Join us for our Social Behavioral Interest Group (SBIG) Colloquium on December 11, 2025!
Speaker: Greg Walton (Stanford University)
Title: Possibility Architects: How We Can Create the Positive Representations That Help Students and Teachers Spiral Up
Abstract: Maybe you were struggling. Maybe you were getting in conflicts. Maybe you just didn’t know which way to go. But if someone a little older than you, someone you respected, saw in you the good and successful person you could become, if they shared this image with you, might that help you become this person? In this talk, building on classic “wise” interventions that address the downstream consequences of identity threat (e.g., for experiences of threat, for belonging uncertainty), I’ll discuss how we can address a “spoiled” image of the self, including to facilitate the development of “possibility architects” and the functions this serves. First, I’ll share recent research developing interventions that help people invert their own identities from weak to strong, including examples with refugee students (enhancing academic engagement over 1 year) and people contending with depression (enhancing goal pursuit over two weeks). Second, focusing on students in some of the most stigmatized positions in school, I’ll describe how we can leverage students’ own voices to shift their identity in the social sphere. Our Lifting the Bar program creates a platform for students to (re)introduce themselves to an educator of their choice on their terms. In an initial evaluation with students returning to school from a period in juvenile detention, this reduced the rate of recidivism to the justice system from 69% to 29%.
The Social Behavior Interest Group consists of members of the university community who are interested in social psychological research. The SBIG supports an active program of visiting speakers. The group meets weekly to hear speakers describe their recent research. Since 1990, SBIG has brought in numerous distinguished visiting speakers. Presentations have included contemporary issues in the study of attitudes, social cognition, prejudice & stereotyping, and also applied research questions in the domains of health and consumer behavior.