Stereotype Threat and Student Performance

1. Stereotype Threat and Student Performance

3. Stereotype Threat Members of any stereotyped group must deal with the possibility of being judge or treated stereotypically, or of doing something that will confirm the stereotype This predicament is called stereotype threat (after Claude Steele) or vulnerability

4. Stereotype Threat The psychological literature has taught us much about how negative stereotypes can contribute to intellectual underperformance among stigmatized people ? stress, anxiety, diminished enjoyment

5. Stereotype Threat Research by Steele and Aronson (1995) Afro-American and Caucasian college students take the verbal portion of the GRE Control condition: the tests were presented as a measure of intellectual ability and preparation (stereotype threat or diagnostic condition)

6. Stereotype Threat (Steele and Aronson, 1995) Experimental condition: stereotyped threat removed by telling test takers that the test was simply being used to examine the psychology of verbal problem-solving (nonevaluative or nondiagnostic condition)

7. Stereotype Threat (Steele and Aronson, 1995)

8. Stereotype Threat (Steele and Aronson, 1995) Afro-American students answered twice as many problems in the nonevaluative condition compared to the ST control There was no difference between the performance of the Afro-American test takers under no stereotype threat and that of the Caucasian test takers

9. Stereotype Threat (Steele and Aronson, 1995) Simply making test taker aware of race via a question on the test can have an effect on performance

10. Stereotype Threat (Steele and Aronson, 1995)

11. Stereotype Threat The basic effect of impaired test performance has been replicated in studies of Latino students taking tests of verbal ability and with women taking math tests in grade school through college To feel stereotype threat, the stereotype need not pertain to race, ethnicity, or gender.

12. Stereotype Threat For example, Croizet and Claire (1998) found that students of low socioeconomic status perform worse on a test when reminded of their social status, often stereotypically associated with low academic achievement

13. Stereotype Threat Similarly, intellectual performance by elderly individuals can be disrupted by the stereotype suggesting that their mental abilities are on the decline Stereotype threats/expectations can work both ways

14. Stereotype Threat(Shih, Pittinsky, and Ambady, 1999) Asian women were subtly reminded (with a questionnaire) of either their Asian identity or their female identity prior to taking a difficult math test Women reminded of their Asianness performed better than the control group Women reminded of their female identity performed worse than the control group

15. Stereotype Threat(Cheryan and Bodenhausen, 2000) Asian women made overtly conscious that their Asian identity was relevant to a math test performed significantly less well than the control group; in other words they choked.

16. Stereotype Threat Few are immune to this sort of threat: Highly math-competent white male engineering students at Stanford (replicated at the University of Texas) were asked to take a difficult math test One group was told the test was simply to measure their math ability.

17. Stereotype Threat The second group was told that they were part of a research project to understand why Asians seem to perform better in math Pressured by the stereotype of Asian mathematical superiority, the white males in the second group solved significantly fewer of the problems on the test

18. Stereotype Threat Recall that these students were highly competent and confident: most of them had near perfect scores on the math portion of the SAT

19. Stereotype Threat(Aronson 2002) �That such undeniably smart and accomplished students like our high-scoring math whizzes underperformed on a test when faced with a stereotype should make us think twice about casually assuming that the low performance of blacks and Latinos in certain circumstances reflects a lack of ability. Instead, we need to appreciate the power of those circumstances they face.�

20. Reducing the Effects of Stereotyped Threat Example: Good, Aronson, and Inzlicht (2003) 138 seventh graders in Texas Population: 67% Hispanic, 13% Afro-American, 20% White; low-income population (70% qualified for free lunch); Kids assigned college student mentors for the academic year; met with kids and e-mailed frequently

21. Reducing the Effects of Stereotyped Threat Experimental Groups: 1. Incremental condition�learned that intelligence is a malleable and expandable capacity that increases with mental work; learned about how brain worked; explored a restricted web space that reinforced these notions of the expandability of intelligence (�The mind is a muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it grows.�)

22. Reducing the Effects of Stereotyped Threat 2. Attribution condition�learned that many students tend to experience difficulty when they move to a new educational situation but then bounce back after they become accustomed to their new environment; mentors emphasized that academic setbacks are more likely due to the novelty of the situation and not the shortcomings of the students; also had access to restricted web space that reinforced this perspective

23. Reducing the Effects of Stereotyped Threat 3. Combined condition�learned both incremental message and attribution message; explored both restricted web spaces 4. Antidrug control condition�learned about the perils of drug use; explored restricted web space Students took Texas standardized math and reading tests at end of school year

24. Reducing the Effects of Stereotyped Threat Results: Math�gender gap occurs in control condition Gender gap in math disappears in all three experimental groups All three experimental groups significantly outperformed control in math and reading (recall that 80% of the participants were either Afro-American or Hispanic)

25. Reducing the Effects of Stereotyped Threat Conclusions: Stereotyped students�females and ability-stigmatized students � increased their standardized test scores after participation in the intervention program Students improved by developing beliefs that helped them contend with the anxieties and prior assumptions that might negatively influence their performance

26. The beliefs that children have walking into our classrooms � about themselves and about what other people may think about them � can importantly influence their motivation, effort, and academic performance.

27. One of the challenges of our practice is how we identify, shape, and react to those beliefs in our daily teaching