The Impact of Participation in Undergraduate Extracurricular Activities on the Transformation of Habitus among American Medical Students

Abstract

Building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, we look at the question of whether extracurricular activities at the undergraduate level have an impact on American medical students' habitus, which we operationalize as a sense of inclusion, belonging. Using a national sample of 375 medical students and controlling for relevant variables, we find that for students from high-prestige backgrounds, being white is the major influence on sense of belonging. For students from low-prestige backgrounds, being white, multiple school acceptances, and participation in cultural activities as undergraduates are directly related to sense of belonging. The effect of participation in undergraduate cultural activities on sense of belonging illustrates the hysteresis effect. We discuss the consequences of cultural omnivorousness with its implications for a broad symbolic touch including the ability to decode a wide range of cultural texts in physician–patient communication in the context of a diverse population.