Purpose reflection benefits minoritized students’ motivation and well-being in STEM

Students from groups historically excluded from STEM face heightened challenges to thriving and advancing in STEM. Prompting students to reflect on these challenges in light of their purpose can yield benefits by helping students see how their STEM work connects to fundamental motives. We conducted a randomized, controlled trial to test potential benefits of reflecting on purpose—their “why” for pursuing their degrees. This multimethod study included 466 STEM students (232 women; 237 Black/Latinx/Native students). Participants wrote about their challenges in STEM, with half randomly assigned to consider these in light of their purpose. Purpose reflection fostered benefits to beliefs and attitudes about the major, authentic belonging, and stress appraisals. Effects were robust across race and gender identities or larger for minoritized students. Structural and cultural shifts to recognize students’ purpose in STEM can provide a clearer pathway for students to advance.

fundamental principles of goal congruity theory suggest that seeing agentic and communal values as possible in STEM is essential for motivation and persistence.
To see whether agentic and communal values emerge among STEM professionals, we can examine reported inspirations for pursuing a STEM career.As shown in Table 1, individual-focused reasons (being passionate or having a career in a respected field) were more often cited by White men, whereas reasons focused on social impact (solving world's biggest challenges or making a difference) were especially cited by White women and Black/Hispanic STEM professionals.
Notably, the inspirations that STEM professionals reported varied by both gender and race.Yet the modal STEM department may not prioritize the communally-oriented reasons emphasized by minoritized groups.Common beliefs hold that STEM fields lack opportunities to fulfill communal goals 11 or to work with communally-oriented faculty 12 .Further, the cultures in engineering and physical sciences departments can particularly emphasize agency over communality 10 .The challenge thus is to build clearer bridges between STEM educational activities and the purposes articulated by students.
Because STEM departments can be seen by students as operating at a communality deficit, highlighting the ways that STEM fields can fulfill prosocial goals holds particular power 4,5,13 .Highlighting communal opportunity in STEM fosters greater motivation 14 and better performance 15 .When students (even outside of the STEM pathway) reflect on why scientists do their work, students generate more communally-oriented content 16 .Considering "why" might bring to mind how science and engineering contribute to communal purpose.Sometimes the beneficial "why" is quite concrete and practical: Prompting students to consider the utility value of their science or math coursework increases student motivation and performance 17 .At other times, the "why" is more abstract: Prompting students to consider the self-transcendent purpose of their coursework yielded greater persistence and graduation rates for first-generation students 18 .
If articulating purpose taps into fundamental motives, similar benefits might emerge across racial identities, because evidence suggests that agency and communality are highly valued within and across racial groups.For example, Afrocentric values center communally-oriented ideals related to community, collaboration, and justice 19,20 .Yet group membership likely shapes the experience and endorsement of fundamental motives.For instance, the facets of communal purpose might diverge for minoritized and majoritized groups.McGee and colleagues 13,21 advocate that STEM faculty incorporate an equity ethic into their material to more fully engage Black and Latinx students.If STEM courses and communicators can clarify these paths, both students and the science will reap the benefit.

A fuller picture of experience: authentic belonging and stress appraisals
Integrating purpose into STEM work can bolster students' belonging and resilience through goal congruity processes.Students' clarity about how their STEM path aligns with their fundamental motives can contribute to a sense that one's true self is seen and valued within STEM.Prior goal congruity evidence shows that students (especially women) who wrote about science as including communal opportunities reported greater belonging in science 22 .This sense of purpose and goal alignment can especially be valuable as students meet with challenges; otherwise, struggle can be a sign that the student should exit (particularly for students contending with identity threats).Individuals who experience contexts as aligning with their values tend to experience authenticity in those contexts 23 ; such experiences of authenticity can matter especially when students occupy identity-threatening contexts 24 .
Articulating purpose in STEM also holds potential to reduce deleterious psychological stress responses.Psychological stress occurs when the demands of stressors surpass efficacy to cope with them or the resources for coping 25 .In contrast, more adaptive responses occur when individuals believe that their capacities surpass their stressors.Students minoritized by their race, gender, or multiple identities experience stressors related to challenging work, as well as additional stressors due to potential bias, resource disparities, and isolation or exclusion.A novel contribution of the current research is to expand goal congruity evidence to stress appraisals: Does   To make a difference in the world 29% 37% 35% 34%

