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[edit] Definition

Stereotype threat refers to being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group. The idea of stereotype threat was first identified by psychologist Claude Steele. Stereotype threat states that when a fixed biological characteristic (eg race, gender) is emphasized before a given test, test performance is negatively affected:

“culturally-shared stereotypes suggesting poor performance of certain groups can, when made salient in a context involving the stereotype, disrupt performance of an individual who identifies with that group” ^[1](Steele, Aronson 1995).

Although Steele and his colleague Aronson focused on the emphasis on race affecting test performance, similar studies have demonstrated the same results for emphasis on gender. In other studies researchers found that “consistent exposure to stereotype threat (e.g., faced by some ethnic minorities in academic environments and women in math) can reduce the degree that individuals value the domain in question” ^[2](Aronson, et al. 2002; Osborne, 1995; Steele, 1997). Also research has found that there are varying degrees of an individual on a certain group to be affected by stereotype threat:

…some members may be more vulnerable to its negative consequences than others; factors such as the strength of one’s group identification or domain identification have been shown to be related to ones’ subsequent vulnerability to stereotype threat (http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/definition.html)

Further research has also found that when an individual identifies with a specific group, performance can be negatively affected because of concerns that they will in fact confirm the negative stereotypes of that group.

Information from: www.reducingstereotypethreat.org

[edit] Gender and Stereotype Threat

Several studies have shown that negative stereotypes can undermine women’s performance on tests, in particular math tests. Catherine Good’s field study of men and women in a college level mathematics course demonstrated that although these students were all considered to be “highly motivated,” stereotype threat still affected women’s scores. In one group the women were given a “stereotype-nullifying” presentation and women’s scores were far higher than the men’s scores. When another group was given the test under normal conditions, men and women’s scores were equal ^[3].

In Amy Keifer’s study on examining the implicit stereotypes about mathematical performance for women affects their susceptibility to stereotype threat. She found that “women who showed less implicit math-gender stereotyping showed the largest performance difference across experimental conditions” ^[4].

[edit] References