A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Investigation of the Neural Mechanisms Underlying Women’s Underperformance in Math

This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural structures associated with women’s underperformance on math tasks. Although women in a control condition recruited neural networks that are associated with mathematical learning (i.e., angular gyrus, left parietal and prefrontal cortex), women who were reminded of gender stereotypes about math ability did not recruit these regions, and instead revealed heightened activation in a neural region associated with social and emotional processing (ventral anterior cingulate cortex). The underlying cause of the disparity in the number of men and women in math and science careers has been widely and vigorously debated in recent years. Potential explanations have ranged from suppositions of innate sex differences that predispose men more than women to succeed in math and science, to claims of systematic biases in the educational system. In the present article, we consider another possible explanation: the effect of stereotypes about putative sex differences in math ability. In an influential study, Steele and Aronson (1995) found that reminding people about a negative stereotype of their social group in a specific domain (e.g., African Americans and intellectual ability) impaired their subsequent performance on related tasks, an effect Steele and Aronson referred to as stereotype threat. Likewise, Spencer, Steele, and Quinn (1999) observed that women’s performance on a difficult math test suffered after they were told the test had previously revealed sex differences in performance. A large body of research has subsequently emerged to explore the effects of stereotype threat on women’s math performance. Although this research has uncovered a wealth of information about various methods of inducing stereotype threat (Davies, Spencer, Quinn, & Gerhardstein, 2002; Inzlicht & Ben-Zeev, 2000; O’Brien & Crandall, 2003; Sekaquaptewa & Mischa, 2003) and potential ways to minimize the effects of the threat (Good, Aronson, & Inzlicht, 2003; Johns, Schmader, & Martens, 2005), the mechanisms underlying stereotype threat are not fully understood (but see Wraga, Helt, Jacobs, & Sullivan, 2007). Recent behavioral research has implicated several possible mechanisms—most notably, working memory and anxiety—that might be responsible for the performance decrements associated with stereotype threat (Beilock, Jellison, Rydell, McConnell, & Carr, 2006; Osborne, 2001; Pronin, Steele, & Ross, 2004; Schmader, 2002; Schmader & Johns, 2003). Schmader and Johns (2003) found that women under stereotype threat demonstrated lower working memory capacity and poorer performance on a difficult math test, compared with control subjects. Cadinu, Maass, Rosabianca, and Kiesner (2005) recently demonstrated that women under stereotype threat experience more domain-specific negative thoughts when performing difficult math tests, compared with control subjects. Cadinu et al. argued that such negative thoughts consume working memory resources. Inzlicht and Ben-Zeev (2003), however, argued that stereotype threat increases anxiety, which subsequently impairs performance. They found that women underperformed on math Address correspondence to Anne C. Krendl, 6207 Moore Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, e-mail: akrendl@dartmouth. edu. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 168 Volume 19—Number 2 Copyright r 2008 Association for Psychological Science tests when they were the sole female in a group of males. Similarly, Sekaquaptewa and Mischa (2003) demonstrated that women who believed they would have to take an oral exam in front of a room of men performed worse on the test than women who believed they would have to take the exam in front of a room of other women. The authors suggested that this finding is further evidence that stereotype threat induces performance anxiety. Together, these findings suggest a role for both working memory and performance anxiety in stereotype threat. However, it remains unclear whether their roles are interconnected. Beilock, Rydell, and McConnell (2007) suggested that working memory and performance anxiety are activated separately. Specifically, they posited that stereotype threat causes performance anxiety, and that anxiety subsequently triggers negative math-relevant thoughts that consume working memory. In other words, working memory deficits accompany stereotype threat because the threat heightens awareness of and concerns about the implications of the stereotypes. Support for this argument came from an earlier study (reported by Beilock et al., 2006) showing that performance on tasks that do not rely on working memory is negatively affected by stereotype threat. Although the findings by Beilock et al. (2007) and other researchers have greatly informed the stereotype-threat literature, it remains unclear how the mechanisms that are believed to underlie stereotype threat cause subsequent performance decrements. In order to effectively override the stereotype-threat phenomenon, it is vital to understand clearly the core processes that underlie it. In pursuing this goal, researchers may benefit from using neuroimaging to identify brain regions engaged during stereotype threat. When considered in tandem with the extant behavioral research, neuroimaging studies may help elucidate the neural mechanisms engaged during stereotype threat and, furthermore, dissociate them from the neural mechanisms engaged during performance of relevant tasks in the absence of stereotype threat. Thus, in the current study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify the neural processes engaged when women perform difficult math tasks both in the presence and in the absence of stereotype