The Affects Of Task Difficulty And Domain Identificatioin On Performance In Positive Stereotype Condition

Stereotype is the recognition of people's knowledge, notion and participation for some social group. It has positive stereotype and negative stereotype, which affect behavior also has two different outcomes:stereotype threat and stereotype boost. A large body of work now testifies to the reliability and generalizability of stereotype threat effects on performance, refer to mechanisms of stereotype threat, affect factors and attempting to reduce its overall effect. The research of positive stereotype has focus on two aspects:one is the signification of stereotype boost, for example stereotype activation, different affect of stereotype objection on stereotype targets or nontargets, difficulty of task. Anther is the controversy of stereotype's effects on performance:stereotype boost or chocking under pressure. Some research has suggested that positive stereotypes may boost performance for dominant group members, because it can active the positive self conception. Another line of research has suggested that individuals will "choke under pressure" in the face of a positive stereotype.The influence of positive stereotypes on performance has yielded inconsistent results. In their meta-analysis of stereotype threat studies, Walton and Cohen (2003) found that the conditions that the activation of positive stereotype can encourage downward social comparisons with denigrated outgroup. By comparing themselves with a socially devalued group, people may experience an evaluation on self-efficacy or sense of personal worth, which may, in turn, improve performance. Particularly for difficult tests where one must persist in the face of frustration, the extra boost in feelings of efficacy and worth may be important to maintaining confidence and motivation. Another line of research has suggested that individuals will "choke under pressure" in the face of a positive stereotype. When individuals are aware that others hold high expectations for their performance, they may experience increases in performance pressure. We posit that they investigate different affect factors and active different variance lead to contrary outcomes. Shih et al. (2002) distinguished between subtle and blatant stereotype activation and found that for individuals who are targets of stereotypes, subtle stereotype activation can lead to better performance. Task difficult also play significant role on performance in the condition of stereotype activation. Researchers have found evidence that women under stereotype threat performed better on an easy threat-irrelevant task, but worse on a difficult threat-irrelevant task than women not under threat.Domain identification is an important variance which researchers investigate the relationship of stereotype and performance. Cadinu and Hess found that target with the higher involvement and stereotype identification the more be suspect to stereotype threat. For example in women highly identified with math, the presence of a negative stereotype in evaluative situations (public or private) detrimentally affects their math performance, as the same to the memory of older in memory, In this research, we posit that domain identification, an individual difference variable, maybe another important moderator. We suggest that when both the nature of the stereotype and domain identification are taken into account, the inconsistencies found in previous research may be further reconciled.Contrary to the controversy of positive Stereotypes for how impact on performance, boost or chocking under pressure, this paper attempts to full investigate the domain identification, stereotype activation and task difficulty on the performance of targets. Experiment 1 and 2 adopt different gender to investigate the influence of positive stereotypes on targets' math and verbal performance. The experiment adopt mixed design: task difficulty (difficult vs easy)×stereotype activation (no prime vs subtle prime vs blatant prime)×domain identification (high vs low). The result show that: (1) high domain identification individual is significantly better than low domain identification individual in both math and verbal performance. (2) high domain identification individual is more susceptible to the impact of stereotype activation manner, but is different to men and women. The men's performance from high to low is in no prime condition, subtle prime condition, blatant prime condition, the women's performance in blatant prime condition is significant better than performance in no prime condition. (3) the men's performance is no significant difference in simple task, but in difficult task has. (4) in stereotype blatant condition, men's domain identification have significant difference in difficult task, but in simple task. (5) Activation manner and task difficulty have no significant affect on performance of low domain identification.This study has important theoretical and practical value. In theory, introducing a new variable for the controversy of positive stereotype affect on the performance, further deepening the understanding of positive stereotype on performance. In practice, for the differentiated use of stereotype boost performance provided strong guidance.