Nguyen 1

Pauline Nguyen
Daubert/Jorgensen
English 12
16 Dec. 2014
Social Issue Research Paper
How does academic stress affect Asian-American students and what external
factors contribute to stress specifically within Asians?
School is commonly attributed as one of the leading sources of stress
in high school studentsand for good reason. A huge amount of pressure is
placed on students to succeed academically, and this pressure has only been
increasing steadily over the years. The strong emphasis on academic
success and achievement has resulted in a society where students who
choose to not pursue further education or who are not academically
outstanding are more often than not left at a severe disadvantage in the
future compared to those who excel, as well as creating an extremely
competitive academic environment among students. With all of this, stress
seems to be an unavoidable roadblock on the average high school students
road to their futurein fact, stress is normally a natural bodily response to
dangerous or otherwise troubling situations, and it can be invaluable during
those times. Despite this, the amount of stress students experience regularly
at school often goes well and beyond the amount of stress considered
healthy or even reasonable, putting these students at risk of developing a
plethora of mental and physical health issues. Pressure on students to excel

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is constantly on the rise, and the correlation between academic pressure and
student stress levels has not gone unnoticed.
In the same vein, Asian-American students are often viewed as the
pinnacle of educational achievement, the picture-perfect model minority
inherently smart and perfect. This idea first came to being in the mid1960s, when the Immigration Act of 1965 allowed a large number of Asian
immigrants to enter America. However, only certain classes of Asians were
allowed entrancespecifically, the wealthiest and most educated groups
within their native countries (Racial Stereotyping of Asians and Asian
Americans and Its Effect on Criminal Justice: A Reflection on the Wayne Lo
Case 2-3). These Asian newcomers were quickly hired as skilled workers,
changing the overall character of the Asian-American community into what
would eventually develop into the idealized model minority stereotype. The
most common stereotype associated with Asians as a whole is the tendency
for them to be exceedingly smart and excel academically, earning top grades
and graduating with flying colors. A number of other stereotypes exist,
including the notion that Asian-Americans can do no wrong, but some of the
most harmful ones regard their intelligence and education. These
stereotypes create skewed impressions of Asian-Americans as a whole,
making people create sweeping generalizations of all Asian-American
students as being inherently smart or their intelligence being a genetic
factor, despite the term Asian-American being a very broad umbrella term
for a large number of extremely different groups in culture, language, and

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circumstances. In addition, they may cause people to have unrealistic or
unfair expectations of these students in comparison to other racial groups,
creating even more stress for them to meet these expectations on top of
Asian cultural expectations of academic success.
Robert and Jeanne Segal and Melinda Smith, as well as Marissa
Maldonado, provide an explanation of what exactly stress is and how it
affects ones health. According to Segal and Smith, stress is a normal
physical response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your
balance in some way (Stress Symptoms, Signs, and Causes 2). However,
students are constantly experiencing levels of stress that go beyond the level
considered healthy and into the level that results in adverse effects on
health. Segal and Smith suggest that people who are highly stressed become
accustomed to the feeling of stress and remain unaware of its severity, even
when it begins affecting their health, thus causing them to become more
stressed and worsening the issue, creating a vicious repeating cycle of
stress. They also argue that how people react to and deal with stress varies
from person to person and that something that is extremely stressful to one
person may not be quite as stressful to another person. Maldonado focuses
more on chronic stress, or long-term exposure to stress, and its biological
background, which has shown that chronic stress creates more myelinproducing cells and less neurons, creating an imbalance in the brains
connectivity (How Stress Affects Mental Health 5).

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Carolyn Gregoire focuses on an APA survey on stress levels conducted
in 2013, which found that teenagers report that during school, their stress
level reaches an extremely high 5.8/10 when a healthy level of stress is
believed to be around 3.9/10. In addition, 31 percent of teenagers reported
that their stress levels increased in the past year, while only 16 percent said
otherwise (American Teens Are Even More Stressed Than Adults 4).
Gregoire believes that teenagers sleep, exercise, technology, and work
habits may be a contributing factor to their increasing stress levels in
addition to school. In particular, lack of sleep increases the likelihood of
teenagers developing major depressive disorder by four times. She also
suggests that parents can be a source of stress for teenagers, but they can
also influence their stress levels by modeling healthy ways to deal with
stress.
Sian Beilock, a psychology professor, argues that academic stress is
also counterproductive to students education. With the pressure to succeed
higher than ever, students are often overwhelmed by the amount of stress
they face and their academic performance is often in turn affected. This can
be worsened by a number of other factors or phenomena, including pressure
or perceived importance of a certain test, or ones gender and its association
with negative stereotypes or beliefs (How Stress Affects Mental Health 2).
Beilock recommends psychological interventions such as addressing
students worries regarding tests or difficult material and reaffirming a
students self-worth in order to combat academic stress.

