University Girls Mathematical Gender Stereotype Threat Effect

Whether in life or in learning, it was widely believed that women in mathematics performance less well than men, which seriously affected the lives of women in learning and self-confidence and self-esteem, and also challenges the economical development and social harmony. So concerning about the mechanism of female mathematics stereotype threat effect and its factors become very important.Stereotype threat refers to when activating a group of their negative stereotypes, which causes stress and fear so that it leads to reduce the members of the group to complete the task. Negative stereotypes of women in mathematics performance is rigid in women’s social cognition and the stereotypes threat has also a negative impact on women’s learning, work and health. According to the Regulatory Fit Theory, made by Higgins, when adjusting the orientation and it matches the individual’s task information framework, the individual’s performance is better. For example, in the context of stereotype threat, when the activated orientation matches the reward structure of the loss, which will improve the individual’s task performance, so the results get better.Therefore, this study is based on the Regulatory Fit Theory, combines with the Yerkes-Dodson law, discusses the impact of negative stereotypes on girls math scores, and analyzes the role of regulatory fit played in Women’s mathematics effect of stereotype threat; On this basis, this study tries to change the level of the incentive structure and motivate its motivation of different levels, to explore the interaction of regulatory fit and motivation of female mathematics stereotype threat effect, and to analyze when changing the reward structure level, whether the effect of regulatory fit changes or not.The results shown as following:(1)Compared with the control group, negative self-representation stereotype threat is significantly activated.(2) Different levels of motivation is stimulated effectively, high, medium and low motivation among three levels are significantly different.(3) Regulatory Fit and motivation have a remarkable effect on the interaction of female’s mathematics stereotype threat effect.① When low levels of motivation is motivated, whether the regulatory focus and the reward structure match or not, there is no significant difference between threat and control groups in math scores.②When motivating the intermediate level motivation, supposed that the regulatory focus and the reward structure is matched, both the math scores of the threat group and the control group are significantly better than the mismatched one.③When a high level of motivation is motivated, the opposite result appears between the stereotypes threat group and the control group:in the threat group, when regulatory focus and the reward structure is matched, the math score of the former is significantly lower than the one that is mismatched; in the control group, when the regulatory focus and the reward structure is matched, the math scores of the tested one is significantly higher than the result from the mismatched one.