This study investigates the post-performance effects of stereotype threat. Undergraduate students (N = 130) classified as either strongly- or weakly- identified with academics were told a diagnostic anagram task either typically shows poorer performance for their gender (stereotype threat) or no gender differences (no stereotype threat), and received arbitrary positive or negative feedback on an initial task. They later performed a second anagram task. Results indicate a 2-way interaction between stereotype threat and academic identification among those who received negative feedback. Negative feedback under stereotype threat did not harm performance for participants strongly-identified with academics, but did harm performance for participants weakly-identified with academics. This same 2-way interaction within the negative feedback condition also predicted post-feedback levels of identification as a college student, though it did not seem to affect post-feedback levels of academic identification. Strongly-identified participants receiving negative feedback identified less as a college student if they were under stereotype threat while weakly-academically identified participants identified more. Levels of post-feedback identification as a college student negatively predicted performance.

This study investigated stereotype threat of women in petroleum engineering, a traditionally male-dominated industry. There were two main purposes to understanding communicative aspects of stereotype threat: 1) the creation of a typology of stereotype threats received and 2) the elaboration of coping strategies used to mitigate threats. This research examined contextual factors that influence women’s coping, including socialization, psychological inoculations, and memorable messages. This work is a contribution to communication research as it examines these components through the lens of scripts, which considers stereotype threat from a new perspective that suggests people are active participants in mitigating threats. To complete this study, I performed 61 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with current or former female petroleum engineers. Through constant comparison (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) I analyzed the data and produced an initial set of 13 different stereotype threats and 11 distinct coping strategies. Upon further comparison, the threats and coping strategies were each consolidated further to five core categories. This typology aligns threats on a spectrum that runs from passive actions to overt actions, and threats closely adhere to the underperformance benchmarks of previous stereotype threat research (Aronson & McGlone, 2009). The coping strategies address specific actions women take to mitigate threats, and the strategies align with the long-term responses to stereotype threat proposed by Block, Koch, Liberman, Merriweather, and Roberson (2011). In addition, the coping strategies execute problem- and emotion-based coping (Folkman and Lazarus, 1980). A distinctive feature of coping is dualistic subversions, which is when women use a subverted stereotype threat to mitigate it. Finally, this study suggests that stereotype threats and coping strategies result from childhood socialization practices, a process that writes scripts workers rely upon throughout their careers. This study is a contribution to organizational communication in how it examines ways messages are communicated in male-dominated careers and how women can use communication to mitigate negative expectations that arise in those environments. In addition, it looks at communication events that encourage women to enter male-dominated careers. Finally, it adds to communication theory because it uncovers additional ways that people use scripts to mitigate stereotyping. / text

The current report examines the components and implications of the existing research utilizing the theory of academic disidentification. The theory of academic disidentification proposes a process that accounts for the academic disparity between the academic achievement levels of White and ethnic minority students. The premise hypothesizes that academic achievement only results from an individual’s adaptive integration of their performance in the academic domain with their identity. For ethnic minority students the academic domain presents frequent exposure to stereotype threat whether it occurs on exams or in class participation. Over time, the accumulation of these experiences promote a maladaptive process by which ethnic minority students separate their overall identity from the academic domain, thus undermining the importance of academic achievement. In addition to the analysis of the research, this paper propose a process of academic disidentification and present implications for counselors working with ethnic minority students. / text

This report explored the effects of stereotype threat—i.e., the apprehension associated with the possibility of confirming a self-relevant negative stereotype—on the stigmatized group Latinos as they were interviewed about their academic achievements and career aspirations. Latino participants were exposed to a self-relevant negative stereotype in the news, an illegal immigrant crossing the Mexican-American border smuggling drugs, as a stimulus activating stereotype threat. The study used deception as participants were unaware of the connection between the news article and the interview thus ensuring stereotype threat activation. Latino participants in the illegal immigrant/criminal condition displayed more verbal disfluency and tentative language than those in the control condition demonstrating evidence for media’s ability to stereotype threat. / text

