This double-blind, field experiment consisted of over 200 seventh-grade students, who were taking the same class subject, ranging from lower-middle-class families to middle-class families. Half of the students were African Americans, and half were European Americans. This experiment took place at the beginning of the fall semester when evaluative stress is assumed to be high. Students in the class were assigned to either be in the control group, or the treatment (affirmation) group, and all students were given an exercise to complete individually and silently. The exercise contained a list of (personal) values (such as being good at drawing), and the students in the affirmation group were instructed to indicate their most important value, while students in the control group were instructed to indicate their least important value. The students in the treatment (affirmation) group then wrote a paragraph indicating why their chosen value is important to them. The students in the control group also wrote a paragraph but indicated why the chosen value might be important to someone else. Finally, students in the treatment group indicated their level of agreement with the statement "I care about these values", while students in the control group indicated their level of agreement with the statement "some people care about these values" (Cohen, 2006). The data from this experiment was combined with data from a replicative study, the only difference being how many values the student indicated.