What is Stereotype Threat?
Stereotype threat is "the threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype or the fear of doing something that would inadvertently confirm that stereotype". [Steele, 1999] When activated, stereotype threat causes students to perform worse on assignments than they might otherwise. This reaction is neurobiological in nature - the perceived threat stimulates cortisol production in the brain having the effect of reducing the available working memory for completing tasks.
Stereotype threat affects members of any group about whom there exists some negative stereotype. The effect is variable across different groups and situations. Different groups experience different degrees of threat depending on the content of the stereotype and the situation. Also, stereotype threat has the potential to affect members of any group, if a situation makes them believe they will be viewed in light of a negative stereotype.
A stereotype must be relevant to one's self for it to be threatening; in other words, one must care about the domain or behavior that the stereotype describes. But one need not believe in the stereotype for it to be threatening. This makes stereotype threat different than "self-fullfilling prophesy" where one's negative beliefs about oneself can sabotage performance. But trying to disprove a stereotype, by outperforming for example, has detrimental effects and paradoxically leads to a decrease in performance.
Language or prompts that call to mind relevant negative stereotypes can activate the threat. For example, one study [Steele and Aronson, 1995] found that simply asking African American students to indicate their race before taking a standardized test caused them to get fewer answers correct, answer fewer items, spend more time on the questions they did answer, and feel significantly more anxiety. Similarly, women performed worse than men on a difficult math exam if they were told that the test showed gender differences favoring men, but showed no difference in scores if not primed in that way [Steele, 1997].
One of the most insidious aspects of stereotype threat is that better students are more likely to be affected. As Steele [1999] said:
"The most achievement oriented students, who were also the most skilled, motivated, and confident, were the most impaired by stereotype threat." [Steele, 1999, p.48].
They hypothesize that these students have more of their self-worth tied up with school and thus try harder to prove the stereotype wrong. The effect is that the threat results in distraction, self-consciousness, evaluation apprehension, test anxiety, and loss of motivation.
Note that these effects are only visible for tests that are challenging. Easy assignments do not show a difference in scoring even when students are given prompts to elicit the threat.
Stereotype Lift
Given all of this, a natural question would be whether or not students will respond to the opposite kind of prompting. It turns out that they do. This is called "Stereotype Lift." If students are told that the group to which they belong does particularly well on something, then they tend to do better that might otherwise be expected. Note, however, that this only works when the activated stereotype actually exists and the participants buy into it. The results are also not as strong as with Stereotype Threat, but it is statistically significant.
From “girls suck at maths” and “men are so insensitive” to “he is getting a bit senile with age” or “black people struggle at university”, there’s no shortage of common cultural stereotypes about social groups. Chances are you have heard most of these examples at some point. In fact, stereotypes are a bit like air: invisible but always present.
We all have multiple identities and some of them are likely to be stigmatised. While it may seem like we should just stop paying attention to stereotypes, it often isn’t that easy. False beliefs about our abilities easily turn into a voice of self doubt in our heads that can be hard to ignore. And in the last couple of decades, scientists have started to discover that this can have damaging effects on our actual performance.
This mechanism is due to what psychologists call “stereotype threat” – referring to a fear of doing something that would confirm negative perceptions of a stigmatised group that we are members of. The phenomenon was first uncovered by American social psychologists in the 1990s.
In a seminal paper, they experimentally demonstrated how racial stereotypes can affect intellectual ability. In their study, black participants performed worse than white participants on verbal ability tests when they were told that the test was “diagnostic” – a “genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations”. However, when this description was excluded, no such effect was seen. Clearly these individuals had negative thoughts about their verbal ability that affected their performance.
Black participants also underperformed when racial stereotypes were activated much more subtly. Just asking participants to identify their race on a preceding demographic questionnaire was enough. What’s more, under the threatening conditions [diagnostic test], black participants reported higher levels of self doubt than white participants.
Nobody’s safe
Stereotype threat effects are very robust and affect all stigmatised groups. A recent analysis of several previous studies on the topic revealed that stereotype threat related to the intellectual domain exists across various experimental manipulations, test types and ethnic groups – ranging from black and Latino Americans to Turkish Germans. A wealth of research also links stereotype threat with women’s underperformance in maths and leadership aspirations.
Men are vulnerable, too. A study showed that men performed worse when decoding non-verbal cues if the test was described as designed to measure “social sensitivity” – a stereotypically feminine skill. However, when the task was introduced as an “information processing test”, they did much better. In a similar vein, when children from poorer families are reminded of their lower socioeconomic status, they underperform on tests described as diagnostic of intellectual abilities – but not otherwise. Stereotype threat has also been shown to affect educational underachievement in immigrants and memory performance of the elderly.
It is important to remember that the triggering cues can be very subtle. One study demonstrated that when women viewed only two advertisements based on gender stereotypes among six commercials, they tended to avoid leadership roles in a subsequent task. This was the case even though the commercials had nothing to do with leadership.
Mental mechanisms
Stereotype threat leads to a vicious circle. Stigmatised individuals experience anxiety which depletes their cognitive resources and leads to underperformance, confirmation of the negative stereotype and reinforcement of the fear.
Researchers have identified a number of interrelated mechanisms responsible for this effect, with the key being deficits in working memory capacity – the ability to concentrate on the task at hand and ignore distraction. Working memory under stereotype threat conditions is affected by physiological stress, performance monitoring and suppression processes [of anxiety and the stereotype].
Neuroscientists have even measured these effects in the brain. When we are affected by stereotype threat, brain regions responsible for emotional self-regulation and social feedback are activated while activity in the regions responsible for task performance are inhibited.
In our recent study, published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, we demonstrated this effect for ageism. We used electroencephalography [EEG], a device which places electrodes on the scalp to track and record brainwave patterns, to show that older adults, having read a report about memory declining with age, experienced neural activation corresponding to having negative thoughts about oneself. They also underperformed in a subsequent, timed categorisation task.
Coping strategies
There is hope, however. Emerging studies on how to reduce stereotype threat identify a range of methods – the most obvious being changing the stereotype. Ultimately, this is the way to eliminate the problem once and for all.
But changing stereotypes sadly often takes time. While we are working on it, there are techniques to help us cope. For example, visible, accessible and relevant role models are important. One study reported a positive “Obama effect” on African Americans. Whenever Obama drew press attention for positive, stereotype-defying reasons, stereotype threat effects were markedly reduced in black Americans’ exam performance.
Another method is to buffer the threat through shifting self perceptions to positive group identity or self affirmation. For example, Asian women underperformed on maths tests when reminded of their gender identity but not when reminded of their Asian identity. This is because Asian individuals are stereotypically seen as good at maths. In the same way, many of us belong to a few different groups – it is sometimes worth shifting the focus towards the one which gives us strength.
Gaining confidence by practising the otherwise threatening task is also beneficial, as seen with female chess players. One way to do this could be by reframing the task as a challenge.
Finally, merely being aware of the damaging effects that stereotypes can have can help us reinterpret the anxiety and makes us more likely to perform better. We may not be able to avoid stereotypes completely and immediately, but we can try to clear the air of them.