Discounting the Difficult: How High Math-Identified Women Respond to Stereotype Threat

In this study, we examined how math identity moderates women's response to gender-related stereotypes in the domain of mathematics. Male and female college students with varying degrees of math identification took a challenging math test with a gender-related stereotype either activated (i.e., stereotype threat) or nullified. Consistent with previous research, women performed worse than men in the stereotype threat condition, but equal to men in the stereotype nullification condition when performance was adjusted for math SAT scores. Moreover, when faced with stereotype threat, high math-identified women discounted the validity of the test more than did less math-identified women or men in general. We discuss potential benefits and drawbacks of a discounting strategy for women who are highly identified with math.     

Men in pink collars: Stereotype threat and disengagement among male teachers and child protection workers

Male employees are a traditionally advantaged group, but when working in a female‐dominated industry they may be vulnerable to negative gender stereotypes. The current research examined stereotype threat among men in two traditionally feminine jobs. Study 1 measured stereotype threat among primary school teachers and found that men experienced more stereotype threat than women, and that feelings of stereotype threat were related to negative job attitudes for men but not women. Study 2 manipulated the direction of social comparisons to elicit stereotype threat among male child protection workers. For men but not women, upward social comparisons with a successful feminine target elicited stereotype threat. In turn, stereotype threat was associated with intentions to resign and feeling expected to perform stereotypic masculine work tasks. These results suggest that despite their advantaged status, men in pink‐collar jobs are susceptible to workplace stereotype threat.     

刻板印象威胁来源对防御反应的影响

以多重威胁框架为理论基础,探讨了刻板印象威胁来源对防御反应的影响。实验一和实验二选取了性别-数学刻板印象威胁,分别考察了自我概念威胁和群体概念威胁对女性防御反应的影响。结果发现,不管是自我概念威胁还是群体概念威胁,女性尝试数学题目数量都显著小于语文题目数量,表明产生了领域回避。两项研究共同说明,以自我为刻板印象威胁来源对防御反应产生影响     

STEREOTYPE THREAT AND GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PERFORMANCE ON A NOVEL VISUOSPATIAL TASK

Stereotype threat research has shown that being a member of a negatively stereotyped group may result in impaired performance on tests of skills thought to be relevant to the stereotype. This study investigated whether stereotype threat influences gender differences in performance on a novel test of visuospatial ability. Undergraduates ( N  = 194) were told that men outperform women on the test (explicit threat), were given no gender-relevant information (implicit threat), or were told that men and women do not differ (nullified stereotype). Although men outperformed women in the explicit and implicit stereotype threat groups, women's performance did not differ significantly from men's when told there is no gender difference. The effect was most pronounced for difficult line judgments. Although stereotypes regarding visuospatial ability may be less culturally salient than those of other cognitive abilities, these findings suggest that they influence performance nonetheless. Implications for optimizing cognitive test performance are discussed.     

Clearing the air: identity safety moderates the effects of stereotype threat on women's leadership aspirations

Exposing participants to gender-stereotypic TV commercials designed to elicit the female stereotype, the present research explored whether vulnerability to stereotype threat could persuade women to avoid leadership roles in favor of nonthreatening subordinate roles. Study 1 confirmed that exposure to the stereotypic commercials undermined women's aspirations on a subsequent leadership task. Study 2 established that varying the identity safety of the leadership task moderated whether activation of the female stereotype mediated the effect of the commercials on women's aspirations. Creating an identity-safe environment eliminated vulnerability to stereotype threat despite exposure to threatening situational cues that primed stigmatized social identities and their corresponding stereotypes.     

Competence and confusion: How stereotype threat can make you a bad judge of your competence

Women tend to have competence doubts for masculine‐stereotyped domains (e.g., math), whereas men tend to think they can handle both feminine‐stereotyped and masculine‐stereotyped domains equally well. We suggest that perhaps women's more frequent experience with stereotype threat can partly explain why. Our results showed that when stereotype threat was primed in high school students (n = 244), there was no relationship between their performance on an academic test (the SweSAT) and their assessment of their performance (how well they did), whereas in a non‐stereotype threat condition, there was a medium‐sized relationship. The effect was similar for both men and women primed with stereotype threat. The results imply that stereotype threat undermines performance assessments.     

