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This paper raised the possibility that culturally-shared
stereotypes suggesting poor performance of certain
groups can, when made salient in a context involving the
stereotype, disrupt performance of an individual who
identifies with that group. This effect was termed
stereotype threat, and the existence and
consequences of stereotype threat were investigated in
four experiments. Experiment 1 involved African American and
White college students
who took a difficult test using items from the GRE Verbal exam under one of two conditions. In the stereotype threat
condition, students were told that their performance on the test would be a good
indicator of their underlying intellectual abilities. In the non-threat condition,
they were told that the test was simply a problem solving exercise and was not
diagnostic of ability. Performance was compared in the two conditions
after statistically controlling for self-reported SAT
scores. African American
participants performed less well than their white counterparts in the stereotype
threat condition, but in the non-threat condition their performance equaled that of their white counterparts. Experiment 2 provided a
replication of this effect but also showed that African
Americans both completed fewer test items and had less
success in correctly answering items under stereotype
threat. In Experiment 3, African-American and White
undergraduates completed a task that was described
either as assessing or not assessing intellectual
ability. When the task supposedly measured ability,
African-American participants performed more poorly.
In addition, they showed heightened awareness of their
racial identity (by completing word fragments related to
their ethnicity), more doubts about their ability (by
completing word fragments related to low ability), a
greater likelihood to invoke a priori excuses for poor
performance (i.e., self-handicapping), a tendency to
avoid racial-stereotypic preferences, and a lower
likelihood of reporting their race compared with
students in the low-threat condition. Experiment 4
sought to identify the conditions sufficient to activate
stereotype threat by having undergraduates complete the
non-threat conditions from Experiments 1 & 2.
Unlike those experiments, however, students racial
ethnic information was solicited from half of the
students, right before they completed the test items.
Results showed that performance was poorer only among
African-Americans whose racial identity was made salient
prior to testing. These studies established the
existence of stereotype threat and provided
evidence that stereotypes suggesting poor performance,
when made salient in a context involving the
stereotypical ability, can disrupt performance, produce
doubt about one's abilities, and cause an individual to
disidentify with one's ethnic group.
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