'A threat on the Net': Stereotype threat in avatar-represented online groups

This dissertation investigates how psychological threats associated with social categories such as gender and race play out in computer-mediated group settings. In particular, the current work focuses on stereotype threat, which is a type of identity-associated threat that impairs performance and motivation of people whose group identity is negatively stereotyped in a domain. Drawing on the literature on social identity dynamics in computer-mediated communication, on psychological effects of avatars, and on stereotype threat research, three experiments examined: (1) how avatar-based representation of social categories affects stereotype threat responses in computer-mediated group settings, and (2) whether and how contexts of coaction (competitive and cooperative) moderate the effects.;In Study 1 (N = 84), female students---the potential target of stereotype threat in the domain of mathematics---took a math test with two ostensible coactors in computer-mediated group settings, in which the gender of the avatars ostensibly corresponded to avatar users' offline gender identity. The results indicated that participants showed threat-related responses to a greater extent when they were in a numerical minority status as opposed to a non-minority status in an avatar-represented group, but only in the context of competitive coaction. The results also revealed that participants, when situated in the female-minority group, showed threat-related responses to a lesser extent when engaging in cooperation as opposed to competition.;Study 2 (N = 48), extending Study 1 by examining a different target group (African-American students) and a different stereotype-relevant domain (verbal ability task: anagrams), investigated whether African Americans would experience stereotype threat to a lesser extent in a race-nonsalient avatar group (in which silhouette-image avatars "cloaked" race-related cues) than in a race-salient avatar group (in which African-American participants were a numerical minority outnumbered by Caucasians, as indicated by the race of the avatars). The results showed that the race-nonsalient environment based on identity-cloaking avatars did not significantly reduce threat-related responses for African Americans. In addition, the results demonstrated that the coaction contexts moderated the effects of identity salience on threat-related responses: Participants in the race-salient group performed better and gave higher ratings of their problem-solving speed (compared with that of their coactors) in cooperative coaction as opposed to competitive coaction.;Study 3 (N = 120) examined whether arbitrary gender representation via avatars would induce "virtual" stereotype threat, triggering stereotype threat responses regardless of avatar users' offline gender identity, and whether and how contexts of coaction would moderate the effects of arbitrary gender representations. The results showed that regardless of participants' actual gender, the gender of the avatar used by participants (and the condition of being outnumbered by the opposite gendered avatars) induced stereotype threat for the "virtual females": The female-avatar-minority participants performed significantly worse on mental arithmetic problems and persisted on an extremely challenging item to a lesser extent than did the male-avatar-minority participants. Furthermore, the performance results revealed virtual stereotype lift: The male-avatar-minority participants showed a significant performance boost in competitive coaction, outperforming all the other groups of participants.;Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates that online groups in which avatars embody social categories are not immune to stereotypes and stereotype-associated threats that pervade the offline world, and that situational/contextual factors (such as numerical representation/identity salience and contexts of coaction) play a key role in aggravating or alleviating stereotype threat, exerting critical influence on performance- and motivation-related outcomes.