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Starting with Steele and Aronson (1995), research documents the performance decrements resulting from the activation of a negative task-relevant stereotype. I suggest that negative stereotypes can generate better performance, as they produce a prevention focus (Higgins, 2000; Seibt & Förster, 2004), because a prevention focus leads to greater cognitive flexibility in a task where points are lost (Maddox, Markman, & Baldwin, 2006). My prior work, Experiments 1 and 2, done in collaboration with Arthur B. Markman, W. Todd Maddox, and Grant C. Baldwin, used a category learning task that requires the participant test different explicit rules to correctly categorize stimuli. Half of the participants gained points for correct responses while half of the participants lost points for correct responses. We primed a positive or a negative gender stereotype. The negative prime matches the losses environment while the positive prime matches the gains environment. The match states are assumed to increase dopamine release into frontal brain areas leading to increased cognitive flexibility and better task performance whereas the mismatch states should not. Thus, we predict and obtain a 3-way interaction between Stereotype (Positive, Negative), Gender (Male, Female), and Reward structure (Gains, Losses) for accuracy and strategy. Experiments 3 and 4 used a category learning task, which requires the implicit learning system to govern participant responses. This task had an information-integration category structure and involves the striatum (e.g., Maddox & Ashby, 2004). Importantly, cognitive flexibility will hurt performance using this category structure. I therefore predicted that regulatory match states, created by manipulating Stereotype and Reward structure, will produce worse performance than mismatch states. I did not completely reverse the effects described in Experiments 1 and 2 as predicted. I found evidence supporting my predictions using computational models to test for task strategy in Experiment 3 and found results consistent with the flexibility hypothesis in Experiment 4. Importantly, I believe that stereotype threat effects should not be conceptualized as a main effect with negative stereotypes producing worse performance than positive stereotypes, but instead as an interaction between the motivational state of the individual, task environment, and type of task performed.
Over a decade ago, academic psychologists demonstrated that low academic performance by students could be explained by negative stereotypes ascribed to their racial, gender, or cultural groups. For example, researchers have argued that the stereotype that women are bad at math leads women to underperform on math tests relative to men. This monograph describes research studies that were inspired by regulatory fit theory and reviews the literatures on stereotype threat and regulatory fit. The regulatory fit approach is used to explore the benefits of placing individuals in appropriate task environments as a way to remove the influence of the negative stereotype. As such, this monograph challenges the conventional view that it is the negative stereotype that undermines performance. Critically, this approach suggests a method to improve performance of stigmatized groups without initially embarking on the difficult task of changing cultural stereotypes. This reinterpretation of stereotype threat will be of interest to social and cognitive psychologists, educators, graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and anyone else fascinated by the influence of stereotypes on performance.
This study sought to examine how underlying characteristics of multiple social identities could explain why some people are not affected by stereotype threat. Specifically, it proposed that different identities are not only associated with positive or negative stereotypes, but also different regulatory foci. It additionally sought to address a common methodological issue in the literature by including non-targets of stereotype threat as a comparative group. Using a quantitative experimental design, math-identified male (N=104) and female (N=172) university students were randomly assigned to take a difficult math test under circumstances which varied both reward structure and salient identities. For math- identified females, their gender identity was believed to invoke a negative stereotype about female math ability and thus stereotype threat. However, college identity was proposed to be positively stereotyped about ability. When both were made salient, females would suppress their gender identity in order to maintain a good self-concept and would thus be protected from stereotype threat effects. Furthermore, it was predicted females under threat would enter into a prevention regulatory focus and thus perform better under a reward structure which focused on minimizing losses. A major criticism of stereotype threat research is that it fails to differentiate itself enough from stereotype priming. While the two are similarly activated, stereotype threat only affects those for whom the stereotyped identity is relevant. Thus it is important to include non-targets of threat to ensure that the experimental manipulations do not affect them. Males were included in this study because the negative stereotype about female math ability is not relevant. Results indicated that when gender identity was made salient, math-identified females performed worse than a control group. However, when both gender and college identity were made salient, math-identified females performed better than those only reminded of their gender, and equivalent to those in a control group. Reward structure showed no main effect on performance. While the interaction between identity salience and reward structure was marginally significant, more research is needed to determine if there is a true relationship. Males showed no differences across conditions however, which indicates this was a more valid manipulation of threat.