The maleness of violence in dating relationships: an appraisal of stereotypes

This study clarifies and adds to our understanding of how gender and gender orientation affect physical aggression in dating relationships. The stereotype of male violence assumes that men exclusively or nearly exclusively use abusive and violent behavior to manage conflict situations with an intimate partner, and that the more violent men will be more masculine. Data from a sample of 336 undergraduates indicate that the expected sex differences were not observed; among college students, physical aggression in dating relationships is not gender-specific. However, gender orientation was significantly related to courtship aggression. A more masculine and/or less feminine gender orientation and variations in relationship seriousness proved to be the two strongest predictors of both men's and women's involvement in courtship violence. Findings are discussed in terms of the masculine mystique and the male role norms in our culture's superstructure.This project was funded in part by a faculty research grant from Holy Cross College.     

Why they leave: the impact of stereotype threat on the attrition of women and minorities from science, math and engineering majors

This paper examines the effects of group performance anxiety on the attrition of women and minorities from science, math, and engineering majors. While past research has relied primarily on the academic deficits and lower socioeconomic status of women and minorities to explain their absence from these fields, we focus on the impact of stereotype threat—the anxiety caused by the expectation of being judged based on a negative group stereotype. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, our findings indicate that minorities experience stereotype threat more strongly than whites, although women do not suffer from stereotype threat more than men. Our findings also reveal that stereotype threat has a significant positive effect on the likelihood of women, minorities, and surprisingly, white men leaving science, technology, engineering and math majors.     

Gender Identification Moderates Stereotype Threat Effects on Women's Math Performance

This research applies a social identity perspective to situations of stereotype threat. It was hypothesized that individuals would be more susceptible to the performance-inhibiting effects of stereotype threat to the extent that they are highly identified with the group to which a negative stereotype applies. A quasi-experimental study with male and female college students revealed that individual differences in gender identification (i.e., importance placed on gender identity) moderated the effects of gender identity relevance on women's (but not men's) math performance. When their gender identity was linked to their performance on a math test, women with higher levels of gender identification performed worse than men, but women with lower levels of gender identification performed equally to men. When gender identity was not linked to test performance, women performed equally to men regardless of the importance they placed on gender identity.     

Stereotype threat in salary negotiations is mediated by reservation salary

Women are stereotypically perceived as worse negotiators than men, which may make them ask for less salary than men when under stereotype threat (Kray et al., 2001). However, the mechanisms of stereotype threat are not yet properly understood. The current study investigated whether stereotype threat effects in salary negotiations can be explained by motivational factors. A total of 116 business students negotiated salary with a confederate and were either told that this was diagnostic of negotiating ability (threat manipulation) or not. Measures of minimum (reservation) and ideal (aspiration) salary goals and regulatory focus were collected. The finding (Kray et al., 2001) that women make lower salary requests than men when under stereotype threat was replicated. Women in the threat condition further reported lower aspiration salary, marginally significantly lower reservation salary and less eagerness/more vigilance than men. Reservation salary mediated the stereotype threat effect, and there was a trend for regulatory focus to mediate the effect. Thus, reservation salary partly explains why women ask for less salary than men under stereotype threat. Female negotiators may benefit from learning that stereotype threat causes sex-differences in motivation.     

Converging evidence that stereotype threat reduces working memory capacity

Although research has shown that priming negative stereotypes leads to lower performance among stigmatized individuals, little is understood about the cognitive mechanism that accounts for these effects. Three experiments tested the hypothesis that stereotype threat interferes with test performance because it reduces individuals' working memory capacity. Results show that priming self-relevant negative stereotypes reduces women's (Experiment 1) and Latinos' (Experiment 2) working memory capacity. The final study revealed that a reduction in working memory capacity mediates the effect of stereotype threat on women's math performance (Experiment 3). Implications for future research on stereotype threat and working memory are discussed.     

