Twenty Years of Stereotype Threat Research: A Review of Psychological Mediators

Abstract

This systematic literature review appraises critically the mediating variables of stereotype threat. A bibliographic search was conducted across electronic databases between 1995 and 2015. The search identified 45 experiments from 38 articles and 17 unique proposed mediators that were categorized into affective/subjective (n = 6), cognitive (n = 7) and motivational mechanisms (n = 4). Empirical support was accrued for mediators such as anxiety, negative thinking, and mind-wandering, which are suggested to co-opt working memory resources under stereotype threat. Other research points to the assertion that stereotype threatened individuals may be motivated to disconfirm negative stereotypes, which can have a paradoxical effect of hampering performance. However, stereotype threat appears to affect diverse social groups in different ways, with no one mediator providing unequivocal empirical support. Underpinned by the multi-threat framework, the discussion postulates that different forms of stereotype threat may be mediated by distinct mechanisms.

The Development of Critical Consciousness and its Relation to Academic Achievement in Adolescents of Color

“…Given that a growing awareness of racism is part of normative development (Garcia Coll et al, ), other scholars have investigated interventions for actively disrupting stereotype threat (e.g., Pennington, Heim, Levy, & Larkin, ; Taylor & Walton, ). A number of these studies have found that encouraging adolescents to either access an alternative, non‐stereotyped identity or affirm their identity in order to restore a positive self‐image can help mitigate the impact of stereotype threat (Croizet, Désert, Dutrévis, & Leyens, ; Taylor & Walton, ).…”

Negative Aging Stereotypes Disrupt both the Selection and Execution of Strategies in Older Adults

“…For example, they are larger in young-older adults, aged 60–70 years, than in old-older adults, age 70+ years, and in more highly than less highly educated older adults [10]. A meta-analysis [2, 3] also revealed that domain identification, manipulation types of stereotype threat, and performance domain are important moderators. Aged-based stereotype threat effects are indeed stronger when domains are highly valued, when stereotype-based rather than fact-based manipulations are used, and when cognitive/memory rather than motor/skill performance are assessed.…”

Stereotype Threat and Educational Tracking: A Field Experiment in Chinese Vocational High Schools

“…1 Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA 2 Henan University, Henan, China studies to isolate how negative stereotypes about race, gender, and class interfere with performance (for a review of these studies, see Walton and Cohen 2003;Pennington et al 2016). Investigating stereotype threat in educational tracks helps establish whether stereotype threat operates only for certain kinds of stereotypes (such as those for race, gender, and class) and, if so, why.…”

“…These reminders lead to negative performance via several mechanisms (Pennington et al 2016;Schmader and Johns 2003), such as depleting working memory (Schmader, Johns, and Forbes 2008) or increasing mental load (Croizet et al 2004). For instance, Asian American women tend to do worse in mathematics when their gender identity is primed but not when their Asian identity is primed (Shih, Pittinsky, and Ambady 1999).…”