A major public policy concern is the well known fact that many minority students under-achieve scholastically. The roots of the discrepancy in performance of some minorities and their white counterparts has been attributed to many causes, such as socioeconomic disparities and poor school systems in minority communities. Many of the explanations, however, focus on the students’ environment, and less attention is paid to the psychology of being a minority student in America. Recent provocative research in social psychology, however, suggests that a large portion of academic performance differences may reflect minority students’ representations of stereotypes  surrounding their racial and ethnic identities. Read more →

There is little argument that physical activity promotes good health, and that outdoor “green space” such as parks, forests, and recreation fields, promotes physical activity. Many studies have concluded that access to such space has an independent benefit on health and health-related behaviors. Now, however, there is evidence that access to green space many actually reduce the disparities in health care inequality related to socioeconomic status.

A new study published in The Lancet postulates that exposure to quality outdoor recreational space mitigates factors that lead to disease for populations in a lower socioeconomic position. Read more →

In behavioral medicine, professionals base their interventions on a few models that attempt to explain people’s health-related behavior: the health belief model, reasoned and planned behavior theory, learning theories/classical conditioning, and social cognitive theory. These models are termed continuum theories, for they aim to recognize variables that influence people’s behavior, and using the sum of variables, how likely the person will engage in a particular behavior (Weinstein, Rothman, & Sutton, 1998). They are often criticized on their narrow focus on outcome behavior of interest (e.g. smoking cession) and its non-inclusion of race, gender, and socioeconomic status — all features known to have a somewhat strong influence on health behavior. Nonetheless, the model dynamics are useful to describe particular types of behavior. Read more →