Teaching Stereotype Threat as a Means of Improving Women’s Math Performance

We tested whether informing women about stereotype threat is a useful intervention to improve their performance in a threatening testing situation. Men and women completed difficult math problems described either as a problem-solving task or as a math test. In a third (teaching-intervention) condition, the test was also described as a math test, but participants were additionally informed that stereotype threat could interfere with women’s math performance. Results showed that women performed worse than men when the problems were described as a math test (and stereotype threat was not discussed), but did not differ from men in the problemsolving condition or in the condition in which they learned about stereotype threat. For women, attributing anxiety to gender stereotypes was associated with lower performance in the math-test condition but improved performance in the teaching-intervention condition. The results suggest that teaching about stereotype threat might offer a practical means of reducing its detrimental effects. Research on stereotype threat suggests that women and minorities underperform on mathematical and intellectual tests, in part because of a concern that their performance might confirm negative stereotypes about their group (see Steele, Spencer, & Aronson, 2002, for a review). Studies have shown that anything that reminds women or minorities of their stigmatized identity can reduce their performance on a stereotype-relevant task. In fact, simply knowing that a test is meant to be diagnostic of one’s abilities in a stereotype-relevant domain is often enough to trigger stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995). The potential consequences of this phenomenon extend beyond just test performance; stereotype threat may also reduce motivation to achieve in stereotype-relevant domains (Davies, Spencer, Quinn, & Gerhardstein, 2002). The robustness of these effects and the potentially profound implications for stigmatized individuals’ success has led to a pronounced interest in how to combat stereotype threat. Existing research has provided some solutions. Exposure to positive role models (Marx & Roman, 2002; McIntyre, Paulson, & Lord, 2003), testing in same-sex environments (Inzlicht & Ben-Zeev, 2000), and instructions to view intelligence as a malleable trait (Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002) are three strategies that increase the academic performance of stigmatized individuals. Research has also shown that stereotype threat is reduced when individuals are given a situational explanation for arousal or poor performance (Brown & Josephs, 1999; Stone, Lynch, Sjomeling, & Darley, 1999). Although these studies provide insight about the nature of stereotype threat, it is not clear how to translate some of these manipulations into practical interventions. For example, it is difficult to imagine a test administrator cuing test takers to misattribute their arousal as a means of undermining the stereotype just prior to a test. The present study was designed to test the efficacy of a more practical approach to reducing stereotype threat. Specifically, we examined whether teaching women about stereotype threat was sufficient to ameliorate group-based performance deficits. The vast majority of introductory social psychology textbooks now include a discussion of stereotype threat. Given that these findings are being widely disseminated to students, it is important to test whether this newfound knowledge actually empowers those who are targeted by negative stereotypes or could unintentionally place an added burden upon them. Indeed, it is possible to develop contrasting predictions for the effect that knowledge of stereotype threat might have on a target’s performance. On the one hand, teaching about stereotype threat might exacerbate the very problem it describes. For instance, research on automatic social behavior (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999) suggests that mere stereotype activation can produce stereotypeconsistent behaviors (Wheeler & Petty, 2001) and that the Address correspondence to Michael Johns or Toni Schmader, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; e-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume 16—Number 3 175 Copyright r 2005 American Psychological Society potential for stereotype-consistent behavior increases as construct activation increases (Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998). Thus, teaching women about stereotype threat could intensify performance decrements by priming women with thoughts of gender stereotypes whenever they perform a math-related task. In addition, if stereotype threat is caused by a concern that one’s performance might be seen by other people as confirming negative group stereotypes, then learning about any factor that debilitates one’s performance (even if it is stereotype threat) might only increase that concern. On the other hand, one can develop a more optimistic prediction about the effect of learning about stereotype threat. Given past research demonstrating that situational attributions can alleviate stereotype threat (e.g., Brown & Josephs, 1999; Stone et al., 1999), learning about the effects of stereotype threat might provide individuals with an external attribution for their anxiety during a stereotype-relevant task. This attribution might release stereotype-threatened individuals from assuming that the increased arousal they are feeling indicates they do not have the ability to do well. Thus, teaching students about stereotype threat might inoculate them against its effects. We tested this idea by having female and male undergraduates complete a difficult math test under one of three conditions. In one condition, the test was framed as a nondiagnostic problem-solving exercise. Participants in a second condition were told that the test was a measure of mathematical aptitude and that their performance would be used to make gender comparisons. The third condition was identical to the second, but participants were also given a brief description of stereotype threat, and women were offered this phenomenon as an explanation for anxiety they might experience while completing the test. If the mere salience of negative stereotypes automatically leads to lower performance or increases feelings of threat among the stereotyped targets, any pretest instructions that prime negative stereotypes should lower the targets’ performance. However, our hope was that teaching women about stereotype threat would free them from its effects.