Emphasizing excellence and diversity cues on university websites: Additive or interactive effects on prospective students' psychological reactions?

A series of three web‐based scenario experiments investigated how emphasizing excellence and/or diversity on university websites affects students' psychological reactions toward the advertising institution. Our findings form a robust pattern suggesting that emphasizing excellence and emphasizin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of applied social psychology Vol. 48; no. 2; pp. 59 - 70
Main Authors Ihme, Toni Alexander, Stürmer, Stefan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.02.2018
Subjects
College students
Colleges & universities
Educational psychology
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Social psychology
University students
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Summary:A series of three web‐based scenario experiments investigated how emphasizing excellence and/or diversity on university websites affects students' psychological reactions toward the advertising institution. Our findings form a robust pattern suggesting that emphasizing excellence and emphasizing diversity have additive (rather than interactive or mutually interfering) effects. Two studies (N = 346 and N = 128) showed that the effects of emphasizing excellence and diversity arise from different psychological processes related to important aspects of student applicants' expectations about how well they “fit in” and how well the institution will meet their needs. Study 3 (N = 363), using a within‐subject design, further corroborated that participants preferred universities whose websites emphasized both excellence as well as diversity. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.
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ISSN:0021-9029
1559-1816
DOI:10.1111/jasp.12490