Distinguishing stereotype threat from priming effects: on the role of the social self and threat-based concerns

The Intersecting Influence of Age and Performance Stereotypes on Physical and Psychological Aspects of Stair Navigation in Older Adults

Negative age-stereotypes can have widespread effects on older adult functionality; however, no research has explored psychophysical aspects of stair navigation after exposure to stereotype priming. The present study examined self-efficacy and biomechanics related to stair navigation in older adults ( N = 90). Between-groups analyses revealed positively primed older adults ascended and descended the stairs significantly faster with greater velocity in the medio-lateral plane than older adults who received a negative prime or controls ( p < .017). Moreover, negatively primed older adults rated their stair self-efficacy significantly lower compared with the control and positively primed groups ( p < .017). These results suggest positively primed older adults can navigate stairs with more confidence, quickness, and efficiency. With implications for interventions aimed at maintaining older adult functionality, the present study highlights the potential benefits of positive age-stereotypes, especially related to challenging physical tasks.

A Values Affirmation Intervention to Improve Female Residents' Surgical Performance

BACKGROUND

Female residents in surgical training may face stereotype threat. The awareness of negative stereotypes about surgical ability based on gender may heighten stress and thus reduce performance.

OBJECTIVE

The main objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a brief stress-reducing writing exercise, known as a values affirmation, to mitigate the negative effects of stereotype threat on the performance of female surgical residents.

METHODS

This is a randomized, controlled trial in which 167 residents were invited to participate. A total of 45 resident volunteers, including 18 women, were randomized to the affirmation condition or the no-affirmation condition. We administered a values affirmation intervention and measured clinical evaluations data both prior to and 6 months after the intervention.

RESULTS

Women benefited from the affirmation. Women who had participated in the affirmation exercise earned higher clinical evaluation scores than those in the control condition (B = 0.34, P < .05). For men, performance did not differ by affirmation condition (B = -0.20, P = .35).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest a benefit of values affirmation for women in surgical training, as measured by performance on clinical evaluations. This suggests that a brief psychological intervention may improve on-the-job performance for women in surgery, an underrepresented group.

Exploring the Relationship Between Stereotype Perception and Residents' Well-Being

BACKGROUND

Medicine has historically been a male-dominated field, and there remains a stereotype that men are better physicians than women. For female residents, and in particular female surgical residents, chronically contending with this stereotype can exact a toll on their psychological health. The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between women surgeons' psychological health and their perception of other people's endorsement of the stereotype (stereotype perception).

STUDY DESIGN

This is a correlational study based on survey data collected from 14 residency programs at one medical center from September 2010 to March 2011. The participants were 384 residents (representing an 80% response rate). The main survey measures were the Dupuy Psychological General Well-Being Scale and the Maslach Burnout Inventory.

RESULTS

Among female surgical residents, we found that those with higher degrees of stereotype perception had poorer psychological health than those with lower degrees of stereotype perception (β = -0.44, p = 0.002). For men, there was no relationship between stereotype perception and psychological health (β = 0.015; p = 0.92). Among nonsurgeons, there was no relationship between stereotype perception and psychological health for either women or men (β = -0.016; p = 0.78; β = -0.0050; p = 0.97, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS

The data suggest that women in surgical training, but not men, can face a stressor--stereotype perception--that is negatively associated with their psychological health. This same relationship does not seem to exist for women in nonsurgical training programs. Efforts should be made to further understand this relationship and investigate possible interventions to level the playing field for male and female surgical trainees.

Parent-child math anxiety and math-gender stereotypes predict adolescents' math education outcomes

Two studies examined social determinants of adolescents' math anxiety including parents' own math anxiety and children's endorsement of math-gender stereotypes. In Study 1, parent-child dyads were surveyed and the interaction between parent and child math anxiety was examined, with an eye to same- and other-gender dyads. Results indicate that parent's math anxiety interacts with daughters' and sons' anxiety to predict math self-efficacy, GPA, behavioral intentions, math attitudes, and math devaluing. Parents with lower math anxiety showed a positive relationship to children's math outcomes when children also had lower anxiety. The strongest relationships were found with same-gender dyads, particularly Mother-Daughter dyads. Study 2 showed that endorsement of math-gender stereotypes predicts math anxiety (and not vice versa) for performance beliefs and outcomes (self-efficacy and GPA). Further, math anxiety fully mediated the relationship between gender stereotypes and math self-efficacy for girls and boys, and for boys with GPA. These findings address gaps in the literature on the role of parents' math anxiety in the effects of children's math anxiety and math anxiety as a mechanism affecting performance. Results have implications for interventions on parents' math anxiety and dispelling gender stereotypes in math classrooms.

Influence of negative stereotypes and beliefs on neuropsychological test performance in a traumatic brain injury population

The impact of stereotype threat and self-efficacy beliefs on neuropsychological test performance in a clinical traumatic brain injury (TBI) population was investigated. A total of 42 individuals with mild-to-moderate TBI and 42 (age-, gender-, educationally matched) healthy adults were recruited. The study consisted of a 2 (Type of injury: control, TBI) × 2 (Threat Condition: reduced threat, heightened threat) between-participants design. The purpose of the reduced threat condition was to reduce negative stereotyped beliefs regarding cognitive effects of TBI and to emphasize personal control over cognition. The heightened threat condition consisted of an opposing view. Main effects included greater anxiety, motivation, and dejection but reduced memory self-efficacy for head-injured-groups, compared to control groups. On neuropsychological testing, the TBI-heightened-threat-group displayed lower scores on Initial Encoding (initial recall) and trended toward displaying lower scores on Attention (working memory) compared to the TBI-reduced-threat-group. No effect was found for Delayed Recall measures. Memory self-efficacy mediated the relation between threat condition and neuropsychological performance, indicating a potential mechanism for the threat effect. The findings highlight the impact of stereotype threat and self-referent beliefs on neuropsychological test performance in a clinical TBI population.

