The benefits of having a positive role model in your life, and your kids’

Published on Psychology Today

This past month, I lost my mentor, my friend, and the person who served as my career role model. Her name was Judy DeLoache, and she plucked me out of college at the ripe old age of 22 to start a career in academia. I worked in her lab throughout graduate school, earning a master’s and PhD under her mentorship. She taught me how to write, how to do research, and how to think scientifically. Most importantly, she taught me how to navigate a difficult and competitive career as a woman in a male dominated field, and how to do it with dignity and grace. I looked up to her, I emulated her, and any accomplishments I’ve ever had careerwise are because I had her there to hold my hand. I am so very sad to lose her presence in my life, but I’ve also been reflecting on how lucky I was to have her in it for so long.

According to psychology, a model is someone you can imitate to learn something new. Models can be anyone you can learn behaviors from, good or bad, whereas a role model is a positive influence who inspires and guides good behaviors. Research suggests that the best role models are competent, and meaningfully similar to the individual, and the role model’s success has to be attainable (Gladstone & Cimpian, 2021).

Given that we often choose and learn the most from role models that are somehow like us, oftentimes the best ones are the same gender and race/ethnicity that you are, and this seems to be especially important for women and historically marginalized groups. For example, teachers are better able to positively influence the educational performance and career decisions of students who share the teacher’s gender or race. As such, female college students are more likely to take courses that are taught by a female professor. Female students are also more likely to pursue a science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) major if they have a female professor for a STEM class and are more likely to persist in that major than if assigned a male mentor. Likewise, when students from underrepresented ethnic/racial backgrounds take classes with professors who are of their same ethnic/racial group, performance improves relative to White students. And this isn’t just true for college-aged adults; in fact, Black students assigned to a Black teacher as early as in elementary school are more likely to graduate from high school and go to college than are those assigned to a White teacher (see Kearney & Levine, 2020, for a review)

Importantly, a role model doesn’t have to be someone you know—they could be someone that we are exposed to in other ways, such as on television or other media. Actors, musicians, authors, and even fictional characters can certainly affect someone’s attitudes in positive ways, when we glamorize their behavior, or in negative ways, when we mock or condemn them, so it’s important that the role models we expose ourselves and our children to express good messages or good behaviors (Kearney & Levine, 2020).

Unfortunately, finding role models through the media can be difficult for women and underrepresented groups, because they are just that—underrepresented. When I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, male characters dominated children’s TV and movies. Men were portrayed as more independent, important, attractive, and brave when compared to female characters, who were few and far between and highly gender stereotyped, often playing the role of the victim. Black, Hispanic, and Asian characters were almost non-existent. Even in the 2000s, women made up fewer than 40 percent of characters in prime time. Thus, not surprisingly, when researchers asked a group of 179 kids aged 8-13 to describe a role model, girls and children from underrepresented groups were more likely to cite people they knew over someone in the media, since people who matched their gender and ethnicity just wasn’t available to them on TV (Anderson & Cavallaro, 2002).

Despite not having a lot of female role models on television, I did find some inspiration through a TV character named Dana Skully from The X-Files. She was a female scientist and paranormal investigator; so for an aspiring scientist (and avid fan of all things spooky) she was the ultimate super hero. Turns out that I wasn’t alone: The “Skully Effect” is actually a well-known phenomenon, and research has shown that girls who watched the X-Files growing up were more likely to pursue careers in STEM, many citing Dana Scully as an important influence in that decision (Kearney & Levine, 2020).

My parents were more of my role models growing up. Classically, parents can serve as children’s primary role models, especially parents of the same gender, like mothers with their daughters and fathers with their sons (Hill & Duncan, 1987). But my parents didn’t have the same aspirations that I did, as most parents don’t. On top of that, kids spend a lot of time away from their parents, especially as they get older, so it’s important to have role models that are closer to your age and interests.

Like women, children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to have role models outside of their parents. But various programs have been designed to provide children with a slightly older mentor, or role model, to help fill in that gap. Programs like Big Brothers, Big Sisters and other well-designed mentoring programs have shown significant benefits in children’s educational and career attainment over time. On top of that, children in these programs show fewer absences in school, greater academic confidence, and improvements in their grades (Kearney & Levine, 2020).

So why are role models important? Role models provide you (and your children) with someone to look up to, to model good behaviors, and scaffold reasonable, positive short term and long-term goals. It’s worth thinking about whether you have a role model, whether your kids have a role model, and what that role model can or has taught you. Remember that loving, caring friends and relatives, like your parents can serve as role models, and likewise, that you or your relatives can serve as role models for your kids. On top of that, it isn’t the 80s and 90s anymore, and while media is far from perfect, there are a lot more role models who are women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ on television than ever before. I will always miss my mentor, but after learning so very much from her, I can now reflect on how lucky I was to have someone who’s path I was so thrilled to follow.

Photo by Pexels/Katerina Holmes

References

Anderson, K. J. & Cavallaro, D. (2002), Parents or Pop Culture? Children's Heroes and Role Models. Childhood Education, 78(3), 161-168.

Gladstone, J.R., Cimpian, A. (2021). Which role models are effective for which students? A systematic review and four recommendations for maximizing the effectiveness of role models in STEM. IJ STEM Ed 8, 59.

Hill, M. S., & Duncan, G. J. (1987). Parental family income and the socioeconomic attainment of children. Social Science Research, 16(1), 39-73.

Kearney, M. S., & Levine, P. B. (2020). Role models, mentors and media influences. The Future of Children, 30(1), 83-106.