HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series
HKS Working Paper No. RWP15-017
April 2015
Abstract
When people perceive themselves as similar to others, greater liking and closer relationships typically result. In the first randomized field experiment that leverages actual similarities to improve real-world relationships, we examined the affiliations between 315 ninth grade students and their 25 teachers. Students in the treatment condition received feedback on five similarities that they shared with their teachers; each teacher
received parallel feedback regarding about half of his/her ninth grade students. Five weeks after our intervention, those in the treatment conditions perceived greater similarity with their counterparts.
Furthermore, when teachers received feedback about their similarities with specific students, they perceived better relationships with those students, and those students earned higher course grades. Exploratory analyses suggest that these effects are concentrated within relationships between teachers and their “underserved” students. This brief intervention appears to close the achievement gap at this school by over 60%.
Citation
Gehlbach, Hunter, Maureen E. Brinkworth, Aaron M. King, Laura M. Hsu, Joe McIntyre, and Todd Rogers. "Creating Birds of Similar Feathers: Leveraging Similarity to Improve Teacher-Student Relationships and Academic Achievement." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP15-017, April 2015.