Encouraging Belonging

Stanford psychologist Gregory Walton provides tips to help improve student and workplace environments in this psychological intervention keynote. Through what Walton calls an "attribution retraining process," there is the possibility to change reactions to negative events that cause a feeling of not belonging. By receiving information from older students who have a variety of ethnicities, backgrounds and genders about their experiences in small interventions, new students or freshmen can become better adjusted.

The knowledge that these negative feelings and social events are common and a part of the process shows students that it does not mean that they as an individual do not belong. This creates a very positive effect on academic achievement as well as helping students start out on a positive trajectory. They will continue to feel as if they belong even on a bad day.

Walton shows through the example of women in the heavily male-dominated major engineering, that those who experience this intervention often have a higher sense of confidence and are more likely to feel at home in their environment. Everything talked about by Walton in this psychological intervention keynote can be applied to fast-paced and demanding workplace environments.