Stereotyped: investigating gender in introductory science courses

Research in science education has documented achievement gaps between men and women in math and physics that may reflect, in part, a response to perceived stereotype threat. Research efforts to reduce achievement gaps by mediating the impact of stereotype threat have found success with a short values-affirmation writing exercise. In biology and biochemistry, however, little attention has been paid to the performance of women in comparison with men or perceptions of stereotype threat, despite documentation of leaky pipelines into professional and academic careers. We used methodologies developed in physics education research and cognitive psychology to 1) investigate and compare the performance of women and men across three introductory science sequences (biology, biochemistry, physics), 2) document endorsement of stereotype threat in these science courses, and 3) investigate the utility of a values-affirmation writing task in reducing achievement gaps. In our study, analysis of final grades and normalized learning gains on content-specific concept inventories reveals no achievement gap in the courses sampled, little stereotype threat endorsement, and no impact of the values-affirmation writing task on student performance. These results underscore the context-dependent nature of achievement gaps and stereotype threat and highlight calls to replicate education research across a range of student populations.

Distinguishing between the effects of stereotype priming and stereotype threat on math performance

Stereotype threat and stereotype priming have both been shown to impair test performance. Although research suggests threat-based concerns distinguish the experience of threat from priming (Marx & Stapel, 2006), it is not clear whether these psychological phenomena impact performance via similar or distinct mechanisms. The current work demonstrates that priming and threat produce distinctive patterns of performance via different mechanisms. Motivation was found to play a proximal role in the effect of stereotype threat on females’ math performance. Threatened females were motivated to disconfirm the negative stereotype, but performed more poorly because they were more likely than controls to use the incorrect, but prepotent conventional solution approach. Gender-math stereotypes do not incorporate the notion that females are motivated to disconfirm stereotypes. Instead the results are consistent with the argument that participants primed with female gender constructs performed poorly because they withdrew effort.

Cognitive Appraisals of Stereotype Threat

Using the cognitive appraisal conceptualisation of the transactional model of stress, the goal was to assess how victims of stereotype threat respond to this situation in terms of primary appraisals (threat/challenge) and to investigate whether those appraisals may mediate the relation between stereotype threat and performance. Results show that, while participants from North Africa living in France did appraise the situation more as a threat and less as a challenge, only challenge appraisal mediated between stereotype threat and performance.

Stress and coping with discrimination and stigmatization

The aim of this article is to briefly review the literature on stigmatization and more generally identity threats, to focus more specifically of the way people appraise and cope with those threatening situations. Based on the transactional model of stress and coping of Lazarus and Folkman (1984), we propose a model of coping with identity threats that takes into accounts the principle characteristic of stigma, its devaluing aspect. We present a model with specific antecedents, a refined appraisal phase and a new classification of coping strategies based on the motives that may be elicited by the threatening situation, those of protecting and/or enhancing the personal and/or social identity.

Stereotype threat and health disparities: what medical educators and future physicians need to know

Patients' experience of stereotype threat in clinical settings and encounters may be one contributor to health care disparities. Stereotype threat occurs when cues in the environment make negative stereotypes associated with an individual's group status salient, triggering physiological and psychological processes that have detrimental consequences for behavior. By recognizing and understanding the factors that can trigger stereotype threat and understanding its consequences in medical settings, providers can prevent it from occurring or ameliorate its consequences for patient behavior and outcomes. In this paper, we discuss the implications of stereotype threat for medical education and trainee performance and offer practical suggestions for how future providers might reduce stereotype threat in their exam rooms and clinics.

An integrated process model of stereotype threat effects on performance

Research showing that activation of negative stereotypes can impair the performance of stigmatized individuals on a wide variety of tasks has proliferated. However, a complete understanding of the processes underlying these stereotype threat effects on behavior is still lacking. The authors examine stereotype threat in the context of research on stress arousal, vigilance, working memory, and self-regulation to develop a process model of how negative stereotypes impair performance on cognitive and social tasks that require controlled processing, as well as sensorimotor tasks that require automatic processing. The authors argue that stereotype threat disrupts performance via 3 distinct, yet interrelated, mechanisms: (a) a physiological stress response that directly impairs prefrontal processing, (b) a tendency to actively monitor performance, and (c) efforts to suppress negative thoughts and emotions in the service of self-regulation. These mechanisms combine to consume executive resources needed to perform well on cognitive and social tasks. The active monitoring mechanism disrupts performance on sensorimotor tasks directly. Empirical evidence for these assertions is reviewed, and implications for interventions designed to alleviate stereotype threat are discussed.

An integrated process model of stereotype threat effects on performance

Research showing that activation of negative stereotypes can impair the performance of stigmatized individuals on a wide variety of tasks has proliferated. However, a complete understanding of the processes underlying these stereotype threat effects on behavior is still lacking. The authors examine stereotype threat in the context of research on stress arousal, vigilance, working memory, and self-regulation to develop a process model of how negative stereotypes impair performance on cognitive and social tasks that require controlled processing, as well as sensorimotor tasks that require automatic processing. The authors argue that stereotype threat disrupts performance via 3 distinct, yet interrelated, mechanisms: (a) a physiological stress response that directly impairs prefrontal processing, (b) a tendency to actively monitor performance, and (c) efforts to suppress negative thoughts and emotions in the service of self-regulation. These mechanisms combine to consume executive resources needed to perform well on cognitive and social tasks. The active monitoring mechanism disrupts performance on sensorimotor tasks directly. Empirical evidence for these assertions is reviewed, and implications for interventions designed to alleviate stereotype threat are discussed.