Bye the Books: How Student Perceptions of Inequality Affect Academic Engagement

BRIAN LOWERY
Stanford University Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior

Researchers have long seen evidence that ethnic minorities and women show lower levels of academic engagement than Whites and men. Lowery's talk provides evidence that the way inequality is described can reverse this pattern of academic (dis)engagement. He will also touch on what these findings tell us about the psychological and moral burdens associated with social inequality.

Brian Lowery is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford. A
social psychologist, Lowery's research focuses on the operation of unconscious
racial attitudes and on how individuals perceive inequality. His teaching
centers on translating basic knowledge about human interactions into lessons for
managers, and on managing diversity. He has written about underlying assumptions
that may exacerbate existing inequity, affirmative action, and in-group and
out-group dynamics in major scholarly journals including the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, and Law and Human Behavior. He also oversees the Lowery
Lab, which focuses on how individuals perceive inequality.

SCOPE's brown bag seminar series brings notable experts to the Stanford
community to address issues of educational opportunity, access, equity,
and diversity in the United States and internationally.