Title

The many faces of stereotype threat: Group- and self-threat

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2008

Abstract

Contending with negative intellectual stereotypes has been shown to depress the academic performance of targets of the stereotypes [Steele, C. M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. American Psychologist, 52, 613–629]. The present paper examines whether women’s mathematics performance is differentially affected by the concern of confirming that a negative stereotype is true of the self (self-threat), than by the concern of confirming that the stereotype is true of their gender (group-threat). In two studies we independently manipulated these different threats for women taking a mathematics test. Gender identification moderated the effect of group-threats on test performance; only women highly identified with their gender underperformed. The performance of less gender-identified women was unaffected by group-threats. In contrast, gender identification did not moderate the effect of self-threats—both high- and low-identified women underperformed. The results of these studies suggest that women’s math performance is differentially affected by the source of the threat.

Comments

Originally published as: Wout, D., Danso, H., Jackson, J., & Spencer, S. (2008). The many faces of stereotype threat: Group- and self-threat. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(3), 792–799. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2007.07.005

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