<p>Extensive evidence demonstrates how mental illness symptomatology can inhibit perceptions of and actual performance on important tasks. However, receiving treatment from the medical establishment for such symptomatology requires diagnosis, whereby the patient becomes labeled and subject to the stereotypes connected to that label. Mental illness labeling is associated with a variety of negative outcomes including inhibited access to unemployment, housing, health insurance, and marriage and parenthood opportunities and can disrupt interpersonal relationships. However, the repercussions of mental illness labeling for one area of life have remained largely overlooked; that area is task performance. Adults spend a substantial portion of their lives at work engaged in group-based or individual level tasks. This dissertation explores external perceptions of mental illness in task groups and the role of self-internalization of stereotypes about mental illness in individual task performance through two experimental studies. </p><p> Previous research has revealed that, on average, task partners with a mental illness are stigmatized and subject to diminished status when they are identified to participants as having been hospitalized for general psychological problems for an extended period of time. Study 1 of this dissertation explores the stigma- and status-based attributions triggered by engaging with a partner in a mutual task who is identified as having a specific mental illness label: none, Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or schizophrenia. </p><p> Additionally, research has revealed that members of a group about which negative stereotypes exist may face a situational threat in a domain relevant task--stereotype threat. Race, gender, social class, age, and a variety of other sociodemographic attributes can trigger stereotype threat. However, little research has considered the potential for stereotype threat to emerge on the basis of mental illness labeling. Study 2 of this dissertation focusing on individual-level performance, exploring the potential for ADHD to trigger stereotype threat in test-taking situations.</p><p> Results from Study 1 suggest that the specific mental illness labels studied, presented devoid of symptomatology severity, do not trigger stigmatized attributions but may trigger some negative status attributions in the case of a task relevant diagnosis. (ADHD). Study 2 suggests that a task relevant diagnosis may also trigger stereotype threat in a test-taking situation, negatively impacting performance. Taken together, the results indicate that task relevance of one's mental illness label may be a driving factor in negative external and internal perceptions of mental illness.</p> / Dissertation

Objectives: Most researchers have attributed observed cognitive differences between individuals with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and ‘normal’ individuals to physiological changes to the brain. Lacking exploration has been the role of social context/environmental variables. One of the variables investigated in the social psychology literature is stereotypes. Research has shown that the presence of stereotypes in testing environments negatively interferes with test performance (called stereotype threat theory). This concept appears relevant to the TBI population given that empirical research has demonstrated that individuals tend to believe that traumatic brain injuries lead to cognitive deficits, as well as the fact that reminders of potential cognitive deficits are oftentimes present in neuropsychological testing settings (e.g., in pre-test instructions, etc.). It is argued that these cues exacerbate pre-existing negative beliefs regarding cognitive functioning for individuals with a mild-moderate TBI, thereby affecting neuropsychological test performance. Method: The sample consisted of 42 individuals who sustained a mild-to-moderate TBI at least 6 months earlier and 42 age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy adults below the age of 60. The study, similar to other stereotype threat research, consisted of ‘reduced threat’ and ‘heightened threat’ conditions. The purpose of the former condition was to reduce negative stereotypes and emphasize the notion of personal control over cognitive abilities. Questionnaires and neuropsychological tests were administered subsequent to the experimental manipulation. Results: TBI participants endorsed greater levels of anxiety, motivation, and dejection, but reduced feelings of memory self-efficacy compared to the control group. The most pivotal results to the research study revealed that the TBI heightened threat group displayed lower scores on the Initial Encoding and Attention composite variables (which were comprised of neuropsychological test measures) than the TBI reduced threat group. Furthermore, the head-injured heightened threat condition reported lower memory self-efficacy than the reduced threat condition, and the non-head-injured heightened threat group endorsed a greater degree of negative beliefs/stereotypes regarding TBI than the non-head-injured reduced threat group. The construct of memory self-efficacy was found to mediate the relation between threat condition and performance on encoding/attention measures. Conclusions: The findings highlight the role of negative stereotypes and expectations/beliefs to cognitive test performance in individuals who have sustained a mild/moderate TBI. To date, there have been few attempts to integrate social cognition with neuropsychology. Applying the information gleaned from previous stereotype threat studies to a TBI population bridges this gap and provides a prosperous avenue for future research.