Current research
We conducted a randomized, controlled trial testing the benefits of a brief elicitation of students' purpose in STEM.Our goal was to determine what motivational and attitudinal benefits arise from reflecting on challenges along with purpose, and whether these effects emerge across gender and race/ethnicity.This research examined three central questions: 1. does articulating purpose benefit students, and are these benefits observed among groups historically excluded from STEM? 2. are the benefits of purpose reflection on authentic belonging and stress appraisals related to perceived opportunities to fulfill communal and agentic motives in STEM? 3. Do the challenges and purposes articulated by STEM students vary across gender and race/ethnicity?
In the brief online exercise, each student reflected on challenges in their STEM major.The presence of purpose constituted the experimental manipulation: Half of the participants were randomly assigned to consider these challenges integrated with their purpose.Students wrote for 5 min following their randomly-assigned instruction, and then completed self-report assessments (see "Method").

Results
Key analyses were 2 Reflection Condition (challenge or purpose/challenge) × 2 Racial Status (minoritized, majoritized) × 2 Gender (women, men) between-subjects ANOVAs testing all main effects and interactions.We present all significant effects of reflection condition and interactions between reflection and race and/or gender; however, student identities did not systematically moderate the effect of purpose reflection.All other significant effects (e.g., main effects of race and gender) are reported in Supplementary Materials.In brief, those findings reveal greater difficulties for students identifying as women, as Black/Latinx/Native, or both-they report less beneficial beliefs and attitudes about the major, less authentic belonging, and greater stress appraisals.
With this context in mind, we turn to examining whether the brief reflection of purpose bolsters students from historically excluded groups in STEM.As intended, the experimental manipulation significantly influenced written responses.Purpose themes more frequently appeared among participants directed to write about their purpose, whereas challenge themes more frequently appeared among participants directed to focus only on challenges (chi-square ps = < 0.001-0.024).Purpose themes were rarely spontaneously generated in the challenge condition.

Effects of purpose integration on major/career beliefs and attitudes
Reflecting on challenges integrated with purpose, relative to reflecting on challenges alone, increased students' belief that their STEM major offered opportunities to meet their goals, F(1, 458) = 12.55, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.027.The purpose benefit occurred for both communal and agentic affordances (see Fig. 1).The benefit was stronger for men than women, Purpose Reflection × Gender interaction: F(1, 458) = 3.867, p = 0.050, η p 2 = 0.008.As shown in Fig. 2, students reflecting on purpose reported greater enjoyment in pursuing the STEM major, F (1, 457)

Research question 2: Are effects of purpose reflection on belonging and stress appraisal mediated by perceived opportunities to fulfill agentic or communal goals?
We then tested possible psychological pathways for the effects of purpose reflection on the theoretically-relevant student experience variables of belonging and stress appraisals (see Fig. 5).For authentic belonging, both agentic and communal affordances mediate the effect (see Panel A); in contrast, for reduced stress appraisals, only agentic affordances mediate (see Panel B).For students in the STEM pathway, articulating their purpose increased their belief that they can meet their self-oriented and other-oriented goals in their STEM majors; these perceived goal opportunities were distinctly associated with beneficial outcomes.

Research question 3: Do challenges and purposes vary across student race and gender?
We employed thematic coding to document the content of students' writing about their challenges and purposes.

