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A lesson not to be learned? Understanding stereotype threat does not protect women from stereotype threat

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Abstract

This research examines whether reading a text presenting scientific evidence concerning the phenomenon of stereotype threat improves or disrupts women’s performance in a subsequent math task. In two experimental conditions participants (\(N = 118\)) read a text summarizing an experiment in which stereotypes, and not biological differences, were shown to be the cause of women’s underperformance in math (Gender-relevant condition), or the deficits of Afro-Americans on verbal tests (Control condition). Results showed that, whereas men’s performance was not affected by the information provided, women who properly understood the mechanism of stereotype threat had their math performance disrupted in the Gender-relevant condition. These findings suggest that the mere presentation of research evidence on stereotype threat, in the absence of other interventions aimed at reducing the aversive effects of negative stereotypes, may have harmful effects on the targets of stigma.

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Notes

  1. In our materials we did not mention that the verbal test scores of White and African-Americans in the original article by Steele and Aronson (1995) were adjusted for prior SAT scores across all participants. As noted by Sackett et al. (2004) and Yzerbyt et al. (2004), this adjustment does not allow the conclusive inference that observed racial differences in the test scores were the mere product of stereotype threat. We have chosen to omit this information as our participants were not familiar with analyses of covariance. Most importantly, our main concern was to present almost-identical materials both in the Control and in the Gender-relevant conditions, and the Spencer et al.’s (1999) findings presented in the Gender-relevant condition were not adjusted for any covariate. Subsequent studies (Brown and Day 2006) did indeed demonstrate that the removal of stereotype threat, with no covariate adjustment across conditions, also accounted for the racial gap between African-Americans’ and Whites’ performance on other challenging cognitive tasks (e.g., Raven Progressive Matrices).

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, 90, Piazza Aldo Moro, 47023, Cesena, Italy

    Carlo Tomasetto & Sara Appoloni

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  1. Carlo Tomasetto
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  2. Sara Appoloni
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Correspondence to Carlo Tomasetto.

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Tomasetto, C., Appoloni, S. A lesson not to be learned? Understanding stereotype threat does not protect women from stereotype threat. Soc Psychol Educ 16, 199–213 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-012-9210-6

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