The past two decades have seen a substantial increase in the availability of numerical data that individuals are faced with on a daily basis. In addition, research uncovering the multiple facets of statistical reasoning has become increasingly prominent. Both gender differences and the effect of experience or training have emerged as two key factors that influence performance in statistics. Surprisingly, though, the combined effects of these two variables have not been studied. This gap in understanding the joint effect of gender and experience on statistical reasoning is addressed in the present dissertation with six studies. In Study 1 (N = 201), participants with various levels of experience in statistics were asked to complete the Statistical Reasoning Assessment (SRA; Garfield, 2003). Although the performance of both genders improved with experience, the gender gap persisted across all experience levels. Multiple measures of individual differences were used in a confirmatory structural equation model. This model supported the idea that differences in statistical reasoning are not uniquely a matter of cognitive ability. In fact, gender was found to influence statistical reasoning directly, as well as indirectly through its influence on thinking dispositions. In Studies 2 (N = 67), 3 (N = 157), and 4 (N = 206), the role of stereotype threat was examined as a potential cause of the persisting gender gap in statistics, and value affirmation was tested as an intervention to overcome stereotype threat. Despite the fact that many women believed negative stereotypes about the ability of women in statistics, value affirmation had no significant impact on performance. To help explain this lack of effect, and in keeping with the results of the structural equation model suggesting a multi-pronged approach, efforts were turned towards a different (and potentially richer) cognitive factor. Specifically, mental representations were explored to help shed light on the root causes of those conceptual understanding differences in statistics. In Studies 5 and 6, gender differences in mental representations of statistical features were examined using a categorization paradigm. In Study 5 (N = 219), extending some of the key findings in Studies 1, 3 and 4, it was established that two courses in statistics are necessary to create a significant difference in the quality of mental representations of statistical concepts. More importantly, Study 6 (N = 208) demonstrated how constraining the task format particularly benefits women in that the quality of their reasoning significantly improved, where that of men was equal across tasks. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Cette thèse a pour objectif majeur d’examiner l’émergence des émotions en situation de menace du stéréotype et leurs implications sur la performance cognitive des individus stigmatisés. Nous poursuivons deux objectifs. Dans un premier temps, nous souhaitons montrer que la situation de menace du stéréotype est propice non seulement au déclenchement de peur mais aussi de colère chez les individus stigmatisés. Dans ce cadre, nous postulons que l’adhésion ou non des individus au stéréotype de leur groupe d’appartenance déterminerait respectivement l’émergence de peur ou de colère. Cinq études expérimentales permettent de valider cette hypothèse. Dans un second temps, nous examinons les processus par lesquels ces deux émotions interviennent dans la chute de performance classiquement observée en menace du stéréotype. Sur la base de la théorie des tendances à l’action et des théories cognitives, nous proposons que la peur et la colère ressenties par les individus stigmatisés dans cette situation, sont responsables de ses conséquences délétères sur leur performance. La peur est associée à une tendance d’évitement qui empêcherait les individus négativement stéréotypés de s’impliquer dans la tâche qui permet l’application du stéréotype. La colère, quant à elle, favorise une tendance d’approche et un traitement heuristique de l’information qui, associés, précipiteraient les réponses des individus stigmatisés et empêcheraient le traitement approfondi de la tâche. Par leur tendance d’action, peur et colère pourraient contribuer à la réduction des performances en situation de menace du stéréotype. Trois études expérimentales permettent de valider cette idée.Cette thèse propose une explication alternative à l’effet délétère classiquement observé de la menace du stéréotype sur les performances des individus stigmatisés et pointe l’importance de prendre en considération les conséquences comportementales et cognitives des émotions dans cette situation. / The aim of this research is to examine the emergence of emotions in stereotype threat and its implications on performances of stigmatized individuals. We have two purposes. First, we want to show that stereotype threat situation triggers not only fear but also anger in stigmatized individuals. We postulate that endorsement or non endorsement to the group stereotype would respectively determine the emergence of fear or anger. Five experiments confirm our hypothesis. Then we examine processes through which fear and anger have deleterious effect on performances in stereotype threat situation. We suggest that fear and anger have deleterious effect because of the action tendencies and the cognitive processing of information that they trigger. Fear triggers an avoidance action tendency which could prevent stigmatized individuals to get involved in the task. Anger triggers an approach action tendency and a heuristic processing of information which could lead to rush towards the task without processing information deeply. Three experiments confirm our hypothesis. This research suggests an alternative explanation to the deleterious effect of stereotype threat on performances and highlights the importance to take into account the behavioral and cognitive consequences of emotions in the stereotype threat situation.

