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stereotype threat

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The well-studied phenomenon whereby individuals’ fear of confirming negative stereotypes about their group can lead to anxiety that causes them to perform less well as a task.

Stereotype threat is a kind of reinforcing feedback loop: negative stereotypes about a group cause artificially low performance, which provide fuel for those same negative stereotypes. That all reinforcing feedback loops can be driven backward highlights the importance of representation: the more examples we see of people bucking stereotypes, the lower the effect of stereotype threat, so the better members of that group will perform, leading to still more counterexamples of that stereotype.

From Mindset by Carol Dweck:

Research by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson shows that even checking a box to indicate your race or sex can trigger the stereotype in your mind and lower your test score. Almost anything that reminds you that you are Black or female before taking a test in a subject you are supposed to be bad at will lower your test score, a lot. In many of their studies, Blacks are equal to whites in their performance, and females are equal to males when no stereotype is evoked. But just put more more males in the room with a female before a math test and down goes the female’s score.

This is why: when stereotypes are evoked, they fill people’s minds with distracting thoughts, with secret worries about confirming the stereotype. People usually aren’t even aware of it. But they don’t have enough mental power left to do their best on the test. This doesn’t happen to everybody, however. It mainly happens to people who are in a fixed mindset. It’s when people are thinking in terms of fixed traits that the stereotypes get to them.

It’s interesting that Dweck suggests a growth mindset can help counter stereotype threat. Some supporting research appears to be “Reducing the Effects of Stereotype Threat on African American College Students by Shaping Theories of Intelligence” in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology:

students in the experimental condition of the experiment were encouraged to see intelligence—the object of the stereotype—as a malleable rather than fixed capacity. This mind-set was predicted to make students’ performances less vulnerable to stereotype threat and help them maintain their psychological engagement with academics, both of which could help boost their college grades. Results were consistent with predictions. The African American students (and, to some degree, the White students) encouraged to view intelligence as malleable reported greater enjoyment of the academic process, greater academic engagement, and obtained higher grade point averages than their counterparts in two control groups.

Related Phenomena

  • Stereotype boost is the opposite of stereotype threat, whereby members of a group about which a positive stereotype exists with respect to a task perform better at the task when reminded of the stereotype.
  • Stereotype lift is a related phenomenon whereby individuals experience better performance on a task when reminded of negative stereotypes about other groups.

From Wikipedia which cites Stereotype Threat: Theory, Process, and Application for these concepts.