Aug. 20, 2010 Children are more likely to do their homework if
they see it as an investment, not a chore, according to new
research at the University of Michigan. Most children in the
United States say they expect to go to college, but there is
frequently a gap between students' goals and their current
behavior, according to the study conducted by U-M graduate
student Mesmin Destin and Daphna Oyserman, a psychologist at the
U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR), School of Social Work,
and Department of Psychology. The gap can be especially wide
among low-income and African American students, the study says.
The study is published in the Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology. The researchers conducted two studies among middle-
school children in the Detroit area. In the first study, they
asked 266 students about the jobs they saw themselves having as
adults. "Think about yourself as an adult, what job do you think
you'll have? What will you be doing in 10 years?" Nine out of 10
children expected to attend