3 Stereotype Threat
Steele & Aronson (study 3 summary)
1) Does St activate stereotypes? 2) Does it cause distancing from stereotype? 3) Does it lead to self-handicapping? ●Design: 2(race) x 3(threat, non-diagnostic, no test control)+ SAT verbal ●DVs: Stereotype activation, distance, and handicapping. ●Results: Black p's in threat condition showed more stereotype activation, more self-doubt, more distancing from the stereotype (e.g. activities, traits, and indicating race on questionnaire), and more handicapping.
Inzlicht & Kang 2010
Coping with ST may leave one in a depleted volitional state and so less willing or able to engage in tasks requiring effortful self-control (the coping is the real problem)
Inzlicht & Kang 2010 Study 1
Does ST lead to spillover into a non-stereotypic domain? What if an adaptive strategy is produced? ●All female participants, all in threatening diagnostic condition ●Assessed prior identification with math abilities ●IV: Cognitive reappraisal instructions vs none ●Pairs took tests and then graded the other's test; then received negative feedback; then completed noise-blast paradigm ●Results (math identity as covariate): P's in reappraisal condition were less aggressive than those in the comparison condition and performed better on the math test. ●No effects or affect of state self-esteem ●Aggression and math performance positively related in threat condition, this rules out frustration in favor of depletion account.
Stereotype Threat according to S&A
Is being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group.
Steele & Aronson (study 4 summary)
Is diagnosticity critical? ●Design: 2(race) x 3(race salience) ●Results: Blacks in race salient condition performed worse than others on the GRE verbal questions. They also attempted fewer questions, guessed less, and re-read questions more. Also reported more identity threat.
ST effects occur when...
Members of a stigmatized group perform poorly on a task because they fear confirming a negative stereotype that is associated with their ingroup.
Spencer & Castano 2007 Methodology
● 2(diagnostic vs non-diagnostic) x 2(SES salience) x 3(participant SES) ● 15 difficult verbal GRE questions ●SAT scores entered as covariate ● 3-way interaction: Participant SES predicted performance only in the diagnostic+SES salience condition ●High (low) SES most (least) confident in the diagnostic+SES salience condition
Steele & Aronson (study 1 summary)
● 2(race) x 3(diagnostic vs non-diagnostic vs non-diagnostic challenge) ●DV: 27 verbal GRE ?'s + 3 anagrams ●Explicit self-reported comptence, self-worth, distracting thoughts, perceptions of test difficulty and bias, estimates of performance relative to other Stanford students. ●Results: Black p's in diagnostic condition did worse than all other groups. They perceived the test as more biased, and expected lower performance.
Inzlicht & Kang 2010 Study 2
●2(gender-based stigma consciousness) x 2(reappraisal vs no reappraisal) ●Also assessed 'restrained eating' with self-report (included as covariate) ●Results: Threat condition led to more eating, but only among those relatively high in stigma consciousness ●No effects on affect, self-esteem, or math scores (intended null-effect)
Steele & Aronson Study 2
●Argued that effect of stereotype threat on performance is mediated by an apprehension over possibly conforming to the negative group stereotype. Could this apprehension be detected as a higher level of general anxiety among stereotype-threatened participants? ●Same as first study but dropped the challenge condition ●Results: Black participants in the diagnostic condition completed fewer items and had lower accuracy than participants in the other conditions. ●No difference found on other measures including self-reported effort, cognitive interference, or anxiety.
Steele
●Argues that "after a lifetime of exposure to society's negative images of their ability, these students are likely to internalize an 'inferiority anxiety'-- a state that can be aroused by a variety of race-related cues in the environment. ●This anxiety, in turn, can lead them to blame others for their troubles (for example, White Racism), to under-utilize available opportunities, and to generally form a victim's identity."
Steele & Aronson Study 1
●B and W college students given 30 minute test composed of verbal items from the GRE. ●Primary DV: participants' performance on the test adjusted for the influence of individual differences in skill level (operationalized as participants' verbal SAT score)f. ●Prediction: Black participants would underperform relative to Whites in the diagnostic condition where there was stereotype threat, but not in the two nondiagnostic conditions. ●Results: Black participants in the diagnostic condition performed significantly worse than Black participants in the nondiagnostic condition or the challenge condition. As well as significantly worse than White participants in the diagnostic condition.
Inzlicht & Kang 2010 Study 4
●Direct measure of self-control (stroop task)+ activity in Anterior Cingulate Cortex (related to executive control) ●Medial-frontal event related potentials (ERPs)- neural distress signal indicating that attention and vigilance are needed. ●Method: 2(male vs female) x 2(reappraisal vs no reappraisal) ●20 minute threatening math test followed by stroop test and concurrent EEG readings ●Results: Women in ST condition did worse than others on stroop task and women in ST condition showed heightened vigilance to all trials. This vigilance mediated effect of ST on stroop task.
