Lower socioeconomic status is related to poorer emotional well-being prior to academic exams.

BACKGROUND: People of lower social status tend to have greater emotional responses to stress. The present study assessed whether lower social status was related to greater emotional responses in anticipation of a naturalistic stressor: academic exams among college students. METHODS: College students in an introductory statistics class (N = 252; 75.81% female; 18.41% Latino, 25.10% White, 43.93% Asian, 12.56% different racial backgrounds) completed two course exams as part of this naturalistic prepost-experimental design. They provided four reports of positive, depressive, and anxious emotion - one the day before and one immediately after each exam. RESULTS: As hypothesized, multilevel models (ratings nested within participants) predicting emotion indicated that students with lower mother's education had less positive emotion, more depressive emotion, and more anxious emotion the day prior to academic exams than students with higher mother's education (proportional reductions in variance [PRV] = .013-.020). Specifically, lower mother's education was associated with poorer well-being before but not after the exam. Exploratory models revealed that differences in emotion by mother's education were strongest for students with lower exam scores (PRV = .030-.040). CONCLUSIONS: Socioeconomic status may influence college students' anticipatory distress prior to academic exams, which may impact health and academic performance.

The mathematical flexibility of college students: The role of cognitive and affective factors.

BACKGROUND: Traditional math instruction that emphasizes procedures and rote memorization is common in math classes, particularly within the United States. Students may be able to perform steps and recite information, but flexible thinking in math is also an important ability. Lay theories assume that extensive experience in math would lead to increased flexibility, but some research has posited a change-resistant account, which argues that experience with traditional instruction may make it difficult to think flexibly about even simple concepts. AIMS: The current study explored the mathematical flexibility of college students who completed their K-12 education in the United States, and investigated how affective and cognitive factors contributed to flexible thinking. SAMPLE: Participants were 128 undergraduate students at a competitive U.S. public university. METHOD: Mathematical flexibility was measured through a novel task that asked participants to generate as many strategies as they could for a simple arithmetic problem. These strategies were coded to create scores of fluency (number of strategies) and flexibility (number of unique strategies). RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: On average, participants were only able to provide little more than three unique strategies beyond the primary strategy taught in K-12 classrooms. Measures of math anxiety, math identity, need for cognition, and working memory were all unrelated to flexibility. However, student perceptions of how many possible solutions exist were significantly related to flexibility. These results provide evidence for a change-resistance account and provide further evidence that math flexibility is a unique construct.