Stereotype...Threat

I am particularly interested in this topic because I've studied it in my psychology classes and we spoke about it in our class the other day. Stereotype threat includes preconceived notions about a subset of the population. These notions then affect one's performance, but may not be an accurate representation of the construct that is supposed to be measured. For example, stereotype threat can lower the performance of African-Americans taking the SAT, due to the stereotype that African-Americans are not as intelligent than other groups. Even if one just tells this group that they must fill out demographic information on an intelligence test, cultural norms will influence performance. In intelligence testing which I am particularly interested in, this can increase test bias. Are we really getting at a person's true score? The answer is no. The experience of anxiety about confirming a negative stereotype relative to one's social group can cause one's true ability to be undermined.

The same effect could occur when the situation is based on gender stereotypes. For instance, we talked about typically seeing science, technology, engineering, and math career fields as male-dominated. A scientist is usually visualized in a biased way as a white male with a lab coat on (who maybe has glasses or is bald). Women may be just as intelligent as men in these areas, but aren't acknowledged, are seen as less capable, and are stuck at entry rank.

Here's to the common stereotype, even portrayed in comics!

Psychologist Janet Hyde explains, "One reason I am still spending time on this is because parents and teachers continue to hold stereotypes that boys are better in math, and that can have a tremendous impact on individual girls who are told to stay away from engineering or the physical sciences because ‘Girls can’t do the math.’ There is lots of evidence that what we call ‘stereotype threat’ can hold women back in math. If, before a test, you imply that the women should expect to do a little worse than the men, that hurts performance. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy." However, if a woman (for the purposes of this example) was either unaware of the stereotype or thought of it as inaccurate, then she has better chances of performing better.

Many other examples have been scientifically tested. One includes a female administrator or a male administrator who distributed a math/science test to two different groups of examinees. Results showed that women performed as well as men when a female administrator was present. In contrast, they performed progressively worse than men when a male administrator distributed the test. This goes to show that when being faced by an authoritative figure who is more likely to agree with and confirm an already existing negative stereotype about another group to which they don't belong to, participants get worried and self-conscious about their performance in the way beginning. What about the way the test is presented? Two different modes of administration were given to an experimental and control group of examinees. In the experimental group, participants were told by an administrator that the test had previously shown gender differences among test takers in the past. In the control group, participants were told that the test revealed no gender differences in the past. Random administrators were assigned to each condition. At the end of the study, women who were in the control group had higher scores than women who were in the experimental group. But what do you think would happen if a female administrator was assigned to the experimental group? Would women still do worse than women in the control group? Since the administrator could mediate stereotype effects because of her gender, would this matter? Or would she equally enhance stereotype threat as a male administrator would (as shown in the other study)? Thoughts?

How do we fix stereotype threat? Unfortunately, there aren’t nearly as many female mathematicians, scientists, or engineers as there are male figures for girls to admire and use as a positive example. But what we could do in society is raise awareness of the achievements that women have obtained within these STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). Early childhood education teachers can also encourage women that there abilities are just as great as men's abilities in the same fields. Also, in general, when taking a test, it would be ideal for the sex checkbox to be removed from the test, but since we are not anywhere near close to removing it, researchers should keep doing studies to ensure that ANY test is not biased on the basis of one's sex or gender. Also, if students ask about test difficulty, teachers should focus on other factors that can contribute to variability in final scores (i.e. such as not students not reading the whole textbook rather than focusing on gender differences). REINFORCE THAT STUDENTS ARE CAPABLE OF MEETING HIGH STANDARDS! Communicate high standards to both sexes. Unfortunately, in order to follow through with these ideas, perceptions across different cultures, age cohorts, and sexes need to change. In order for this to happen, more education and awareness about intelligence level and the consequences of socialization needs to be more prevalent in many parts of this world.