Topic
Stereotype threat
About: Stereotype threat is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1710 publications have been published within this topic receiving 91736 citations.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
More filters
TL;DR: The role of stereotype vulnerability in the standardized test performance of ability-stigmatized groups is discussed and mere salience of the stereotype could impair Blacks' performance even when the test was not ability diagnostic.
Abstract: Stereotype threat is being at risk of confirming, as self-characte ristic, a negative stereotype about one's group. Studies 1 and 2 varied the stereotype vulnerability of Black participants taking a difficult verbal test by varying whether or not their performance was ostensibly diagnostic of ability, and thus, whether or not they were at risk of fulfilling the racial stereotype about their intellectual ability. Reflecting the pressure of this vulnerability, Blacks underperformed in relation to Whites in the ability-diagnostic condition but not in the nondiagnostic condition (with Scholastic Aptitude Tests controlled). Study 3 validated that ability-diagnosticity cognitively activated the racial stereotype in these participants and motivated them not to conform to it, or to be judged by it. Study 4 showed that mere salience of the stereotype could impair Blacks' performance even when the test was not ability diagnostic. The role of stereotype vulnerability in the standardized test performance of ability-stigmatized groups is discussed. Not long ago, in explaining his career-long preoccupation with the American Jewish experience, the novelist Philip Roth said that it was not Jewish culture or religion per se that fascinated him, it was what he called the Jewish "predicament." This is an apt term for the perspective taken in the present research. It focuses on a social-psychological predicament that can arise from widely-known negative stereotypes about one's group. It is this: the existence of such a stereotype means that anything one does or any of one's features that conform to it make the stereotype more plausible as a self-characterization in the eyes of others, and perhaps even in one's own eyes. We call this predicament stereotype threat and argue that it is experienced, essentially, as a self-evaluative threat. In form, it is a predicament that can beset the members of any group about whom negative stereotypes exist. Consider the stereotypes elicited by the terms yuppie, feminist, liberal, or White male. Their prevalence in society raises the possibility for potential targets that the stereotype is true of them and, also, that other people will see them that way. When the allegations of the stereotype are importantly
7,282 citations
TL;DR: Research shows that this threat dramatically depresses the standardized test performance of women and African Americans who are in the academic vanguard of their groups, that it causes disidentification with school, and that practices that reduce this threat can reduce these negative effects.
Abstract: A general theory of domain identification is used to describe achievement barriers still faced by women in advanced quantitative areas and by African Americans in school. The theory assumes that sustained school success requires identification with school and its subdomains; that societal pressures on these groups (e.g., economic disadvantage, gender roles) can frustrate this identification; and that in school domains where these groups are negatively stereotyped, those who have become domain identified face the further barrier of stereotype threat, the threat that others' judgments or their own actions will negatively stereotype them in the domain. Research shows that this threat dramatically depresses the standardized test performance of women and African Americans who are in the academic vanguard of their groups (offering a new interpretation of group differences in standardized test performance), that it causes disidentification with school, and that practices that reduce this threat can reduce these negative effects.
6,069 citations
TL;DR: This article found that when the test was described as producing gender differences and stereotype threat was high, women performed substantially worse than equally qualified men did on difficult (but not easy) math tests among a highly selected sample of men and women.
3,093 citations
TL;DR: This article found that African Americans, Native Americans, and many Latino groups perform lower than their tested skills would predict in difficult math classes yet at their predicted levels in other classes that they examined such as English or, as they later found, in entry-level math classes.
Abstract: Our research on stereotype threat began with a practical question: Do social psychological processes play a significant role in the academic underperformance of certain minority groups, and if so, what is the nature of those processes? In our search for answers, we soon came upon an intriguing finding: Women at the University of Michigan seemed to perform lower than their tested skills would predict in difficult math classes yet at their predicted levels in other classes that we examined such as English or, as we later found, in entry-level math classes. By that time we had been long aware of what is known in the standardized testing literature as the \"underperformance phenomenon\": At each level of academic skill as measured by prior tests, such as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), and grades, a group of students sharing a given social identity gets lower subsequent grades than other students. Underperformance such as this characterizes the school and college performance of a number of American minority groups--African Americans, Native Americans, and many Latino groups (e.g., Bowen & Bok, 1998; Jensen, 1980; Ramist, Lewis, & McCamley-Jenkins, 1994). And this fact has a rather startling implication: Their poorer performance in school is not due entirely to their lack of skills or preparation. The underperformance phenomenon documents lower performance by these groups at each level of skill that is, when skill and preparation as measured by tests are essentially held constant. Clearly, then, something beyond weaker skills and preparation undermines the school performance of these groups.
1,890 citations
TL;DR: This article found that African American college students tend to obtain lower grades than their white counterparts, even when they enter college with equivalent test scores, and that negative stereotypes impugning Black students' intellectual abilities play a role in this underperformance.
1,649 citations