Challenge condition
Table 2 depicts that the most frequently mentioned challenges were commonly held across groups: Coursework difficulties (n = 173), social stressors (n = 52), and uncertainty about their major or career (n = 48).
Chi-square goodness of fit tests performed on each theme detected no significant differences in the proportions of each identity group mentioning challenge themes (ps = 0.165-0.676).Examination across themes, however, shows that the dispersion of challenges varied by majoritized vs. minoritized status: Minoritized students report challenges across themes, whereas majoritized students concentrate in coursework (i.e., more than 80% of majoritized vs. approximately 60% of minoritized students).In parallel, identity stressor themes emerge among women and especially among racially minoritized women.Identity stressors included both overt prejudice as well as contending with the white male "default" 2 in STEM.
"My major is difficult because the technology involved with audio engineering changes frequently, as well as the culture.It is also a very male-dominated industry, and as a first generation collegiate female, I have a hard time feeling like I fit in.I have yet to face any explicit sexism or discrimination, but it is always subliminally present.I have mostly male professors, and it is clear they just have different classroom expectations that I, as a girl, have been taught to adhere to.For me, it is be quiet and polite.Sit still, pay attention, raise your hand to ask questions, take diligent notes.But in many of my classes, the guys yell out answers, crack jokes that everyone laughs at, speak over each other and myself.It is just a different culture, and I don't think the male students or professors see how that is inherently creating an environment that women are not familiar with or welcome in." (White woman; audio engineering).Some students faced multiple, compounding challenges, such as identity stressors, coursework difficulties, and scarce resources.Coursework challenges are paramount for all students, but students from historically excluded groups must navigate these alongside a range of other ongoing obstacles.

Purpose reflection condition
Students asked to reflect on their purpose most frequently mentioned themes relating to competence (n = 183), prosociality (n = 104), and financial rewards (n = 67; see Table 3).
Chi-square goodness-of-fit tests within each theme detected no significant effects of identity group (ps = 0.41-0.75).Again, minoritized students showed a wider dispersion of purposes, compared to majoritized students.Competence was the most frequently mentioned purpose, particularly for majoritized students (> 87%) compared to minoritized students (64% of women and 76% of men).Representation of identity was more frequently mentioned by minoritized women (28%) than majoritized women (8%), and it was not mentioned by men at all.Representation included a drive to act as a role model for future generations: I am Dominican-American and I have never met or heard of anyone studying or doing what I am doing.In the Hispanic culture, the science field is something that isn't brought up much and if it is it's to become a doctor/nurse.I want to show younger Hispanic kids that they too can be a cool scientist!(Hispanic woman; chemistry and environmental science).
Students integrated both communal and agentic elements into their purpose, and many included multiple motivations that aided them in overcoming challenges:  Further, communal purpose emerged differently across students.Some students emphasized direct collaboration and connection: "I hope to cherish those relationships I make through the workplace and clients.I think that a STEM pathway is a great way to make an impact in your career" (White woman; kinesiology).Other students emphasized more distal prosocial impact: "I would like to work on online products that have a high impact on people across the world.It is important to me to try and make an impact with my work, and there are a million different corners of software engineering that profoundly impact people's day to day lives, even if they do not realize it" (White man; computer science).The complexity and multiplicity of students' purposes suggests it is important for them to articulate these for themselves.

Summary
In sum, the content of students' reflections revealed both similarities and differences across identity groups.As expected given rigorous STEM majors, most students wrote about coursework challenges and competence purposes.Even when students reported agentic and communal motives, how these motives crystallized within STEM varied from student to student.For students whose identities are well-represented in their majors, their challenges and purpose are fairly localized to their coursework and competence; for minoritized students, their challenges and purpose are more widely dispersed.
These student responses illustrate the double-edged sword of marginalized identities.For students from historically excluded groups, identity consideration emerged as both a stressor and purpose.Particularly for minoritized women, identity both led to challenges within their STEM majors and provided a source of meaning.

