ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the perhaps obvious need to better understand the processes that can hamper a group’s school performance and on what can be done to improve that performance. It shows how societal stereotypes about groups can influence the intellectual functioning and identity development of individual group members. Called stereotype threat, it is a situational threat—a threat in the air—that, in general form, can affect the members of any group about whom a negative stereotype exists. Stereotype threat refers to the strictly situational threat of negative stereotype, the threat that does not depend on cuing an internalized anxiety or expectancy. At base, the stereotype threat that women experience in math-performance settings derives from a negative stereotype about their math ability that is disseminated throughout society. Steven Spencer, Diane Quinn, and the author first tested the effect of stereotype threat on intellectual performance by testing its effect on the standardized math test performance of women who were strong in math.
