Stereotype Threat

The concept that if a person associates with a certain group, the person may be at risk of confirming negative stereotypes held about that group. If the negative stereotype about that group is in relation to academic performance, this may in turn affect the person's academic achievements. Stereotype threats have been demonstrated across a wide range of groups. For example, stereotype threats have been demonstrated in the context of race (Steele & Aronson, 1995). When the same difficult items of the Graduate Record Examination were given to African Americans and Caucasians, one third of participants were told that the test measured verbal ability and the other participants were told the test measured psychological factors in problem solving. While Caucasian students performed very similarly under both instructions, African Americans performed worse when being told that the test was measuring verbal ability. The same phenomenon has been observed in the context of gender. Stereotypically, it is perceived that men perform better at math tasks than do women. When this stereotype threat was activated, women had more negative thoughts about the task and performed worse than when the stereotype threat was not activated. An explanation for why stereotype threats may lead to decreased performance is that stereotype threats may trigger physiological responses—for example, increased blood pressure. For more information, see Steele and Aronson (1995).