Discussion
Across both race and gender, students from minoritized and majority groups who wrote briefly about why they were pursuing their STEM degree showed more beneficial cognitions and attitudes.They perceived greater opportunities to fulfill their agentic and communal goals, and they reported more enjoyment and certainty about their majors.Further, students who reflected on their purpose reported greater authentic belonging, as well as reduced stress appraisals.This robust purpose effect holds promise to elevate students, especially those who constantly must contend with questions of whether they "have it"-as individuals and as members of historically excluded groups.
These results are a warning call that the "same" STEM classroom is not psychologically equivalent to all students, and higher education has more work to do to reach equity in terms of inclusion and psychological safety.Racially minoritized students, and minoritized women especially, reported higher levels of stress and lower coping efficacy/resources.Because they started at a much higher level of stress, even a beneficial purpose reflection could not eliminate group disparities in stress.Even after considering purpose, minoritized women reported stress appraisals that were still higher than the those of majoritized men considering their challenges.These results are alarming, given the hazards of the Strong Black Woman stereotype 31 .A level playing field will not be achieved by the individual action of reflecting on purpose: Broader systemic changes are necessary to achieve equity.
This study illuminated plausible psychological processes for how reflecting on purpose realizes benefits.Students who reflected on their purpose perceived that their major allowed them greater opportunity to connect with or help others (communal affordances), and greater opportunity for self-advancement and achievement (agentic affordances).Each of these perceived opportunities in the major was distinctly associated with a sense that students could be their real selves and be accepted in their STEM major.The perception of agentic opportunities was distinctly associated with a reduced appraisal of stress.These findings add to the well-documented relationship Table 3. Characterizing purpose themes: frequencies by race and gender.Data for participants (N = 232) in the purpose condition.Themes are listed in descending frequency across the whole sample.Proportions (prop.) are calculated within group and do not sum to 1.0 within column because participants could report multiple purposes.www.nature.com/scientificreports/ between perceived control and stress 25 , but expand to include perceptions of one's environment rather than oneself.Indeed, perceiving agentic opportunities in their major may provide students with greater ability to deploy their coping resources to manage their stressors.Delineating the unique role of agentic affordances in stress appraisals provides an important step for future research and intervention.All students experience stress along STEM pathways, and clearly providing direct paths to agentic opportunities in STEM environments-for all students-can mitigate stress appraisals.These results provide insight about how particular motives and cognitions matter in STEM trajectories.Goal congruity theory 4,5 posits that perceiving a greater opportunity to fulfill valued goals leads to motivational, affective, and cognitive benefits.The current findings advance this theoretical framework with more precise evidence about when particular affordances matter: Both agentic and communal affordances uniquely related to authentic belonging, but only agentic affordances related to reduced stress appraisals.Initiatives to bolster students' communal opportunities in STEM deserve focus because STEM fields are perceived as deficient in these opportunities.Communal opportunities matter for authenticity and belonging, perhaps especially for students historically excluded from STEM 11,13 .Yet highlighting communal opportunities cannot come at the cost of highlighting agentic opportunities.For students pursuing STEM majors, agentic goals and affordances matter 32 .Classrooms, departments, and institutions that can clarify how their programs aid students in reaching both their communal and agentic goals are those that will recruit and retain students from a wide range of backgrounds.
The current research provides causal evidence of the benefits of a brief purpose reflection for a wide range of students, and future research can build on this foundation to understand when and how identity might moderate the accessibility or impact of purpose reflection.For example, identities may shape outcomes at different parts of the developmental trajectory: Articulating purpose might matter more for historically excluded groups at key decision points, such as choosing a major or applying for jobs.Further, future research can investigate the consequences of having one's purpose reflected or dismissed by the local culture.STEM faculty who are from majoritized identities may be less likely to know or ask about minoritized students' purposes-even though these are the students who might gain the most from such purpose integration in STEM fields.We acknowledge that the current sample did not include gender nonbinary and other gender-identified individuals; yet, we hope that this initial empirical work provides a foundation to investigate a range of other minoritized and marginalized identities to understand if purpose benefits emerge similarly in content and in impact.
The randomized, controlled nature of this experiment provides causal evidence that purpose reflection can benefit students.We note that students articulated their purpose, and thus it is not the instructors' purview to tell students what their purpose is but to create space for reflection.As such, reflections might be incorporated into instruction, advising, and mentoring in straightforward ways.For example, STEM faculty, even in large lecture courses, might ask students to write briefly about their purpose as an attendance check or extra credit.Advisors and mentors could prompt students to articulate their "why" and consider exploring paths that make these purposes more concrete in their day-to-day lives.And students, on their own, might take a moment to consider what is most important to them about this pathway.Pursuing a STEM major is challenging-that is the nature of the work.Yet, connecting students to their "why" can help move them forward with meaning, for the ultimate benefit of both their own lives and building a vibrant, diverse, and innovative STEM workforce.

