Michel Désert

Stereotype Threat: Are Lower Status and History of Stigmatization Preconditions of Stereotype Threat?

This research extended stereotype-threat effects outside of the academic domain and to a nonstigmatized group. Female and male students performed three decision tasks: lexical, valence, and affective processing. Half of the participants were told that, in general, men are poorer performers than are women in affective processing tasks. No differences between conditions were observed for the lexical and valence tasks. By contrast, for the affective task, threatened men made significantly more errors than did participants in the other three conditions. More precisely, threatened men tended to accept as affective words that were not affective. This latter result suggests that threatened men decreased their threshold for affectivity “to prove” the inapplicability of the stereotype to themselves. Moreover, stereotype endorsement did not mediate the results. Identification with the affective domain, on the other hand, moderated the effect of stereotype threat. Discussion considers the consequences of these findings for everyday interactions.

Culture, gender, and the self: Variations and impact of social comparison processes

Psychological differences between women and men, far from being invariant as a biological explanation would suggest, fluctuate in magnitude across cultures. Moreover, contrary to the implications of some theoretical perspectives, gender differences in personality, values, and emotions are not smaller, but larger, in American and European cultures, in which greater progress has been made toward gender equality. This research on gender differences in self-construals involving 950 participants from 5 nations/cultures (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, and Malaysia) illustrates how variations in social comparison processes across cultures can explain why gender differences are stronger in Western cultures. Gender differences in the self are a product of self-stereotyping, which occurs when between-gender social comparisons are made. These social comparisons are more likely, and exert a greater impact, in Western nations. Both correlational and experimental evidence supports this explanation.

Involvement of short-term memory in complex mental calculation

The aim of this study was to examine the involvement of the short-term memory system in complex mental addition by manipulating the phonological and visual similarity of two numbers to be added. The phonological similarity of the problems appeared to have a major effect on both speed and accuracy. However, the manipulation of visual similarity failed to have any measurable impact. This suggests that the phonological loop, rather than the visual-spatial sketch pad, would be used preferably for temporary storage of addends. An interpretation of these results in terms of the nature of the internal code underlying this task is discussed.

So young and already victims of stereotype threat: Socio-economic status and performance of 6 to 9 years old children on Raven’s progressive matrices

The aim of this study was to verify whether children from low socio-economic status (SES) are victims of stereotype threat. Children in first grade (6 to 7 years old) and third grade (8 to 9 years old) performed Raven’s progressive matrices, an intellectual ability test commonly used by psychologists. The test was presented either with the (evaluative) instructions recommended by Raven et al. (1998) or with non evaluative instructions. Children’s SES and beliefs concerning differences of abilities at school as a function of SES were also assessed. The results indicated that, as early as first grade, participants believed that children from high SES are better at school than children from low SES. Furthermore, low SES participants’ performance on the Raven’s matrices was lower in the evaluative condition than in the non evaluative condition. The experimental instructions did not affect high SES participants’ performance. The discussion explores implications of these results in the use of standardized tests to assess the intellectual abilities of low SES children.RésuméCette étude a pour but de vérifier si des enfants issues de milieux défavorisés sont susceptibles d’être victimes de la menace du stéréotype dès l’école primaire. La performance d’élèves de CP (âgés de 6 à 7 ans) et de CE2 (âgés de 8 à 9 ans) à un test d’intelligence fréquemment utilisé par les psychologues, les matrices de Raven, a été mesurée. Le test a été présenté soit avec les consignes évaluatives standard préconisées par les concepteurs du test, soit avec des consignes non évaluatives. Le niveau socio-économique des enfants était évalué ainsi que leur croyance en l’existence d’une différence d’aptitudes scolaires en fonction du niveau socio-économique. Les résultats montrent que, dès le CP, les élèves croient en la supériorité scolaire des enfants favorisés par rapport aux enfants défavorisés. De plus, la performance de ces derniers aux matrices de Raven était plus faible en condition évaluative qu’en condition non-évaluative. La performance des élèves de haut statut socio-économique n’était pas modifiée par le type de consignes utilisées. Les implications de ces résultats pour l’évaluation et l’orientation d’enfants de bas statut socio-économique à l’aide de tests standardisés supposés insensibles aux effets de culture seront discutées.

