Paul H. White

An Examination of Implicitly Activated, Explicitly Activated, and Nullified Stereotypes on Mathematical Performance: It's Not Just a Woman's Issue.

This study was designed to examine the different ways that stereotypes might become activated in testing situations and the effects this activation has on task performance. In Experiment 1, women undergraduates exposed to an explicitly activated stereotype (i.e., told men outperform women in mathematics) performed worse than women exposed to a nullified stereotype (i.e., told men and women perform at the same level in mathematics). The stereotype threat also was activated implicitly under “normal” conditions (i.e., just given the test with nothing else stated) such that performance in this condition was at the same (low) level as the explicitly activated threat. In Experiment 2, the results were replicated with White male undergraduates using the stereotype that “Asians are better than Whites” in mathematics. In addition, in a small field survey we found that this belief about ethnicity did occur spontaneously for White men in college calculus courses. Taken together, the results of these studies suggest that even under normal circumstances, math test situations may lead to nonoptimal performance for both stigmatized (women) and traditionally nonstigmatized (White men) group members. Implications for threat nullification techniques are discussed.

The Stereotyped Task Engagement Process: The Role of Interest and Achievement Motivation

Competence-based stereotypes can negatively affect womens performance in math and science (referred to as stereotype threat), presumably leading to lower motivation. The authors examined the effects of stereotype threat on interest, a motivational path not necessarily mediated by performance. They predicted that working on a computer science task in the context of math-gender stereotypes would negatively affect undergraduate womens task interest, particularly for those higher in achievement motivation who were hypothesized to hold performance-avoidance goals in response to the threat. Compared with when the stereotype was nullified, while under stereotype threat an assigned performance-avoidance (vs. -approach) goal was associated with lower interest for women higher in achievement motivation (Study 1), and women higher (vs. lower) in achievement motivation were more likely to spontaneously adopt performance-avoidance goals (Study 2). The motivational influence of performance-avoidance goals under stereotype threat was primarily mediated by task absorption (Study 3). Implications for the stereotyped task engagement process (Smith, 2004) are discussed.

Development of the Domain Identification Measure: A Tool for Investigating Stereotype Threat Effects

The present study examined the psychometric properties of an individual difference measure of identification within the mathematics and English domains (which may be substituted for any domain of interest to the researcher). Factor analytic results substantiated the presence of English and Mathematics subscales, which yielded scores that were internally consistent and stable over time. Predicted math test performance differences and gender differences were found as a function of identification, providing support for the reliability and validity of scores on the scale. Use of the scale may aid in the understanding of test performance differences at both the global and individual level, especially for individuals susceptible to stereotype threat.

Race of source effects in the elaboration likelihood model.

In a series of experiments, we investigated the effect of race of source on persuasive communications in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (R.E. Petty & J.T. Cacioppo, 1981, 1986). In Experiment 1, we found no evidence that White participants responded to a Black source as a simple negative cue. Experiment 2 suggested the possibility that exposure to a Black source led to low-involvement message processing. In Experiments 3 and 4, a distraction paradigm was used to test this possibility, and it was found that participants under low involvement were highly motivated to process a message presented by a Black source. In Experiment 5, we found that attitudes toward the sources ethnic group, rather than violations of expectancies, accounted for this processing effect. Taken together, the results of these experiments are consistent with S.L. Gaertner and J.F. Dovidios (1986) theory of aversive racism, which suggests that Whites, because of a combination of egalitarian values and underlying negative racial attitudes, are very concerned about not appearing unfavorable toward Blacks, leading them to be highly motivated to process messages presented by a source from this group.

Stigmatized sources and persuasion : Prejudice as a determinant of argument scrutiny

Two experiments examined the viability of several explanations for why majority group individuals process persuasive messages from stigmatized sources more than those from nonstigmatized sources. In each study, majority group participants who either were high or low in prejudice or were high or low in ambivalence toward a stigmatized sources group were exposed to a persuasive communication attributed to a stigmatized (Black, Experiment 1; homosexual, Experiment 2) or nonstigmatized (White, Experiment 1; heterosexual, Experiment 2) source. In both studies, source stigmatization increased message scrutiny only among those who were low in prejudice toward the stigmatized group. This finding is most consistent with the view that people scrutinize messages from stigmatized sources in order to guard against possibly unfair reactions by themselves or others.

Investigating a Measure of Computer Technology Domain Identification: A Tool for Understanding Gender Differences and Stereotypes

The aim of this project is to further examine the construct of domain identification (i.e., a person’s positive phenomenological experiences with, and perceived self-relevance of, a domain), specifically as it applies to computer technology (CT). The authors model a knownmeasure of math identification to first develop a measure ofCTidentification. The authors then test whether the new CT identification measure could uniquely explain the relationship between individuals’ gender and CT career pursuit, above and beyond math identification. Finally, the authors examine the relationships between men’s and women’s CT domain identification, their perceptions of the CT field, and their interpersonal orientation to determine whether existing relationships among these variables might explain individuals’ willingness to consider a number of CT-and non-CT-related fields.

The Role of Internal and External Sources of Evaluation in Motivating Task Performance

White, Kjelgaard, and Harkins (1995) found that participants asked to strive to achieve a stringent criterion outperformed participants asked to do their best (a goal-setting effect). However, the goal-setting effect occurred only when participants were subject to experimenter evaluation. Participants not subject to experimenter evaluation performed no better than experimenter evaluation participants who were asked to do their best. In the current research, Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that this do-your-best level of performance results from the no-experimenter evaluation participants use of the stringent criterion as a yardstick against which they can compare their performance. Although these experiments show that the potential for self-evaluation can motivate performance, Experiment 3 shows that self-evaluation does not contribute to the goal-setting effect; the potential for experimenter evaluation alone is responsible for this effect. Taken together, these findings advance our understanding of the interplay between internal and external sources of evaluation in motivating task performance.

Stigmatized Targets and Evaluation: Prejudice as a Determinant of Attribute Scrutiny and Polarization

The authors provide evidence for a new mechanism for the more polarized evaluations of stigmatized than nonstigmatized target individuals that often follow positive versus negative target descriptions. The current research suggests that polarization can occur because low-prejudiced perceivers think more about information describing stigmatized than nonstigmatized targets (i.e., have polarized thoughts). Mediational path analyses revealed that polarized thoughts fully accounted for the impact of prejudice on evaluative polarization. These findings are most consistent with the watchdog hypothesis that people scrutinize information describing stigmatized targets in order to guard against possibly unfair reactions by themselves or others.