Method
Procedures and materials were approved by Indiana University's Institutional Review Board under protocol number #11661.The experiment was performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.Participants engaged in the study anonymously, and participant data was stored securely.Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Participants
The study recruited undergraduate students in engineering or physical sciences majors from Prolific.Of 575 initial respondents, 82 respondents were omitted because they did not complete more than 50% of the survey and 3 respondents were omitted because they did not meet the study criterion of a STEM major or minor.Data from 24 respondents who did not identify gender as male or female were also omitted, given insufficient data to analyze nonbinary and other gender-identified respondents as a group; we recognize this as a limitation.
The resulting sample was 466 participants (232 women and 234 men), including 280 White students (60.1%), 134 Latino(a/x) students (28.8%), 93 Black/African American students (20%), 11 Asian/Asian American students (2.4%), and 10 Native American/Indigenous students (2.1%).Participants could select multiple racial and ethnic identity options.For analyses, Black/African-American, Latinx, and Native American/Indigenous students were categorized as minoritized students, and White and/or Asian students were categorized as majoritized students given current representation in STEM fields 1 .
Participants were predominantly physical science majors (n = 225) and engineering majors (n = 175); other majors included technology (n = 66) and math (n = 57), and life sciences (n = 38).One student reported a STEM minor.Participants indicated multiple majors if applicable.Most participants were in their first four years of higher education (18.2% first year; 24.2% second year; 28.1% third year; 24.7% fourth year, 3.0% fifth year or second bachelor's/similar degree; 1.7% first year masters or similar).

Power analysis
For a 2 (Reflection Condition) × 2 (Gender) × 2 (Majoritized or Minoritized Race/Ethnicity) between-subjects ANOVA, post hoc sensitivity analysis 29,30  www.nature.com/scientificreports/motives included competence motives focused on demonstrating skills and learning about STEM topics, financial motives involving pursuing monetary rewards and opportunities, and status motives involving a desire to obtain recognition and power over others.The challenge codes included six themes (see Table 5 for excerpts).Coursework difficulty included the struggles associated with completing STEM coursework.Social stressor challenges included difficulties reaching out for help or building and maintaining relationships.Work and family challenges accounted for stressors associated with managing roles beyond the STEM student role.The resources theme captured difficulties in obtaining structural resources and meeting basic needs, such as housing or food.Uncertainty captured feelings of stress related to deciding one's career path or college major.Finally, identity stressors referred to negative stereotypes and hostile environments students experienced due to minoritized gender, racial, or other social identities.Table 4. Sample excerpts of coded motivational themes.

Communal motives
Connection "What's important to me about this pathway is the collaboration of different minds/perspectives to solve a problem and I value that in a career" Prosocial "I hope that being a system admin after college will ensure that online users' safety and privacy are guaran-teed… It is essential to be in STEM/IT as everyone deserves to feel safe on the web" Representation "I hope within my time as a math major I have paved more of an open and understanding pathway for future women in math classes at the collegiate level"

Agentic motives
Competence "I also remind myself why I wanted to study physics in the first place-I have a curious mind and want to better understand how the world/universe operates" Financial "Frankly, I chose a STEM major because I know it would make me money" Status "To me, electrical engineering is important since I can use it as a means of making my impact on the world.I believe that through technology I can have more influence on the things around me and I can do my part to advance society" Table 5. Sample excerpts of coded challenge themes.

