William Hall

Stereotype threat in intergroup relations.

In 1994, a controversial book hit newsstands. Its claim was that the consistent gap in intelligent quotient (IQ) scores between Black and White students was the result of genetic differences between the races. This proposition that one class of people is intellectually inferior to another was not a new claim. In the 1800s, Sir Francis Galton was one of the early psychologists to study intelligence and held the hypothesis that members of the British upper crust were, by birth, intellectually superior to those on lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. In the early 20th century, racial differences in scores on intelligence tests were used to support efforts to restrict immigration from certain regions of the world. But the civil rights movement of the 1960s marked a growing emphasis on ensuring equal opportunity, which called into question these earlier notions of racial differences in intelligence. When Herrnstein and Murray published The Bell Curve in 1994, their hypothesis that race differences in test scores could be traced to genetic factors was reminiscent of what many hoped was a bygone era. At the same time that The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) was raising a firestorm of controversy, two scientists at Stanford University were carrying out research that would yield empirical support for a very different explanation of the race gap in intellectual performance. Those two researchers, Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson, published their work in 1995 showing that performance differences between groups are more about culture than genetics. Their ground-breaking theory claimed that the mere knowledge that one might be targeted by negative stereotypes (negative beliefs and expectations about one’s group) can create a psychological burden that prevents ethnic minority students from performing up to their potential on tests of intellectual ability. They called this phenomenon stereotype threat. Steele and Aronson further argued that it is the situation itself that brings these stereotypes to mind. By extension, if the situation can be altered to remove anything that could cue racial stereotypes, the racial gap on achievement tests should be reduced. Steele and Aronson (1995) tested this hypothesis with a now-classic set of experiments. When a series of verbal problems was described as a diagnostic test of intelligence, African American college students underperformed relative to their European American counterparts, consistent with the often-observed gap in performance on achievement tests. But when the other half of the sample completed the same problems described only as a laboratory exercise, African American students performed as well as their White peers after controlling for prior test scores (Steele & Aronson, 1995). In another study, simply having Black students indicate their race on a demographic sheet before beginning a test was enough to produce lower scores than when race was not salient (see Figure 17.1). Although these initial studies offered no conclusive evidence of the psychological processes underlying this performance

Engineering Exchanges Daily Social Identity Threat Predicts Burnout Among Female Engineers

Efforts to promote women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) require a clearer understanding of the experience of social identity threat outside academic contexts. Although social identity threat has been widely studied among students, very little research has examined how the phenomenon occurs naturalistically among working professionals in ways that could undermine productivity and well-being. The present research employed daily diary methodology to examine conversations with colleagues as triggers of social identity threat among a sample of 44 male and 52 female working engineers. Results of multilevel modeling revealed that (1) women (but not men) reported greater daily experiences of social identity threat on days when their conversations with male (but not female) colleagues cued feelings of incompetence and a lack of acceptance, and (2) these daily fluctuations of social identity threat predicted daily levels of mental exhaustion and psychological burnout. The implications for social identity threat in working professionals are discussed.

Stereotype Threat in School and at Work: Putting Science Into Practice

In any diverse society, public policy can help to provide equal access to opportunities for achieving one’s potential in school and work. However, even as policies in the United States have sought to eradicate institutionalized discrimination on the basis of race or sex, women and minorities continue to underperform academically and are systematically underrepresented in the highest earning occupations. Social psychological research suggests that negative stereotypes about women and minorities can create subtle barriers to success through stereotype threat. This occurs when individuals become concerned that they might confirm a negative stereotype about their group. This article outlines current research on the processes that underlie stereotype threat and how this work informs effective policies to reduce its effects. Using an evidence-based analysis, we review the risks and the benefits of four policies to narrow gender and racial gaps in academic and workplace performance: affirmative action, diversity training, creating identity-safe environments, and teaching coping strategies. Policies informed by social psychological theory and research can help recover the lost human potential due to stereotype threat without disadvantaging or cuing backlash among the majority.

