Daphna Oyserman is a Dean's Professor in the Department of Psychology and of Education and Communication at the University of Southern California.
Oyserman is interested in cultural differences in affect, behavior, and cognition – how people feel, act, and think about themselves and the world around them.
She also examines racial, ethnic and social class gaps in educational achievement and health (see also work relating to gender and self-concept).
Across these domains of research and in different contexts, Oyserman investigates how changes in mindset can shape the perceived meaning of behaviors and situations and how these shifts can have significant effects on health and academic performance.
Throughout her work, she examines how apparently “fixed”differences between groups may in fact mask highly malleable situated processes that can be profoundly influenced through small interventions that shift mindset.
For instance, getting people to circle “I” or “Mine” can make “individualist” Americans look just like “collectivist” Chinese or Koreans and vice versa.
Accordingly, interventions that focus on this macro‐micro interface can help children overcome the constraints imposed by social structural variables.
[7] A core way to intervene with aspiration-achievement gaps in academics is to make school success part of a child's perceived identity.
[11] This identity-goal approach has real world consequences: randomized trials show significant improvement in academic outcomes.