By Carolyn Gray Anderson
Is it possible that people routinely undermine their own educational interests because they fear the “social penalties” of making choices that are different from their friends’ choices? Would a high schooler decline the offer of a free $200 SAT prep course if he thought his classmates might disapprove? We call this phenomenon peer pressure and some researchers are noticing patterns that indicate students may not always act in their own best interests when faced with decisions about their education.
Leonardo Bursztyn is assistant professor of economics in the Global Economics and Management group at UCLA Anderson and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which recently published his working paper “How Does Peer Pressure Affect Educational Investments?” Bursztyn and his co-author Robert Jensen, professor of business economics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and also affiliated with NBER, conducted field experiments at four large underperforming public high schools in South Los Angeles to understand, in part, the extent to which 11th-graders’ educational choices are shaped by their social environment.
Bursztyn and Jensen found that high school juniors in non-honors courses are 25% less likely to sign up for a free SAT prep course if their choice to do so will be made public. In honors classes, where the peer pressure to succeed academically is greater, the opposite was true: those students were 25% likelier to sign up if their choice was public than if it was not.
“Beyond understanding student motivation and behavior, we believe the results carry important policy lessons,” write Bursztyn and Jensen. “Peer pressure appears to be a powerful force affecting … whether students undertake important investments that could improve academic performance. Even very low-income students are willing to forgo free access to an SAT prep course that could improve their educational and possibly later life outcomes, solely in order to avoid having their peers know about it.”
The authors conclude that social norms, pressures and stigmas, not to mention peers themselves, would be difficult to change. Their work shows, though, that confidentiality around an individual’s educational decisions could encourage him to aspire academically even if his friends don’t.
Read the latest news about Bursztyn and Jensen’s research:
Why Students Avoid Academic Help
People around you control your mind: The latest evidence
Non-Nerds Would Rather Bomb Their SATs than Look Uncool
Peer Pressure Plays Significant Role in Student Behavior
Hurricane Katrina, Peer Pressure and Energy Conservation
Comments