Stereotype Threat and Women's Math Performance

Spencer, Steven J.; Steele, Claude M.; Quinn, Diane M.

doi:10.1006/jesp.1998.1373

Cited by 2,696 publications

(2,627 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…All three aspects, moreover, can involve feedback loops. When the feedback runs from teacher bias to lowered self-evaluation, reduced effort and subsequent lower academic performance, the loop involves what Farkas et al termed a "self-fulfilling prophecy" and which in the more recent literature has been termed a "stereotype threat" (Spencer et al, 1999). When the feedback instead runs through a heightened ability to perform in a "socially-enhanced learning environment" that uses "well-rounded" academic evaluation criteria, the mechanism is the "cumulative exposure" form of a cumulative advantage process (DiPrete and Eirich, 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social and behavioral skills and the gender gap in early educational achievement

DiPrete

Jennings²

2012

Social Science Research

286

221

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social and behavioral skills and the gender gap in early educational achievement

DiPrete

Jennings²

2012

Social Science Research

286

221

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“…Research on the impact of stereotype threat, or the risk of being judged by negative stereotypes of the ability of women in maths and science (e.g. Spencer et al, 1999) do support the idea that female astronomers (on average) would tend to find it harder to ask questions, for example (Carr and Steele, 2010) found that women facing stereotype threat are more risk averse than typical. In addition, there are suggestions that subtle differences in criticism from teachers over time can lead girls/women to develop low self confidence in their abilities, while boys/men may (again on average) overestimate theirs (e.g.…”

Section: The Psychology Of Asking Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Steinpreis et al 1999), as well as stereotype threat (Betz et al, 2014;Spencer et al, 1999) and the sheer fact of the raw numbers can still make the astronomical community feel like a hostile place for women, despite the best intentions of all involved.…”

Section: B Implications For Uk Astronomymentioning

confidence: 99%

Asking gender questions

Pritchard

Masters

Allen

et al. 2014

Astronomy & Geophysics

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The gender balance of both speakers and session chairs at NAM (31% and 29% women respectively) closely matched that of attendees (28% female) however we find that women were under-represented among question askers (which were made up of just 18% women).Women were especially under-represented in asking the first question (with just 14% of first questions asked by women), but when the Q&A session reached four or more questions, women and men were observed to ask roughly equal numbers of questions.We found a small increase in the fraction of questions from women in sessions where the chair was also female (but this had no statistical significance). We find that on average 2.2 ± 0.1 questions were asked per talk, and observed no detectable difference in the number of questions asked of female and male speakers, but found that female chairs solicited slightly fewer questions on average than male chairs. These results have some similarities and some subtle differences to those reported by Davenport et al. (2014) for the AAS. They also found that the gender balance of speakers and chairs closely matched that of attendees (all roughly 35% women), and that women were under-represented among question askers (24% women). However, Davenport et al.(2014) found a significant effect that when a session chair was female, women asked more questions, and also found that women speakers were asked more questions (with an average of N = 3.2 ± 0.2 questions per female speaker) than their male counterparts

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“…Although we are not aware of any systematic investigation of chess-related gender stereotypes, such stereotypes are easily visible in chess magazines and have been discussed in detail in Shahade's (2005) popular book. Applying the stereotype threat model (Steele & Aronson, 1995;Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999), the activation of gender stereotypes during a tournament is likely to interfere with the chess performance of women, presumably due to their preoccupation to confirm negative expectations. The stereotype threat model has received considerable empirical support both in academic domains (Inzlicht & Good, 2006;Maass & Cadinu, 2003;Steele, Spencer, & Aronson, 2002) and sports (Stone, Lynch, Sjomeling, & Darley, 1999; for a review see Beilock & McConnell, 2004), but, to our knowledge, has never been investigated as a potential explanation of the gender gap in chess.…”

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confidence: 99%

Checkmate? The role of gender stereotypes in the ultimate intellectual sport

Maass

D'Ettole

Cadinu

2007

Euro J Social Psych

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Women are surprisingly underrepresented in the chess world, representing less that 5% of registered tournament players worldwide and only 1% of the world's grand masters. In this paper it is argued that gender stereotypes are mainly responsible for the underperformance of women in chess. Forty-two male-female pairs, matched for ability, played two chess games via Internet. When players were unaware of the sex of opponent (control condition), females played approximately as well as males. When the gender stereotype was activated (experimental condition), women showed a drastic performance drop, but only when they were aware that they were playing against a male opponent. When they (falsely) believed to be playing against a woman, they performed as well as their male opponents. In addition, our findings suggest that women show lower chess-specific self-esteem and a weaker promotion focus, which are predictive of poorer chess performance. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Chess is not only one of the oldest games but it is also, by many, considered the ultimate intellectual sport. Although chess is an intellectual pursuit not requiring physical strength, women are generally considered inferior and they represent less than 5% of registered tournament players worldwide. Currently, the best female player, Judit Polgar, is placed in position 17 of the FIDE ranking (Federation Internationale des Echecs, 2006) and she is also the only woman among the top 100 players of the world. Thus, women seem to be underrepresented as well as underperforming. 1 Why should this be the case? A first step to understand gender differences in chess is to ask what characteristics are predictive of success and whether these characteristics are less common in females. We will only consider general cognitive and motivational factors here and ignore the specific tactical and strategic skills that develop as a function of chess training, including the striking ability of expert chess players to quickly capture the gist of highly complex chess positions (de Groot & Gobet, 1996; Ross, 2006).European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 231-245 (2008) Charness and Gerchak (1996) have argued that women's underrepresentation among top ranks is simply a function of relative participation rates, since extreme scores tend to increase disproportionally as population size increases.

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Stereotype Threat and Women's Math Performance

Cited by 2,696 publications

References 49 publications

Social and behavioral skills and the gender gap in early educational achievement

Social and behavioral skills and the gender gap in early educational achievement

Asking gender questions

Checkmate? The role of gender stereotypes in the ultimate intellectual sport

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