Why do students holding non-prestigious high school degrees underachieve at the university?

Students holding less prestigious technological baccalaureates underachieve in college compared to those who have a general baccalaureate. Because they are also suspected of having lower intellectual ability, the stereotype threat hypothesis (Steele, 1997) was tested as a possible explanation for this difference. It was expected that activation of stereotype threat would disrupt their performance, affect their state self-esteem and undermine their academic motivation. The study varied stereotype threat by manipulating the instructions accompanying the test that each participant completed. The test was described either as diagnostic or as non- diagnostic of intellectual ability. As predicted, students holding technological baccalaureates performed worse, reported lower state self-esteem and lower motivation towards education when the test was presented as ability-diagnostic. No such effect was observed for students holding a more prestigious general baccalaureate.

Social Comparison and Social Psychology: Social comparisons across cultures I: Gender stereotypes in high and low power distance cultures

Very different social roles are generally assigned to women and men (Eagly, 1987). These roles are translated into stereotypical beliefs about typically female attributes and typically male attributes (Williams and Best, 1986, 1990). Women, for instance, are supposed to be sweet and nurturing. These characteristics are even considered desirable for them. By contrast, men are viewed as cold, domineering, and egotistic. These stereotypes overlap with self-perceptions of women and men (Bem, 1974), and they are not restricted to western countries. Similar data about the self-perceptions of female and male dimensions have been obtained from both men and women in Germany, Japan, Italy, France, Spain, etc. (Lenney, 1991; Lorenzi-Cioldi, 1993; Moya, 1993). Despite some disparities, men from all these cultures see themselves as having more male attributes than do women and the reverse is true for women concerning female attributes. Such a consensus led some authors (Bakan, 1966; Gabriel and Gardner, 1999) to think that it reflects sexual differences that are genetically determined. Costa, Terracciano, and McCrae (2001), however, made an intriguing finding. In their cross-cultural research based on the five-factor model of personality, they found that differences in personality traits between men and women were greater in western countries than in African and Asian ones. First, these data do not conform to the genetic explanation for the differences between genders.

L’Entretien Cognitif reste-t-il efficace pour aider de très jeunes enfants issus de milieux défavorisés à témoigner d’un événement visuel ?

Resume L’objectif principal de cette etude etait d’etudier l’efficacite de l’entretien cognitif en fonction de l’origine sociale d’enfants d’âge prescolaire. Soixante-quinze enfants âges de 5 a 6 ans, issus de milieux defavorises ou favorises, assistaient a un spectacle de magie. Trois a quatre jours plus tard, ils etaient entendus a l’aide d’un entretien standard ou d’un entretien cognitif. Les resultats montrent que les enfants issus de milieux defavorises produisent globalement plus d’informations incorrectes que les enfants issus de milieux plus favorises. Par ailleurs, ils mettent en evidence un effet benefique de l’entretien cognitif pour recueillir plus d’informations correctes, et ce, quelle que soit l’origine sociale de l’enfant. Ce benefice est particulierement observe au cours du rappel libre. Ces resultats sont discutes au niveau de leurs implications theoriques et pratiques.

Perspective Effects on Recall in a Testimony Paradigm

Abstract The two present studies examined the influence of perspective instructions given during encoding and retrieval on the recall of a visual event. Participants viewed slides or a film depicting a day in the life of a man. Before viewing the to-be-remembered event, they were instructed to adopt the perspective of an alcoholic vs. an unemployed man vs. no perspective (Experiment 1), or of an unemployed man vs. no perspective (Experiment 2). Participants in the first study were interviewed twice, with the second recall being preceded by either a change perspective instruction or without any specific instruction. In the second study, participants were interviewed using either a cognitive interview (CI) or a CI without the change perspective instruction. Results showed that adopting a perspective during encoding impaired recall performance and failed to demonstrate a significant benefit of the change perspective instruction. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.