One of the most detrimental effects of inequities experienced by nonwhite ethnic minorities in America is academic underachievement. Specifically, I examine teacher expectancies with regard to student performance as a mediator of the teacher's causal attributions and expressed sentiments (e.g., grades, praise, liking and other rewards) concerning that performance.

My research has found that when the teacher's expectancies are violated, the teacher may maintain those initial expectancies by perceiving an agent or factors external to the student as responsible. This error-prone process is especially debilitating for African American students, since the teacher's expectancy for their academic performance tends to be low. The major assumption of my most recent research is that students who are expected to perform poorly by their teacher(s), will infer a dispositional inadequacy or inability in themselves from the labels and treatment received from the "significant other" (the teacher). The negative emotion associated with internal attributions for failure and external attributions for success creates anxiety which may lead to self-handicapping (lack of effort when faced with academic demands). Having developed this theoretical explanation of African American underachievement, known as the Conditioned Failure Model, present efforts are aimed at empirical research to test the model.

Most recently, I have expanded my research interest to investigate African American family dynamics. I received a National Institute of Health grant to conduct developmental research on the socialization practices employed by African American families and to understand the processes by which African American children are prepared to participate successfully in the society-at-large. Two hundred African American males and two hundred African American females (i.e., fifty of each gender ages 6, 9, 12 and 15), as well as their parent/caregiver, teacher, and a peer are participating in this study. The current research program is now in its fifth year of funding. To date a series of studies have been accepted or published on the development and validation of an instrument designed to assess differential socialization using a Q-sort procedure. The Black Family Process Q-Sort (BFPQ) is an instrument designed to assess differential socialization practices among African American families, to ascertain variable patterns that pertain to racial identity, discipline, family communication, and values.