A Threatening Intellectual Environment: Why Females Are Susceptible to Experiencing Problem-Solving Deficits in the Presence of Males

Abstract

Does placing females in environments in which they have contact with males cause deficits in their problem-solving performance? Is a situational cue, such as gender composition, sufficient for creating a threatening intellectual environment for females--an environment that elicits performance-impinging stereotypes? Two studies explored these questions. Participants completed a difficult math or verbal test in 3-person groups, each of which included 2 additional people of the same sex as the participant (same-sex condition) or of the opposite sex (minority condition). Female participants in the minority condition experienced performance deficits in the math test only, whereas males performed equally well on the math test in the two conditions. Further investigation showed that females' deficits were proportional to the number of males in their group. Even females who were placed in a mixed-sex majority condition (2 females and 1 male) experienced moderate but significant deficits. Findings are discussed in relation to theories of distinctiveness, stereotype threat, and tokenism.

An integrated process model of stereotype threat effects on performance.

“…Past studies provide evidence for this association by showing that manipulations of group salience such as solo status (Inzlicht & Ben-Zeev, 2000), group priming (Shih, Pittinsky, & Ambady, 1999), and group representativeness (Schmader, 2002) produce stereotype threat effects. Work by Marx, Stapel, and Muller (2005) confirmed that situations of stereotype threat activate the collective self, which is a manifestation of a positive link between the concepts of self and group.…”

Women's underrepresentation in science: Sociocultural and biological considerations.

“…Are their superior grades a result of being more compliant (doing homework, asking for help, being prepared), or is there a more complicated opponent process model to explain such perplexing issues? Moreover, why is it that at a young age, when they are first sensitive to stereotype threat (see Good, Aronson, & Harder, 2008), do female students not begin to "disidentify" with the domain of mathematics, that is, reconceptualize their values and identity to avoid stereotype threat by removing math-like activities as a basis for self-assessment (Inzlicht & Ben-Zeev, 2000)? Finally, if women and African Americans score higher when stereotype threat conditions are removed from the SAT-M, then they must have mastered the material prior to the administration of the SAT-M but suffered when the testing context interfered with the retrieval of this learning.…”

Middle class and marginal? Socioeconomic status, stigma, and self-regulation at an elite university.

“…Perceiving such a cue, Steele and colleagues argue, forms a working hypothesis in the individual's mind-a theory of context-that triggers a search for additional information to confirm or disconfirm the suspected potential for social identity-based devaluation. Specifically, this theory of context instigates cognitive processes (e.g., vigilance) and affective responses (e.g., anxious arousal; Murphy et al, 2007) that undermine performance on tasks that are relevant in the context (e.g., Inzlicht & Ben-Zeev, 2000, 2003Sekaquaptewa & Thompson, 2003). It is important to note that this framework is a theoretical extension of stereotype threat theory because it can account for identity-related processes beyond those associated with the threat of confirming a negative group performance stereotype.…”