Stereotype Threat - The Power of the Mind's Hidden Bias
What is ‘stereotype threat’? First, let’s start with what a ‘stereotype’ is.
Our brains process huge amounts of information all the time. Most of this information doesn’t end up in conscious thought but our brains register it nonetheless. So that we don’t go crazy, our brains use mental shortcuts to quickly categorise people, groups or things based on certain traits or characteristics. A stereotype refers to when we quickly categorise people based on certain traits or behaviours.
Stereotypes are not an inherently bad thing.
They are very natural and often useful aspects of human cognition.
In our current social climate the word stereotype gets mixed in with bigger issues like prejudice and discrimination, but I would like to draw an important distinction between them.
Prejudice refers to when we make positive/negative judgements about a person or group based on perceived characteristics, often without factoring in individual differences. In other words, your stereotype has now become a fully formed belief. Discrimination refers to the unequal treatment of individuals or groups based on perceived characteristics or their group membership. Your prejudice has now become an action.
Stereotypes are mental shortcuts. Prejudice is belief based on those shortcuts.
Discrimination is the action that results from those beliefs.
Now, moving on to stereotype threat, also known as stereotype susceptibility. Researchers in the 1990s were looking to explore how deep-rooted negative stereotypes about oneself influence people’s actions.
In the original 1995 study, researchers recruited African-Americans students to take part in a problem-solving task. However, in one group they were told that the task is reflective of intellectual ability, and in the other group, they were told it wasn’t. In other words, the researchers activated ‘stereotype threat’ in the first group, and not in the other. As expected, the first group performed worse than the second group, and the researchers attributed this difference to ‘stereotype threat’. The idea being that reminding African-Americans of negative stereotypes about their intellectual ability would actually make them perform worse. And it did.
Not convinced? Try this one.
In a follow-up study in 1999, this effect was replicated in an even more pronounced and fascinating way. Researchers recruited a number of Asian undergraduates and high-schoolers, and split them into two groups. In the first group, before doing the problem-solving task the participants were reminded of their ethnicity – activating the positive stereotype that Asians have superior quantitative skills. In the second group, before doing the task, the participants were reminded of their gender – activating the negative stereotype that women have inferior quantitative skills. And guess what. The first group outperformed the second group considerably, despite being of similar intellectual abilities. Not only that, but compared to groups where neither positive nor negative stereotype threats were activated, those who were reminded of the ethnicity performed better than the average, and those who were reminded of their gender performed worse than the average.
This is a really fascinating idea.
Just the very nod towards stereotypes we may hold about ourselves can activate them in a way that
subconsciously changes our performance.
This becomes particularly interesting when considering how these extend into wider society, how our subconscious stereotypes may influence the way we feel about ourselves and towards others. It ties into the idea of how historic, culturally pervasive systems of social cognition have shaped how our society functions. Eradicating these and progressing becomes particularly difficult given the subtlety of these effects and their social and cognitive entrenchment.
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The original 1995 experiment involving African-American students.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1999-10204-016
The 1999 experiment involving female, Asian undergraduates.