The Consequences Of Stereotype Threat

From an early age potential inhibitory antecedents to cognitive performance pose acute and irreparable consequences to academic, social, and societal standing (Mckown & Strambler, 2009). One such hindrance are domain specific threats based on social stereotypes, commonly referred to as a Stereotype threat (ST). Stereotype Threat occurs when members of a particular group are exposed to knowledge of a negative stereotype regarding their group and a specific task, and are succumb with an unconscious fear of perpetuating this stereotype (Ganley, Mingle, Ryan, Ryan, Vasilyeva, & Perry, 2013). In other words, if an individual is made aware of their particular group’s inability to adequately or efficiently complete a specific task, he/she may perform
Although subject variables such as gender and collegiate standing were not analyzed in relation to the dependent variable, for the sake of scholastic continuity and general reference, participants were comprised of 10 males and 42 females. Likewise, participants constituted 27 freshman (M= 18.77 years old, SD= 1.12), 13 sophomores (M= 19.84 years old, SD=.55), 7 juniors (M=21.00 years old, SD=1.00), and 5 seniors (M=21.60 years old, SD=.54). All participants were recruited through the affiliated Department of Psychology’s SONA Systems Participant Pool.
Materials
Word Find
A 20 x 20 character word find consisting of basic English words ranging from 4 to 9 characters (e.g. cactus, community, fish, flower, etc.) was used as a measure in assessing the participant’s ability to efficiently complete a menial task. Words and their position remained consistent between participants.
Stopwatch
A typical digital stopwatch, precise to a 100th of a second, acted as the instrument in measuring performance. Performance by manner of efficiency was assessed using time of completion. Commencement and cessation of the instrument was manually regulated by the
Results indicated a significant difference in completion time between conditions F(2, 49) = 8.90, p = .001 as well as a large effect size, 2 = .26. Levene's test for homogeneity of variance was found to be significant. In correcting for violating the assumption of equal variance, a Tamhane's Post-Hoc analysis was conducted to compare means. Contrary to postulations, participants in the negative stereotype condition (M = 10.36, SD = 2.81) showed no significant difference in performance than those of the positive condition (M = 10.71, SD = 3.83, p = .986), while, surprisingly, those in the control condition (M =16.07, SD = 6.11), who received no stereotype prime, performed significantly worse than those in both the positive (M = 10.71, SD = 3.83, p = .015) and negative condition (M = 10.36, SD = 2.81, p =.006). The hypothesis that participants that were given negative expectations about their performance, group A, would take longer to complete the task than both the participants given positive expectations about their performance, group B, and the control group, group C, was disproven. The secondary hypothesis that the participants in group B would perform better than the participants in group C was initially confirmed as there was statistically significance (p = .001) but given group B did not perform significantly better than group A, and