Stereotype threat and its effect on women in mathematical tasks

We live in a society that tends to classify people in groups, and attribute a defined set of characteristics to them. This phenomenon is called stereotyping and it is an everyday habit for many people. Many of us do it on a regular basis, unintentionally most of the time, without putting into consideration its consequences, because we think it is harmless. But how can it not be harmless when most of the classifications and generalizations we make about these people are negative and can cause harmful effects on them? And what happens to these individuals?

Well obviously these individuals find this very disturbing because they experience an apprehension of being treated unfairly. Let’s take for example women. The most prominent stereotype is the way women are seen as incapable of competing with men in mathematical tasks. Living in a society that puts them in this category, women often times, despite their fear of confirming this stereotype (stereotype threat), feel stereotyped on tasks of mathematics when being compared to males. This can be proven by this field study in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, which investigated whether introducing a stereotype to women would inhibit their mathematical performance compared to a group of women who were not faced with the stereotype. Those women who took the test that was described as free of gender differences did better than their female and male counterparts.

Here are some excerpts taken from the study:

"This research has always carried the positive message that stereotype threat could be overcome-and women's test performance boosted-by small changes in the way tests were presented," says Aronson, a professor of psychology at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

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One group of students in the study received the test under normal testing conditions; that is, they were informed that the test was designed to measure their math abilities and knowledge. Among these students, the women performed just as well as the men, reflecting the fact that these were high-performing women. The surprise came from the second group of students in the class, who took the test under the same instructions but who were additionally informed that the test was free of gender bias. The researchers found that the women in the no-gender-differences group outperformed all the other test-takers in this high-level math class, even the men.

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"We now have really compelling evidence," says, Aronson, "that women at the very highest levels of math ability are held back by cultural images that portray their math abilities as inferior to men's.

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