The 21st century has brought with it unparalleled levels of diversity in the classroom and the workforce. It is now common to see in elementary school, high school, and university classrooms, not to mention boardrooms and factory floors, a mixture of ethnicities, races, genders, and religious affiliations. But these changes in academic and economic opportunities have not directly translated into an elimination of group disparities in academic performance, career opportunities, and levels of advancement. Standard explanations for these disparities, which are vehemently debated in the scientific community and popular press, range from the view that women and minorities are genetically endowed with inferior abilities to the view that members of these demographic groups are products of environments that frustrate the development of the skills needed for success. Although these explanations differ along a continuum of nature vs. nurture, they share in common a presumption that a large chunk of our population lacks the potential to achieve academic and career success.In contrast to intractable factors like biology or upbringing, the research summarized in this book suggests that factors in one's immediate situation play a critical yet underappreciated role in temporarily suppressing the intellectual performance of women and minorities, creating an illusion of group differences in ability. Research conducted over the course of the last fifteen years suggests the mere existence of cultural stereotypes that assert the intellectual inferiority of these groups creates a threatening intellectual environment for stigmatized individuals - a climate where anything they say or do is interpreted through the lens of low expectations. This stereotype threat can ultimately interfere with intellectual functioning and academic engagement, setting the stage for later differences in educational attainment, career choice, and job advancement.
Over the last decade, the field of socio-emotional development and aging has rapidly expanded, with many new theories and empirical findings emerging. This trend is consistent with the broader movement in psychology to consider social, motivational, and emotional influences on cognition and behavior. The Oxford Handbook of Emotion, Social Cognition, and Problem Solving in Adulthood provides the first overview of a new field of adult development that has emerged out of conceptualizations and research at the intersections between socioemotional development, social cognition, emotion, coping, and everyday problem solving. This field roundly rejects a universal deficit model of aging, highlighting instead the dynamic nature of socio-emotional development and the differentiation of individual trajectories of development as a function of variation in contextual and experiential influences. It emphasizes the need for a cross-level examination (from biology and neuroscience to cognitive and social psychology) of the determinants of emotional and socio-emotional behavior. This volume also serves as a tribute to the late Fredda Blanchard-Fields, whose thinking and empirical research contributed extensively to a life-span developmental view of emotion, problem solving, and social cognition. Its chapters cover multiple aspects of adulthood and aging, presenting developmental perspectives on emotion; antecedents and consequences of emotion in context; everyday problem solving; social cognition; goals and goal-related behaviors; and wisdom. The landmark volume in this new field, The Oxford Handbook of Emotion, Social Cognition, and Problem Solving in Adulthood is an important resource for cognitive, developmental, and social psychologists, as well as researchers and graduate students in the field of aging, emotion studies, and social psychology.
The second edition of the Handbook of Motivation at School presents an integrated compilation of theory and research in the field. With chapters by leading experts, this book covers the major theoretical perspectives in the field as well as their application to instruction, learning, and social adjustment at school. Section I focuses on theoretical perspectives and major constructs, Section II on contextual and social influences on motivation, and Section III on new directions in the field. This new edition will have the same popular organizational structure with theories at the beginning. It will also include new chapters that cover motivation as it relates to identity, culture, test anxiety, mindfulness, neuroscience, parenting, metacognition, and regulatory focus.
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The mental representations of perceptual and cognitive stimuli vary on many dimensions. In addition, because of quantal fluctuations in the stimulus, spontaneous neural activity, and fluctuations in arousal and attentiveness, mental events are characterized by an inherent variability. During the last several years, a number of models and theories have been developed that explicitly assume the appropriate mental representation is both multidimensional and probabilistic. This new approach has the potential to revolutionize the study of perception and cognition in the same way that signal detection theory revolutionized the study of psychophysics. This unique volume is the first to critically survey this important new area of research.