Stereotypes L3 Flashcards
Define stereotype threat
Anxiety over confirming a negitive stereotype in a particular domain.
How does stereotype threat worsen performance?
Produces anxiety over confirming stereotype, anxiety uses working memory.
Discuss evidence for Stereotype threat worsening performance. ( 4 pieces )
Steel & Arson - gave white and black students the same test, and were told it was either a test of ‘athletic ability’ (stereotype threat to whites being less athletic) or ‘strategic ability’ (stereotype threat to blacks having low iq). Found that blacks underperformed when under stereotype threat, and this flipped when whites were under stereotype threat.
Spenser & Steel - found women perform poorly on a math test when told ‘it reveals gender differences’ (woman low iq) as oppose to being told nothing at all.
Koeing & Eagly - found men performed poorly on an interpersonal task when told it measures ‘social sensitivity’ (men unemotional) as oppose to nothing at all.
Frantz & Cuddy - found white men were more implicitly racist on an IAPT test when told ‘its a test for racism’ compared to ‘its a test about knowledge of racism’. however, still showed implicit racism when told ‘its just a hard test’ (no stereotype threat).
What is the ‘leaky pipeline’ effect?
women being unrepresentative in the top level jobs due to dropout because of stereotyping.
How does stereotype threat effect people beyond just performance? ( 2 effects ) include evidence.
Withdrawal from domain - anxiety makes people uncomfortable, and leads to avoidance.
Davis & Spencer - exposed men and women to gender stereotypical adverts, the gave them a list of jobs to do. women were less likely to chose ‘male jobs’ like engineering, and more likely to chose verbal jobs.
Learning in domain - anxiety worsens ones ability to learn.
Rydell - found women were worse at learning maths rules when under stereotype threat.
How can we reduce stereotype threat? ( 2 ways ).
Reframing - when we re-frame a task as challenging, and anxiety as helpful, we see that stereotype threat falls.
De-emphasis of social identity - when we get people to identify themselves as an individual, rather than a member to a group of a society they feel less defined by stereotypes.
Discuss Miyakes research into reducing the achievement gap in an entry level physics class.
Aim - wanted to see if the achievement gap could be narrowed
Method - Value affirmation task was given to all students, which involved writing about values important to you. control wrote about things importaint to others.
Results - found that the gap narrowed drasticly, and were roughly the same.
