Welcome to my website

Thanks for visiting!  Here you’ll find a

description of some of my research interests, publications, information about classes I teach, links to recent news coverage, and information about some of my friends and collaborators.

For more about me, read this bio or see the Rising Star interview from the Association for Psychological Science.

Please feel free to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you!

Select New Papers

A 21-minute writing exercise improves marriages (Finkel, Slotter, Luchies, Walton, & Gross, in press)

Are affirmative action and meritocracy the same thing? New paper on the policy implications of stereotype threat (Walton, Spencer, & Erman, 2013).

A shared birthday with a math major increases students’ motivation in math  (Walton, Cohen, Cwir, & Spencer, 2012, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)

One-hour belonging intervention increases Black college students’ grades over over 3-years, reducing the racial achievement gap by half (Walton & Cohen, 2011, Science).

A simple change in the wording of survey items increases voter turnout by 11% (Bryan, Walton, Rogers, & Dweck, 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science)

Resources

Stereotype Threat and Affirmative Action

Legal scholars Stuart Banner (UCLA), Jerry Kang (UCLA), and Rachel Godsil (Seton Hall), and Steve Spencer and I led a group of social psychologists to prepare an amicus brief for the Supreme Court in Fisher v. Texas on the implications of stereotype threat for affirmative action. The brief was signed by almost all leading stereotype-threat researchers (95 in total). Click here for the brief. Click here for a policy paper.

Educators

Want to reduce stereotype threat? This 1-page guide created with Geoff Cohen and Claude Steele reviews empirically validated strategies. To learn more, watch a video on stereotype threat or on the social-belonging intervention

Want to learn how brief psychological interventions can raise student achievement over long periods of time? Check out this 4-page review written with David Yeager and Geoff Cohen. They’re not magic! Want more? Read this longer review written with David Yeager.

Want to raise your students’ achievement? Sign up for PERTS -- the Project for Education Research that Scales!  PERTS features free research-based techniques to change how students think and feel about school in ways that raise their motivation and achievement. Interested? Read more here.

Popular Writings

Willpower: It’s in your head. November 26, 2011, New York Times.

Addressing achievement gaps with psychological interventions. February , 2013, Phi Delta Kappan.