Using a Self-Compassion Intervention to Increase Engineering Self-Efficacy in Women Pursuing Engineering in Higher Education

Encouraging women’s pursuit and retention in higher education has been an important movement in the United States over the last several decades. While there has been considerable progress, women are still underrepresented in fields related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). The most significant gender gap being engineering, where women make up only 21% of all engineering majors. Lack of self-efficacy is one variable that has been implicated as a barrier for women in engineering, due to implicit and explicit biases and discrimination women experience relating to engineering in higher education. Self-compassion has been shown to be strongly correlated with self-efficacy, with explanations theorized at the level of each positive subcomponent: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. The current study investigates the effects of a self-compassion mindstate induction (SCMI) intervention on engineering self-efficacy compared to a control group. This study also explores gender and race discrimination from faculty and peers in the participants' environment to observe if this plays a role in the effect of the intervention. Women (N = 73) majoring in engineering were recruited from a large southwestern university to participate. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted, revealing a significant three-way interaction for condition type (SCMI or control), discrimination scores, and engineering self-efficacy from Time 1 to Time 2 (F(1, 69) = 6.51, p = .01). The results of this study suggest that participants in the SCMI condition experienced a significant increase in engineering self-efficacy from Time 1 to Time 2 when controlling for discrimination in the women's environment. Self-compassion based interventions that have the potential to increase engineering self-efficacy may be particularly helpful to women who experience more gender and race discrimination in their environment. Future work should be done to examine discrimination more directly in the context of self-compassion and engineering self-efficacy. These results show promise for using brief, accessible, cost-free, positive psychology interventions to support women pursuing engineering in higher education. This research contributes to the literature aiming to address gender disparities in engineering higher education, laying the groundwork for future interventions that support underrepresented populations in STEM.