Reflection on Purpose Changes Students' Academic Interests: A Scalable Intervention in an Online Course Catalog

College students routinely use online course catalogs to explore a variety of academic offerings. Course catalogs may therefore be an effective place to encourage reflection on academic choices and interests. To test this, we embedded a psychological intervention in an online course catalog to encourage students to reflect on their purpose during course exploration. Results of a randomized field experiment with over 4,000 students at a large U.S. university show that a purpose intervention increased students' cognitive engagement in describing their interests, but reduced search activities. Students became more interested in courses related to creative arts and social change, but less in computer and data science. The findings demonstrate the malleability of students' interests during course exploration and suggest practical strategies to support purpose reflection and guide students toward deliberate exploration of their interests in higher education.