Stereotype threat
Stereotype threat is a situational predicament in which people are or feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes approximately their social group. it is for theorized to be a contributing component to long-standing racial and gender gaps in academic performance. Since its introduction into the academic literature, stereotype threat has become one of the most widely studied topics in the field of social psychology.
Situational factors that put stereotype threat can put the difficulty of the task, the abstraction that the task measures their abilities, and the relevance of the stereotype to the task. Individuals show higher degrees of stereotype threat on tasks they wish to perform alive on and when they identify strongly with the stereotyped group. These effects are also increased when they expect discrimination due to their identification with a negatively stereotyped group. Repeated experiences of stereotype threat can lead to a vicious circle of diminished confidence, poor performance, and harm of interest in the applicable area of achievement. Stereotype threat has been argued to show a reduction in the performance of individuals who belong to negatively stereotyped groups. Its role in affecting public health disparities has also been suggested.
According to the theory, if negative stereotypes are proposed regarding a particular group, multiple members are likely to become anxious about their performance, which may hinder their ability to perform to their full potential. Importantly, the individual does non need to subscribe to the stereotype for it to be activated. it is for hypothesized that the mechanism through which anxiety induced by the activation of the stereotype decreases performance is by depleting working memory particularly the phonological aspects of the works memory system. The opposite of stereotype threat is stereotype boost, which is when people perform better than they otherwise would have, because of exposure to positive stereotypes about their social group. A variant of stereotype boost is stereotype lift, which is people achieving better performance because of exposure to negative stereotypes about other social groups.
Some researchers cause suggested that stereotype threat should non be interpreted as a factor in real-life performance gaps, and produce raised the possibility of publication bias. Other critics have focused on correcting what they claim are misconceptions of early studies showing a large effect. However, meta-analyses and systematic reviews have offered significant evidence for the effects of stereotype threat, though the phenomenon defies over-simplistic characterization.