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Regarding Asian-American students, Yong Zhao and Wei Qiu readily
tear down four of the most commonly-believed myths surrounding them: that
they have superior academic achievement, that they are inherently smart,
that they are rarely troublemakers or problem children, and that they are
good at everything. Zhao and Qiu argue that overrepresentation of specific
groups of Asian-Americans with better performance rates than others creates
unrealistic standards and expectations for all groups; for example, ChineseAmerican students are overrepresented in many of the nations elite
universities, receive higher SAT scores in mathematics, are overrepresented
among finalists of National Merit Scholars and other recognitions, and are
less likely to lag behind their age group (How Good Are the Asians?
Refuting Four Myths About Asian-American Academic Achievement 2). In
addition, Asian-Americans are extremely diverse and cannot be generalized
to fit one stereotype based on a few specific groups performance. Therefore,
using one general stereotype to describe all Asian-Americans is entirely
unrealistic and unfair to these students.
Joyce Beiyu Tan and Shirley Yates touch more upon the high emphasis
on academic success that seems to be prevalent throughout the majority of
Asian cultures and how it causes stress in Asian-American students. The
Asian countries of China, Singapore, Korea, and Japan, which are considered
Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) countries, greatly value education and
have extremely high educational standards. In these countries, students
most commonly attribute school and their education to severe amounts of

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stress. When Asian families move to America, their children are often left
with the same cultural educational standards and expectations of their
parents or their own home country, and this creates a familial obligation to
meet these expectations. A study conducted on Singaporean students by Tan
and Yates showed that teacher and parental expectations of students
academic success was highly correlated with the effort students put into
school and their level of academic achievement (Academic Expectations as
Sources of Stress in Asian Students 16). In addition, their own feelings of
self-worth were also found to affect whether they struggled with reaching
their teachers and parents expectations.
Cindy C. Sangalang and Gilbert C. Gee look more into how the support
and strains derived from family and friends affect Asian-American students
stress levels and their mental health. Studies have shown that AsianAmerican students often need mental health care or counseling, but the
stigma surrounding mental illness or health in Asian culture often
discourages these students from seeking help for mental health issues.
Instead, these students often turn to their friends and family for support.
Social support within Asian-Americans has been negatively associated with
acculturative stress and depression, as well as increasing the effect of
stressors on mental health. Again, Asian cultural values may be responsible
for this, as students may be reluctant to open up to others about personal
problems for fear of being a burden on others or of losing face. In addition,
social strain brought on by parental expectations can affect students as well.

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Kelly Yu-Hsin Liao and Meifen Wei focus on a specific group of AsianAmerican studentsChinese international students, mainly transferees from
China to American colleges. On top of the stress of school, these students
face the challenge of a language barrier, having to adapt to a new,
unfamiliar cultural and academic environment, and trying to meet the
cultural expectations of two countries, particularly Chinas. The Chinese
cultural emphasis on academic achievement, as well as the familial
obligation to excel academically, creates a huge amount of stress for these
students. Culture shock and the difficulty of acculturation can also create
personal issues for these students, showing the influence of cultural
expectations on students (Academic Stress and Positive Affect: Asian Value
and Self-Worth Contingency as Moderators Among Chinese International
Students 2).
The effect of academic stress on adolescents has been made all too
clear. With student stress levels continually on the rise along with
increasingly difficult academic expectations and standards, students are now
subject to a huge amount of pressure to succeed. The educational
environment is now most commonly associated with stress, and students are
negatively impacted physically, mentally, and emotionally by the amount of
stress they face daily. For Asian-American students, this issue is further
worsened by Asian cultural expectations of high academic achievement and
success as well as the many stereotypes associated with inherent academic
success that skew peoples standards and expectations of them to unrealistic

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levels. Academic stress may be an issue that affects all students, regardless
of race, but Asian-American students are further burdened by their cultural
standards, especially parental expectations, as well as people generalizing
them as the perfect model minority and assuming that they do not
struggle with school or academic stress at all. The latter is especially difficult
to deal with, as even the most impressive of Asian-American students face
large amounts of stress and personal issues that may affect their health. In
theory, raising awareness of this issue and reminding others that even a
seemingly perfect Asian-American student with top grades that participates
in several extracurricular activities and is chairman of a school club faces just
as much stress as another student, if not more. Knowing that all students,
regardless of race, are affected by academic stress, but also that AsianAmericans are unfairly stereotyped and often treated differently regarding
academics, is the first step to change for them.

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Works Cited
Gregoire, Carolyn. American Teens Are Even More Stressed Than Adults.
The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post, 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 16 Nov.
2014. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/11/american-teensare-even-m_n_4768204.html>.
Liao, Kelly Yu-Hsin, and Meifen Wei. Academic Stress and Positive Affect:
Asian Value and Self-Worth Contingency as Moderators Among Chinese
International Students. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority
Psychology 20.1 (2014): 107-115. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24491130>.
Maldonado, Marissa. How Stress Affects Mental Health. Psych Central.
Psych Central, 25 Feb. 2014. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.
<http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2014/02/25/how-stress-affectsmental-health/>.
Rhoda J., Yen. Racial Stereotyping of Asians and Asian Americans and Its
Effect on Criminal Justice: A Reflection on the Wayne Lo Case. Asian
American Law Journal 7.1 (2000): 2-3. Print.
Smith, Melinda, Robert Segal, and Jeanne Segal. "Stress Symptoms, Signs,
and Causes." Helpguide.org. Helpguide.org, n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2014.

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<http://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/stress-symptoms-causesand-effects.htm>.
Tan, Joyce Beiyu, and Shirley Yates. Academic Expectations as Sources of
Stress in Asian Students. Social Psychology of Education 14.3 (2011):
389-407. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
<http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11218-010-9146-7>.