Multiple social identities and stereotype threat: imbalance, accessibility, and working memory.

Full Abstract

In 4 experiments, the authors showed that concurrently making positive and negative self-relevant stereotypes available about performance in the same ability domain can eliminate stereotype threat effects. Replicating past work, the authors demonstrated that introducing negative stereotypes about women's math performance activated participants' female social identity and hurt their math performance (i.e., stereotype threat) by reducing working memory. Moving beyond past work, it was also demonstrated that concomitantly presenting a positive self-relevant stereotype (e.g., college students are good at math) increased the relative accessibility of females' college student identity and inhibited their gender identity, eliminating attendant working memory deficits and contingent math performance decrements. Furthermore, subtle manipulations in questions presented in the demographic section of a math test eliminated stereotype threat effects that result from women reporting their gender before completing the test. This work identifies the motivated processes through which people's social identities became active in situations in which self-relevant stereotypes about a stigmatized group membership and a nonstigmatized group membership were available. In addition, it demonstrates the downstream consequences of this pattern of activation on working memory and performance. Copyright (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Author information

Author/s: Rydell, Robert J (RJ); McConnell, Allen R (AR); Beilock, Sian L (SL);

Affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. rjrydell(-atsign-)indiana.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Journal: Journal of personality and social psychology (J Pers Soc Psychol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-May; vol 96 (issue 5) : pp 949-66

Dates: Created 2009/04/21; Completed 2009/06/10;

PMID: 19379029, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/10/2009, IMS Date: 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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