THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYunusual appearance as a crude cue for the risk that that person was
carrying a parasitic infection. Somewhat alarmingly, there’s evidence that
these instincts still influence us today. Jason Faulkner at the University
of British Columbia found that participants expressed more xenophobic
attitudes after they were reminded of the ease with which bacteria and
Stereotype threat
The mere knowledge that other people expect certain things of you
because of your age, race, gender or other categorization is enough to
have a detrimental effect on your behaviour, especially if you fear that
your underperformance will be used to bolster a stereotype. Psychologists
call this effect “stereotype threat” and it can occur even in the absence of
any overt prejudice or mistreatment. Women, for example, have been
shown to struggle with a maths task in the company of men, but not a
verbal task, presumably because the pressure not to conform to negative
stereotypes about female mathematical ability has a detrimental effect
on their performance. Similarly, black students have been found to
perform better at school tests administered by a black examiner than
by a white examiner. In 2007, Armand
Chatard, now at the University of
Geneva, showed that stereotypes can
even affect our memories. Female
high-school students primed with
a highly salient reminder of gender
stereotypes, including statements like
“men are gifted in mathematics” and
“women are gifted in the arts”, subse-
quently underestimated maths grades
they’d achieved when they were
younger. Armand said this could have
real-life consequences. For example,
women might be reluctant to pursue
science careers if gender stereotypes
have led them to downplay their past
achievements.
King Carl Gustaf XVI presents the
2009 Nobel prize for Economics to US
economist Elinor Ostrom – the first
woman to win the award, and one of
five female prizewinners that year. In
the 108-year history of Nobel prizes,
however, only 41 have been awarded
to women, compared with 778 awarded
to men.