Steele & Aronson Study 4
●Manipulation of stereotype threat with race of participants in a 2 x 2 design with test performance as the chief dependent measure. ●Test was represented as nondiagnostic of ability ●To manipulate stereotype threat, participants were either required or not to list their race before taking the test. ●Results:i. Blacks in the race prime condition performed worse than virtually all other groups. Blacks in no race prime condition performed equally with that of Whites.ii.Data suggests that lessened accuracy is part of the process through which stereotype threat impairs performance ●Black participants made fewer guesses when race was primed than when it was not, whereas White participants tended to guess more when race was primed than when it was not. iv.Black participants felt more stereotype threat than White participants ●Black participants reported valuing sports less than Whites. ●Shows that mere cognitive availability of the racial stereotype is enough to depress Black participants' intellectual performance, and that this is so even when the test is presented as not diagnostic of intelligence.
Steele & Aronson Study 3
●Measured the effect of conditions on the activation of this stereotype and of related self-doubts about ability. ●Measured the effect of conditions on participants' stated preferences for such things as activities and styles of music, some of which were stereotypic of African Americans. ●Measured apprehension as the degree to which participants self-handicapped their expected performance, that is, endorsed excuses for poor performance before the test. ●Diagnostic and nondiagnostic conditions same as study 2. Control condition where participants took the critical dependent measures without any expectation to take a test of any sort. ●Participants in this experiment never took the test. ●Predictions: If test diagnosticity threatens Black participants with a specifically racial stereotype, then Black participants in the diagnostic condition, more than participants in the other conditions, should show greater cognitive activation of the stereotype and ability-related self-doubts, greater motivation to disassociate themselves from the stereotype, and greater performance apprehension as indicated by the endorsement of self-handicapping excuses. ●Results: Black participants in the diagnostic condition produced more race-related completions than Black participants in the nondiagnostic condition, and more than participants in any of the other conditions. ●Black participants in the diagnostic condition generated most self-doubt-related completions, significantly more than Black participants in the nondiagnostic condition, and more than participants in any of the other conditions. ●Black participants in the diagnostic condition were the most avoidant of conforming to stereotypic images of African Americans, more so than Black participants in the nondiagnostic condition, and/or White participants in either condition.
Spencer & Castano 2007
●Predictions: Under threatening conditions, low-SES students would feel less secure in their own judgments on a task that requires strong verbal competence and agency. ●Low SES students performance and confidence on the standardized test would be worse when presented as a diagnostic tool of intelligence, than when it was presented as a perceptual task. ●Low SES students would underperform and be less confident when their socioeconomic status was made salient.
Steele & Aronson Study 5
●Replicated exp 4 but further showed that there was no disengagement on the part of blacks in threat condition. Also showed increased anxiety on STAI.
Inzlicht & Kang 2010 Study 3
●Risky decisions (Kahneman's System 1&2) ●Threat condition- indicated demographic information and vividly remembered a time when they felt discriminated against ●Control condition- completed lottery task prior to completing the writing task ●27 p's who could not (or did not) write about discrimination instead served as negative affect control groups ●P's in threat condition chose the riskier, System 1 lottery option with greater frequency than those in the control condition or the negative affect condition (who were actually most risk-averse). This did not seem to hold well with age.
Conditions for S&A Study 1
●ST Condition: test described as diagnostic of intellectual ability, making the racial stereotype about intellectual ability relevant to Black participants' performance and establishing for them the threat of fulfilling it. ●Non-ST Condition: Described as a laboratory problem solving task that was nondiagnostic about ability. They make the racial stereotype about ability irrelevant to Black performance and thus preempt any attempt to fulfill it. ●Non-diagnostic-plus-challenge-condition: interested in whether stressing the challenge as inherent in a difficult test might further increase participants' motivation and performance over what would happen in the nondiagnostic (non-stereotype threat) condition.
Steele & Aronson (study 2 summary)
●Same as exp 1 + measure of anxiety (STAI)- non-diagnostic challenge condition ●Replicated finding of exp 1 (but with a significant interaction effect!) ●Black p's in threat condition also attempted fewer items ●No effects on explicit self-reports
Steele & Aronson 1995
●Stereotype Threat ●Standardized tests predict subsequent school achievement as well for Black students as White students ●At every level of preparation as measured by a standardized test, Black students with that score have poorer subsequent achievement than White students with that score ●Suggests that the Black-White achievement gaps are not due solely to group differences in preparation -> Blacks achieve less well than Whites even when they have the same preparation, and even when that preparation is at a very high level.
Spencer and Castano Overview
●The present study investigates whether the observed achievement gap in standardized testing between high- and low-socioeconomic status (SES) American students can be due, in part, to this phenomenon. ●Participants were placed in one of four conditions that varied in level of ''threat'' related to socioeconomic status. ●Results show that when socioeconomic identity is made salient before taking a test, or when the test is presented as diagnostic of intelligence, low-SES students perform significantly worse, and report much lower self-confidence, than low-SES participants in the non-threatening conditions. ●When threatening conditions converge, performance of low-SES students is at its worst level. ●These results help us better understand the role stereotyping plays in the academic performance of low-SES students, and may partly explain the disparity on standardized test scores between low- and high-SES students.
