Knowing Is Half the Battle Teaching Stereotype Threat as a Means of Improving Women's Math Performance

Michael Johns; Toni Schmader; Andy Martens

doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00799.x

Knowing Is Half the Battle

Teaching Stereotype Threat as a Means of Improving Women's Math Performance

University of Arizona

Michael Johns or Toni Schmader, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; e-mail: mjjohns{at}u.arizona.edu or schmader{at}u.arizona.edu.

Abstract

We tested whether informing women about stereotype threat is a useful intervention to improve their performance in a threatening testing situation. Men and women completed difficult math problems described either as a problem-solving task or as a math test. In a third (teaching-intervention) condition, the test was also described as a math test, but participants were additionally informed that stereotype threat could interfere with women's math performance. Results showed that women performed worse than men when the problems were described as a math test (and stereotype threat was not discussed), but did not differ from men in the problem-solving condition or in the condition in which they learned about stereotype threat. For women, attributing anxiety to gender stereotypes was associated with lower performance in the math-test condition but improved performance in the teaching-intervention condition. The results suggest that teaching about stereotype threat might offer a practical means of reducing its detrimental effects.

Article Notes

↵¹Including all participants weakened the primary performance results somewhat, but the mean performance pattern paralleled the pattern for White participants.
↵²There were no effects of experimenter on any measure.
↵³Anxiety was also assessed, but analysis on this measure revealed only that across conditions, women (M = 3.94) reported more anxiety than men (M = 3.00), F(2, 103) = 7.90, p < .01.
↵⁴There were fewer degrees of freedom for the performance analysis than for the manipulation checks because 7 participants failed to provide their SAT scores.
↵⁵Analysis of the number of items answered correctly adjusted for guessing produced a marginal interaction, F(2, 103) = 2.69, p = .07, that mirrors the results for accuracy.
- Received March 2, 2004.
- Accepted August 25, 2004.