STEREOTYPES 3

Question 1

What is stereotype threat?

Answer 1

The concern experienced by a person when there is a possibility that they may act in a way consistent with negative stereotypes

Question 2

How does Steele and Aronson’s study display how stereotype threats can affect behaviour

Answer 2

Black ppts performed worse than white ppts on an intelligence test (reading and verbal reasoning), but performed equally well when no reverence was made to intellectual ability.

Question 3

How does Spencer, Steele and Quinn’s study display how stereotype threats can affect behaviour

Answer 3

Women performed worse than men on a maths test when told it reveals gender differences, but equally when told that it ‘

Question 4

How does Koenig and Eagly’s study display how stereotype threats can affect behaviour

Answer 4

Men perform worse on an interpersonal perception task when told it assesses social sensitivity (and that men normally perform worse than women), relative to when told it assesses complex information processing.

Question 5

How does Frantz et al’s study display how stereotype threats can affect behaviour

Answer 5

White psychology undergrad ppts assigned to explicit threat, no threat or no instruction group, which determined what information they were given about the IAT.
In the explicit threat condition ppts were informed ‘research shows that a high proportion of whites show preference for white people’.
Explicit threat condition showed higher IAT effect score, indicating a greater pro-white implicit bias.

Question 6

Implications of stereotype threats

Answer 6

• Women and STEMM, leaky pipeline
• UK Women academic staff 42%
  UK Women academic staff at most senior grade 17%

Question 7

What efforts have been made to combat the implications of stereotype threats?

Answer 7

Uni: Athena Swan Award recognising commitment to advance women’s careers in STEMM
Government: 2013 Science and Technology Select Committee Inquiry

Question 8

Explain two examples of withdrawal from the stereotyped domain

Answer 8

1. Davies et al
   Women exposed to gender stereotypic TV ads reported less interest in pursuing qualifications/careers involving quantitative skills eg. engineering, statistics, physics
2. Rydell et al
   Females under stereotype threat showed attenuated learning of math rules learnt when under threat, compared to females not exposed to threat.

Question 9

Interventions into stereotype withdrawal

Answer 9

• Reframing and Reappraisal
  Threats reduced when reframed as a challenging learning experience
  Threats reduced when anxiety is presented as helpful rather than harmful
• De-emphasis of threatened social identity or domain
  Threats reduced when ppts given opportunity to list pos/neg attributes of their personal rather than social identity