How Do Disparities Emerge?: Unpacking Confidence and Accuracy Gaps by Gender and Socioeconomic Status

It is well known that achievement and self-perception gaps exist between marginalized and non-marginalized student groups. However, how and when these disparities arise remains less clear. In this paper, we use multiple linear regression with interaction terms to disentangle the relationship between actual achievement (accuracy) and self-perception (confidence) across control and marginalized groups defined by gender and socioeconomic status. Additionally, we investigate the developmental timing of these gaps to better inform educators on when and how to intervene. Our findings reveal that the confidence boost from answering correctly differs between marginalized and control groups, with marginalized students showing smaller increases in confidence despite similar or improving accuracy. When examining age-related patterns, gender-based confidence gaps also emerge early and remain stable throughout K-12 despite little change in accuracy differences, whereas for socioeconomic status, accuracy gaps tend to narrow with age but confidence gaps persist, highlighting a disconnect between performance and self-perception. These results underscore the importance of early and targeted interventions focused not only on knowledge acquisition but also on building confidence, especially for marginalized students.