198 Chapter 6influenced by people’s actual abilities. In one
study, stereotype threat was induced by hav-
ing students take a math test for which past
research showed men outperformed women
(Lesko & Corpus, 2006). The women in this
condition who perceived themselves to be
very good at math (strong math identity) dis-
counted their poor performance by saying
the test was not accurate and not reflective of
their ability. Thus, at least those who identify
with a domain may be able to discount poor
performance induced by stereotype threat and
continue to persist in the area. We should be
most concerned about the effects of stereotype
threat on people who do not identify with the
domain or people who are novices. These peo-
ple may see poor performance as diagnostic of
their abilities and give up the area of pursuit.
More recently, researchers have asked
whether there is a specific part of the math ste-
reotype that evokes stereotype threat (Thoman
et al., 2008). Female college students were ran-
domly assigned to either read an article that
stated males were better than females at math
due to innate differences (i.e. genetics), an ar-
ticle that stated males were better than females
at math because males exert more effort, or a
control condition that did not involve read-
ing an article. Then, students took a math test.
The effort group outperformed both the con-
trol group and the ability group. There was no
difference in performance between the con-
trol group and the ability group, consistent
with previous research that suggests women
are aware of the stereotype without it being
explicitly activated. In other words, people in
the control group automatically assume that
differences in performance are due to differ-
ential ability. The effort group also spent more
time solving the problems than the ability and
control groups. Studies like this suggest that
we should be encouraging children to focus
on effort rather than ability as an explana-
tion for high achievement. See Sidebar 6.1 forStereotype threat is not limited to math
and science. The stereotype that men have
more political knowledge than women has
affected women’s performance on a politi-
cal knowledge survey when made explicit
(McGlone, Aronson, & Kobrynowicz, 2006).
Men are not invulnerable to stereotype threat.
When female and male college students com-
pleted a social sensitivity test that involved
decoding nonverbal cues, men performed
more poorly than women when told the test
measured social sensitivity but performed the
same as women when told the test measured
information processing (Koenig & Eagly,
2005). Thus the theory of stereotype threat
generalizes to all groups of people for whom
there are stereotypes.
There have been so many studies on
this topic in recent years that a meta-analysis
of studies across five different countries was
conducted (Walton & Spencer, 2009). The
finding was that stereotyped groups perform
worse than nonstereotyped groups under
conditions of threat, but that stereotyped
groups’ performance improves when the
threat is removed. Because standardized tests
are threatening, these findings suggest that
the academic performance of stereotyped
groups—women and ethnic minorities—may
be underestimated.
Clearly the activation of a stereotype af-
fects immediate performance, but are there
long-term consequences? One study showed
that stereotype threat affected ability percep-
tion and intentions to pursue the area of ability
in the future (Correll, 2004). Stereotype threat
was aroused by telling students that males are
better than females at an ambiguous task. De-
spite the fact that all students were given the
same score on the test, males perceived that
they had greater ability in the task and had
greater career aspirations in an area that re-
quired competence at this task. However, the
long-term effects of stereotype threat may beM06_HELG0185_04_SE_C06.indd 198 6/21/11 8:10 AM