| “Stereotype Threat”—the concern or preoccupation with fulfilling a negative stereotype about one's group—has been shown to undermine the standardized test performance and school outcomes of stereotyped group members. Recent research also has shown that vulnerability to stereotype threat can be abated by encouraging students to adopt an incremental view of intelligence. The current research investigated the emergence of stereotype threat for young children and the role that children's prior implicit theories of intelligence play in their vulnerability to stereotype threat. In the first study, elementary students from the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades were given a survey measuring their awareness of, endorsement of, and vulnerability to the gender stereotype that girls' mathematics capabilities are inferior to boys'. Results indicated that boys were significantly more likely to report awareness and endorsement of the gender stereotype. Sixth grade girls, however, were more likely to report concern about fulfilling the stereotype. In study 2, stereotype threat was experimentally manipulated for fourth, fifth, and sixth grade boys and girls, and their performance on a mathematics test and their willingness to pursue challenging mathematics tasks were measured. As predicted, under stereotype threat conditions, sixth-grade girls performed worse than boys; but under non-threat conditions, girls outperformed boys. In addition, results suggest that girls' unwillingness to work on difficult mathematics problems under stereotype threat conditions develops over time. Furthermore, whereas past studies have documented the benefits of encouraging an incremental view of intelligence, the current study found that girls' prior malleability beliefs did not protect them from stereotype threat. The results of this study have important implications for understanding the development of stereotype threat and its relation to implicit theories of intelligence. |