The effect of gender stereotype activation on entrepreneurial intentions

In this study, the impact of implicit and explicit activation of gender stereotypes on men's and women's intentions to pursue a traditionally masculine career, such as entrepreneurship, was examined. On the basis of stereotype activation theory, it was hypothesized that men and women would confirm the gender stereotype about entrepreneurship when it was presented implicitly but disconfirm it when it was presented explicitly. Hypotheses were tested by randomly assigning 469 business students to one of 6 experimental conditions and then measuring their entrepreneurial intentions. Results supported the hypothesis when entrepreneurship was associated with stereotypically masculine characteristics but not when it was associated with traditionally feminine characteristics. Men also had higher entrepreneurial intention scores compared with women when no stereotypical information about entrepreneurship was presented, suggesting that underlying societal stereotypes associating entrepreneurship with masculine characteristics may influence people's intentions. However, men and women reported similar intentions when entrepreneurship was presented as gender neutral, suggesting that widely held gender stereotypes can be nullified. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Reducing the backlash effect: Self‐monitoring and women's promotions

Previous research shows that masculine (agentic) women suffer from a backlash effect in which they are sanctioned for violating the feminine gender role stereotype. We examine the impact of self‐monitoring on the promotion rates of MBA men and women over an 8‐year period following graduation. Results show that women who were more masculine as well as high on self‐monitoring received more promotions, suggesting that self‐monitoring is associated with an absence of backlash effects.     

Coping sense of humor reduces effects of stereotype threat on women's math performance

Two studies demonstrated that coping sense of humor buffered women against the effects of stereotype threat on math performance. Using a correlational design, Study 1 demonstrated that women low in coping sense of humor assessed their performance on standardized math tests lower than did men and lower than did women high in coping sense of humor. Using an experimental design, Study 2 showed that coping sense of humor was positively related to women's performance on a math test taken under conditions of stereotype threat but not under conditions of no stereotype threat. Mediation analyses suggest that in the stereotype-threat condition, state anxiety mediated the relationship between coping sense of humor and test performance. Women higher in coping sense of humor performed better because they felt less anxiety while taking the test.     

The Costs of Accepting Gender Differences: The Role of Stereotype Endorsement in Women's Experience in the Math Domain

Two studies were designed to examine the costs of stereotype endorsement for women's self-perceptions, career intentions, and susceptibility to stereotype threat in the math domain. Study 1, a survey of women majoring in math-related fields, revealed that women who believe that status differences between the sexes are legitimate were more likely to endorse gender stereotypes about women's math abilities, which in turn predicted more negative self-perceptions of math competence and less interest in continuing study in one's field. In Study 2, women who tended to endorse gender stereotypes were found to be more susceptible to the negative effects of stereotype threat on their math test performance. The implications of these results for research on stereotype endorsement and women's math achievement are discussed.     

The role of performance-avoidance goals and worry in mediating the relationship between stereotype threat and performance

To understand the process underlying stereotype threat better, we developed and tested a model integrating the extant stereotype threat research with insights from achievement goal theory. The core tenet of this model is that stereotype threat impairs performance through performance-avoidance goal adoption and worry about one’s performance. To test this model, women under stereotype threat and not under threat reported their test-related achievement goals before completing a difficult math test. In addition, participants reported their state test anxiety, including worry, immediately before or after completing the math test. Results revealed that performance-avoidance goals and worry mediated the effect of stereotype threat on performance. Contributions of this model to the stereotype threat literature are discussed.     

Knowing is half the battle: 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 problem-solving 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.     

Hostile environments, stereotype threat, and math performance among undergraduate women

This study examined the impact of hostile environments and stereotype threat on women’s math performance. A hostile environment was created with a derogatory cartoon related to women's math ability. Stereotype threat was removed by informing women participants that “men and women perform equally” on the math test. Results showed that hostile environments and stereotype threat significantly interacted leading to differential math performance for number of math problems attempted and answered correctly. Additionally, women in hostile and stereotype threat conditions experienced differential emotional reactions during the math test. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical importance. This article was based on the first author’s Master’s thesis. Parts of this study were presented at the American Psychological Society 10th Annual Conference (1998) in Washington D.C. The authors would like to thank David Mueller, Jason Joly, and Chris Termini for their help in collecting and entering data. We would also like to thank Eddie Clark and Michael Leippe for their helpful feedback and guidance on this paper.