Stereotype Threat: Are Lower Status and History of Stigmatization Preconditions of Stereotype Threat?

Abstract

This research extended stereotype-threat effects outside of the academic domain and to a nonstigmatized group. Female and male students performed three decision tasks: lexical, valence, and affective processing. Half of the participants were told that, in general, men are poorer performers than are women in affective processing tasks. No differences between conditions were observed for the lexical and valence tasks. By contrast, for the affective task, threatened men made significantly more errors than did participants in the other three conditions. More precisely, threatened men tended to accept as affective words that were not affective. This latter result suggests that threatened men decreased their threshold for affectivity “to prove” the inapplicability of the stereotype to themselves. Moreover, stereotype endorsement did not mediate the results. Identification with the affective domain, on the other hand, moderated the effect of stereotype threat. Discussion considers the consequences of these findings for everyday interactions.