Stereotype threat occurs when a person is preoccupied with behaving in a way that confirms negative stereotypes about members of their group. This additional stress can end up affecting actual performance in a specific situation.
For example, a woman might feel nervous when she takes a math test because of stereotypes about women in math courses. She worries that getting a bad grade will make others think that women don't have high levels of math ability.
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When people are aware of a negative stereotype about their group, they often worry that your performance on a given task may end up confirming other people's beliefs about your group.
Psychologists use the term stereotypical threat to refer to that state in which people are preoccupied with confirming a group stereotype. The threat of stereotype can be stressful and upsetting for people who experience it.
This phenomenon is considered to be situation-specific: people only experience it when they are in a setting where a negative stereotype about their group is salient to them.
In a famous study of the consequences of stereotype threat, researchers Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson had some participants experience a stereotyped threat before taking a vocabulary test difficult.
Students who experienced stereotype threat were asked to indicate their race on a questionnaire before of the test, and their scores were compared with other students who did not have to answer a question about race.
The researchers found that black students who were asked about their race performed worse on the test. of vocabulary – they scored lower than whites and lower than blacks who were not asked about their race.
Importantly, when students were not asked about their race, there was no statistically significant difference between the scores of black and white students.
In other words, the stereotypical threat experienced by black students caused them to perform worse on the test. However, when the source of the threat was withdrawn, they received scores similar to white students.
Research on stereotypes complements research on microaggressions and bias in higher education and helps us better understand the experiences of marginalized groups.
For example, Spencer and her colleagues suggest that repeated experiences with stereotyped threats may, over time, lead women to disidentify with the stereotype. math – in other words, women may choose to take classes elsewhere to avoid the stereotypical threat they experience in math classes.
As a result, the stereotypical threat could explain why some women choose not to pursue careers in STEM, for example. Stereotype threat research has also had a significant impact on society – it has led to interventions educational measures designed to reduce the stereotypical threat, and Supreme Court cases have even mentioned the threat of stereotype.
However, the topic of stereotype threat is not without criticism. In a 2017 interview with Radiolab, social psychologist Michael Inzlicht points out that researchers have not always been able to replicate the results of classic threat research stereotypical.
Although stereotype threat has been the topic of countless researches, psychologists are still conducting more research to determine exactly how stereotype threat affects us.
Although stereotype threat can have negative consequences for individuals, researchers found that psychological interventions can mitigate some of the effects of threat stereotyped. In particular, an intervention known as self-affirmation is one way to reduce these effects.
Self-affirmation is based on the idea that we all want to see ourselves as good, capable, and ethical people, and we feel the need to react in some way when we feel our self-image is threatened. However, an important lesson in self-assertion theory is that people need not respond directly to a threat.
For example, if you are worried about getting a bad grade on a test, you might remember other things that are important to you – perhaps your favorite hobbies, your close friends, or your love of books and music specific. Once you remember about those other things that are also important to you, the test is not so stressful anymore.