abstract: This document explores the presence of stereotype threat among college students training for careers in music. Beginning in the 1990s, an effort led by Claude M. Steele (social psychologist and professor emeritus at Stanford University) identified stereotype threat as an attribute to the underperformance of minority groups. Continued research has mainly focused on stereotype threat within the following contexts: female performance within science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) fields, African American performance on standardized tests, and European American performance in athletics. This document contains two pilot studies that strive to apply current stereotype threat research to the field of music education and music performance in order to ask the following questions: Does stereotype threat impact the education of underrepresented collegiate music students? Does stereotype threat heighten gender awareness of musicians when they enter the typical auditioning environment? The two pilot studies consist of the following: (1) a survey intended to analyze the possible impact of stereotype threat on music students’ interaction with their colleagues and music instructors and (2) a quantitative study that explores the presence of stereotype threat (among musicians) through the use of a word-fragment completion task administered immediately before a mock audition. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2017

Avec cette recherche, nous étudions l’impact de l’ostracisme (sentiment d’exclusion sociale)sur la performance à plusieurs tâches stéréotypées selon si celui-ci provient de personnes demême sexe ou de personnes de sexe opposé. Plusieurs travaux ont pu montrer quel’ostracisme pouvait altérer la performance cognitive (Baumeister, Twenge & Nuss, 2002).Des recherches ont pu également montrer que le fait de réaliser une tâche en même temps queplusieurs personnes de sexe opposé pouvait entraîner une diminution de performance si cettetâche était négativement stéréotypée pour le sexe de la personne c ible (Inzlicht & Ben-Zeev,2000). En référence à ces travaux, nous nous attendions à ce que l’ostracisme entraîne unediminution de performance et à ce que cet effet, pour une tâche négativement stéréotypée, soitd’autant plus fort que celui-ci provient de personnes de sexe opposé plutôt que de personnesde même sexe. Nous avons testé cette hypothèse à partir de 4 expériences : trois réalisées surdes échantillons féminin (avec une tâche numérique) et une sur un échantillon masculin (avecune tâche affective). Une analyse cumulée des expériences réalisées sur un échantillonféminin a également été proposée. Nous ne sommes finalement pas parvenus à valider notrehypothèse. Au contraire, nous avons pu constater que seul l’ostracisme de la part depersonnes de même sexe que soi entraînait une diminution de performances sur une tâchenégativement stéréotypée. Plusieurs pistes sont proposées pour interpréter ce résultat que nousavons pu mettre en évidence à plusieurs reprises. / With this research, we study the impact of ostracism (the feeling of social exclusion) onperformance on several stereotyped tasks, depending on the sex of the ostracism's source.Many researches showed that ostracism could lead to cognitive performance decrease(Baumeister, Twenge & Nuss, 2002). Some studies also pointed out that executing a task atthe same time as members of the opposite sex may cause a decrease in performance, if thetask is negatively stereotyped toward the targeted person (Inzlicht & Ben-Zeev, 2000).According to those studies, we were expecting ostracism would lead to performance decrease,and also that this effect (for a negatively stereotyped task) would be more pronounced,coming from members of the opposite sex. We tested this hypothesis with 4 experiments: 3 onfemale samples (using numeric task) and one on male sample (using an affective task). Wealso proposed a cumulated analysis of experiments conducted on female samples. Eventually,we didn't validate our hypothesis. On the contrary, we observed that only ostracism fromsame-sex persons led to performance decrease on a negatively stereotyped task. We proposeda number of leads to interpret the result we repeatedly highlighted.