L'eggo My Ego: Reducing the Gender Gap in Math by Unlinking the Self from Performance

Stereotype threat can vary in source, with targets being threatened at the individual and/or group level. This study specifically examined the role of self-reputational threat in womens underperformance in mathematics. A pilot study showed that women report concerns about experiencing self-reputational threat that are distinct from group threat in the domain of mathematics. In the main study, we manipulated whether performance was linked to the self by asking both men and women to complete a math test using either their real name or a fictitious name. Women who used a fictitious name, and thus had their self unlinked from the math test, showed significantly higher math performance and reported less self-threat and distraction, relative to those who used their real names. Men were unaffected by the manipulation. These findings suggest that womens impaired math performance is often due to the threat of confirming a negative stereotype as being true of the self. The implications for understanding the different types of threats faced by stereotyped groups, particularly among women in math settings, are discussed.

Navigating stormy waters in times of fiscal uncertainty: Mitigating the challenges

New approaches to resource allocation are providing healthcare managers with ways to meet budget pressures while maximizing benefit to patients and populations. But putting these approaches in place often involves significant organizational change to which some degree of resistance must be expected. The authors have seen seven common objections raised time and again. Here, we offer our best advice on how healthcare leaders can anticipate and respond proactively to these challenges.

Should I Stay or Should I Go

Gender stereotypes that associate science and technology to men more than women create subtle barriers to women’s advancement in these fields. But how do stereotypic associations, when internalized by women, relate to their own sense of fit and organizational commitment? Our research is the first to demonstrate that, among working engineers, women’s own gender stereotypic implicit associations predict lower organizational commitment. In a sample of 263 engineers (145 women), women (but not men) who implicitly associated engineering with men more than women were less committed to their organization. This relationship was mediated by lower self-efficacy and value fit, and not explained by other personality, demographic, or organizational factors. We discuss how internalized cultural biases can constrain women’s experiences in STEM.

Decoding the Dynamics of Social Identity Threat in the Workplace: A Within-Person Analysis of Women’s and Men’s Interactions in STEM

The present research examined whether women’s daily experience of social identity threat in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) settings is triggered by a lack of acceptance during workplace conversations with male colleagues that then predicts daily experiences of burnout. To test these hypotheses, participants from two samples (N = 389) rated their daily interactions with colleagues across 2 weeks. Results revealed that (1) women reported greater daily experiences of social identity threat on days when their work conversations with men cued a lack of acceptance, (2) these daily fluctuations of social identity threat predicted feelings of mental burnout, and (3) these effects were not found among men or for nonwork-relevant conversations. Additional analyses showed that these results were not driven by highly hostile workplace conversations between men and women, nor were they accounted for by individual differences in women’s sensitivity to perceiving gender bias, status differences, or by women being explicitly undermined by colleagues.

Climate control: The relationship between social identity threat and cues to an identity-safe culture.

Social identity threat has been proposed as a key contributor to the underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), but little research has sought to pinpoint naturally occurring contextual predictors of identity threat for women already training or working in STEM. The focus of the present research was to examine how cues to an identity-safe culture predict more or less positive interactions between men and women in STEM in ways that may trigger or minimize women’s daily experience of social identity threat. Specifically, we examined the role of inclusive organizational policies and/or greater female representation as 2 identity safety cues. In 2 daily diary studies of working engineers’ experiences, and in an experiment with undergraduate engineering students, we tested a model whereby cues to identity safety predict lower social identity threat for women in STEM, as mediated by having (or expecting to have) more positive interactions with male (but not female) colleagues. Results across each study and an internal meta-analysis of overall effects revealed that female engineers’ actual and anticipated daily experience of social identity threat was lower in organizations perceived to have more gender-inclusive policies (but was not consistently predicted by gender representation). The link between gender-inclusive policies and lower social identity threat was mediated by women having (or expecting to have) more positive conversations with male (and not female) colleagues, and was only found for women and not men. The implications for reducing social identity threat in naturalistic settings are discussed.