Stereotype threat (ST) research has focused exclusively on how negative group stereotypes reduce performance. The present work examines if pejorative stereotypes about women in math inhibit their ability to learn the mathematical rules and operations necessary to solve math problems. In Experiment 1, women experiencing ST had difficulty encoding math-related information into memory and, therefore, learned fewer mathematical rules and showed poorer math performance than did controls. In Experiment 2, women experiencing ST while learning modular arithmetic (MA) performed more poorly than did controls on easy MA problems; this effect was due to reduced learning of the mathematical operations underlying MA. In Experiment 3, ST reduced women's, but not men's, ability to learn abstract mathematical rules and to transfer these rules to a second, isomorphic task. This work provides the first evidence that negative stereotypes about women in math reduce their level of mathematical learning and demonstrates that reduced learning due to stereotype threat can lead to poorer performance in negatively stereotyped domains.

Stereotype threat (ST) refers to a situation in which a member of a group fears that her or his performance will validate an existing negative performance stereotype, causing a decrease in performance. For example, reminding women of the stereotype "women are bad at math" causes them to perform more poorly on math questions from the SAT and GRE. Performance deficits can be of several types and be produced by several mechanisms. We show that ST prevents perceptual learning, defined in our task as an increasing rate of search for a target Chinese character in a display of such characters. Displays contained two or four characters and half of these contained a target. Search rate increased across a session of training for a control group of women, but not women under ST. Speeding of search is typically explained in terms of learned "popout" (automatic attraction of attention to a target). Did women under ST learn popout but fail to express it? Following training, the women were shown two colored squares and asked to choose the one with the greater color saturation. Superimposed on the squares were task-irrelevant Chinese characters. For women not trained under ST, the presence of a trained target on one square slowed responding, indicating that training had caused the learning of an attention response to targets. Women trained under ST showed no slowing, indicating that they had not learned such an attention response.A cross all cultures that have been examined there is a persistent stereotype held by both men and women that "women are bad at math." This stereotype is consequential: Women's math achievement and performance is lower in cultures where this stereotype is stronger (1). Although there are many reasons why women underperform at math, one important factor that affects not only math performance but also career choices and career achievement is stereotype threat: The mental and behavioral states that accompany the activation of this stereotype in women (2). Most notably, when this stereotype is activated in women's minds, they worry about confirming this pejorative stereotype and their math performance drops (3-5). Similar findings exist for other performance stereotypes held about other populations (5-7). The reasons for the performance drop are not entirely clear. Perhaps some kind of general anxiety causes a general decrement in women's math performance (8). Stereotype threat (ST) has been shown to increase arousal (9), increase negative thoughts (3, 10), decrease cognitive resources (5), and increase the perseverance of incorrect problem-solving strategies (11-13); all of these reactions partially explain performance decrements. Given the varied negative responses to threat, it seems a natural extrapolation to guess that it might inhibit women's ability to learn new information. That theory is the target of the present research.Demonstrating that ST reduces or inhibits learning is important because it broadens the domain of ST and provides a specific unstudied mechanism by which ST impacts performance. ...

Recent stereotype threat research has demonstrated that negative stereotypes about women's math ability can impair their mathematical learning. This experiment extends this research by examining whether presenting "gender fair" information can reduce learning decrements (on a focal and transfer task) and if the timing of this information matters. Women (N = 140) and men (N = 60) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: control, stereotype threat only, stereotype threat removed before learning, and stereotype threat removed after learning. Compared with women in the control condition and women who had stereotype threat removed before learning, learning and transfer were poorer for women in the stereotype threat only condition and women who had stereotype threat removed after learning but before learning assessment. Men's learning and transfer were unaffected by condition. These findings suggest that a manipulation that can reduce performance deficits can also reduce learning decrements if it is presented before learning occurs. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Since the seminal work of Steele and Aronson (1995), social psychologists' knowledge about when and how stereotype threat affects members of negatively stereotyped groups has accumulated rapidly (see Schmader, Johns, & Forbes, 2008;Steele, Spencer, & Aronson, 2002). This research has demonstrated that situations where people's behavior can confirm negative stereotypes about their ingroup's abilities lead to the experience of stereotype threat (Steele, 1997). For example, when women completing math tasks become concerned about confirming the negative stereotype that "women are bad at math," they perform more poorly on math tasks (e.g., Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999); these women have increased arousal (e.g., Ben-Zeev, Fein, & Inzlicht, 2005), decreased executive functioning (e.g., Beilock, Rydell, & McConnell, 2007;Schmader & Johns, 2003), and an increased number of negative thoughts (Cadinu, Maass, Rosabianca, & Kiesner, 2005). Given this research, it is now clear that when negatively stereotyped individuals attempt to execute a previously learned skill, stereotype threat can harm their performance through several different psychological mechanisms (see Schmader & Beilock, in press).Recent work has shown that stereotype threat can also reduce people's ability to learn new information (Mangels, Good, Whiteman, Mansicalco & Dweck, in press; Rydell, Rydell, Shiffrin, Boucher, Van Loo & Rydell, 2010;Taylor & Walton, 2011). For instance, demonstrated that women experiencing stereotype threat have difficulty attending to and storing into memory the mathematical rules and operations being learned. Presumably because stereotype threat reduced women's working memory capacity and/or increased their level of arousal, women had difficulty encoding mathematical information (e.g., Eysenck, 1976;Unsworth & Engle, 2005), thwarting successful learning. When unlearned information was necessary for skill execution, performance suffered. also showed t...

The current work examines a novel and specific way in which competition can hurt the performance of negatively stereotyped individuals: by evoking stereotype threat. In four experiments, we demonstrate that women's underperformance in math when primed with competition was due to feeling worried about confirming negative stereotypes about women's math ability (i.e., stereotype threat), that the activation of negative performance stereotypes for women primed with competition was due to increased group-level social comparisons (i.e., comparing the self with men and women), and that priming competition led men to perform more poorly than women in a domain where they are negatively stereotyped (i.e., verbal ability). This research suggests that priming people with competition in contexts where they are negatively stereotyped leads to greater social comparison, activation of negative stereotypes, and concern about confirming these stereotypes, thereby decreasing stereotyped individuals' performance in the stereotyped domain.

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