Thematic construct Sample excerpt
Coursework "I feel like one of my challenges is having to learn a lot of complex material in a short period of time.This shows up in my daily life because I am constantly stressed and busy trying to keep up with school" Social stressor "I often felt isolated from my peers in my courses due to my educational background… I often felt that I was not able to spend as much time with friends as others who were smarter than me" Work and family "Computer Science requires a ton of math so it is a priority.I have a fiancé and a 1 year old son, so this definitely causes problems at home with how much time I'm not putting into family time.Although it's for the good of the family, college takes a lot of time away from personal things" Resources "I have faced many challenges in school and restarted later in life than a lot of people.Money has been an issue and I had to stop and restart once again because I got pregnant and needed to work full time to prepare for my child" = 4.71, p = 0.031, η p 2 = 0.010, d = 0.21, and greater certainty in pursuing the STEM major, F(1, 457) = 4.612, p = 0.032, η p 2 = 0.010, d = 0.19.Further, purpose reflection especially elevated minoritized students' certainty about the major: Purpose Reflection × Race interaction, F(1, 457) = 5.967, p = 0.015, η p 2 = 0.013.Purpose reflection increased major certainty for racially minoritized students, F(1, 457) = 10.322,p = 0.001, η p 2 = 0.022, d = 0.37 (challenge: M = 4.33; SD = 1.87; purpose: M = 5.03, SD = 1.75).Majoritized students' certainty was stably high across condition (challenge: M = 5.22, SD = 1.72; purpose: M = 5.26, SD = 1.65),F(1, 457) = 0.045, p = 0.833, η p 2 < 0.001, d = 0.02.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Effects of purpose reflection on perceived goal affordances in the major.Note.Ratings ranged from 1 to 7, with higher numbers reflecting more of the construct.Error bars present ± 1 standard error.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Effects of purpose reflection on attitudes about the major.Note.Ratings ranged from 1 to 7, with higher numbers reflecting more of the construct.Error bars present ± 1 standard error.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Effects of purpose reflection on authentic belonging in the major and anticipated career.Note.Ratings ranged from 1 to 7, with higher numbers indicating greater amounts of the construct.Error bars present ± 1 standard error.

"
I am low income and so to survive I have to spend a lot of my time working non skilled labor just to make ends meet.It leaves little time for studying and pursuing my passions of Computer Science … If I spend more time studying, then I won't have enough money to pay for my basic needs such as food, shelter, and clothing … Being a first generation college student makes it really tough to know what the right step is and what to do next when it comes to my education because I don't have anyone in my family or close social circle to guide me since I'm the first one to walk this path." (Latino man; Computer Science).

Figure 4 . 5 .
Figure 4. Effects of purpose reflection on stress appraisals.Note.Positive stress appraisal scores denote more stress than capacity to handle stress; negative scores denote less stress than capacity to handle stress.Error bars present ± 1 standard error.

Uncertainty"
I currently feel like I'm facing a huge challenge in trying to decide what I want out of life after college.I feel an enormous amount of pressure to decide soon and create a vision of what I'm working towards, especially since I'm paying so much to get there.The idea of having to switch majors and possibly have to pay for more terrifies me" Identity stressor "Being a female in a STEM program is definitely hard to identify with professors and other students, it is difficult to find camaraderie in the program"

Table
. STEM professionals' inspiration for pursuing STEM career by race and gender (State of Science Index).Unpublished US subsample survey data retrieved from the State of Science Index (3M, 2022).Participants responded to the question "What is your inspiration for pursuing a STEM career?" and selected from a range of options.

Table 2 .
Characterizing challenge themes: frequencies by race and gender.Data for participants (N = 234) in the challenge condition.Themes are listed in descending frequency across the whole sample.Proportions (prop.)are calculated within group and do not sum to 100% within column because participants could report multiple challenges.When I started college I did not know what I do.I took many courses and found myself most interested in my math classes.Although it is a heavy workload, I enjoy math.It is like solving a puzzle.Sometimes it gets stressful and overwhelming if I fall behind or do not understand a topic.I try to focus on the positives to push through it.I think of how much I am learning, how many interesting applications there are for what I am learning, and I think of my future salary.(White woman; mathematics).