1.)  Male students experience greater social costs to trying harder in school than female students. 

2.)  Gender differences in social costs partly explain gender differences in academic effort.

3.)  Gender differences in social costs partly explain gender differences in academic achievement.

Hamilton College

Workman, J. & Heyder, A. (2020). Gender achievement gaps: The role of social costs to trying hard in high school. Social Psychology of Education, 23, 1407-1427. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-020-09588-6

Gender Achievement Gaps: The Role of Social Costs to Trying Hard in High School

Hypotheses

- social norms generally unsupportive of academic effort, especially for male students
- many students limit their academic effort to attain approval from their peers
- student role of being diligent, hard-working, attentive is more compatible with female than male gender norms (Mickelson, 1989)
- goals of peer approval and academic success are therefore oftentimes in competition
- social costs to academic effort thus come in the form of lost peer approval 

Social Costs

- High School Longitudinal Study of 2009
- investigated social costs, academic effort, academic outcomes
- social costs: students rated the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with two statements:

"If I try hard in my math and science classes, people will make fun of me."

"If I try hard in my math and science classes, I won't be popular."
- academic effort: how often students paid attention to the teacher, turned in assignments on time, kept trying on difficult assignments, did as little work as possible to get by
- academic outcomes: most advanced math course taken by 12th grade, STEM GPA 10th-12th grade

Methods

- social costs is an explanatory factor when looking at gender academic achievement gaps
- implications: focusing on peer norms surrounding academic effort and seeking to change them may help mitigate gender achievement gaps
- limitations: not causal, applied to one culture, one academic domain (STEM), limited to high school level
- STEM is a more stereotypically masculine domain. How would social costs look in other, less stereotypically masculine domains?
- Women are underrepresented in STEM fields and subject to stereotype threat due to stereotypes of underperformance. The findings of this study are somewhat in opposition to this. How do social costs intersect with opposing stereotypes of female underperformance to produce the trends we see in female and male STEM performance?

Conclusion and Reflection

In their 2020 study on gender achievement gaps, Workman and Heyder reported the following results regarding the social costs of academic effort:
- 12% of males and 8% of females reported that they would be made fun of for trying hard in school.
- Male students were 1.75 times more likely than female students to report they would be unpopular for trying hard.
- High social costs led to lower effort and a lower GPA.
- Females reported greater effort, a higher GPA, and taking more rigorous coursework.

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