The effect of stereotype vulnerability on women's math performance.

Abstract

Five studies manipulated women's vulnerability to being stereotyped while taking a standardized test. Stereotype vulnerability was identified as a condition in which members of stigmatized groups experience a sense of vulnerability to devaluation--a devaluation that alleges a category-based inferiority. In all five studies stereotype vulnerability had a pronounced effect on women's math performance. In Study 1, equally-prepared men and women took difficult math and English tests. They performed equally well on the English test, but on the math test where women were vulnerable to stereotype-based evaluations they underperformed in comparison to men. In Study 2, equally-prepared men and women took either a difficult or an easy math test. We reasoned that on the easy math test women would be less vulnerable to stereotype-based evaluations, as their performance would make a stereotype-consistent evaluation less plausible. Women and men performed equally well on the easier math test, but women again underperformed in comparison to men on the difficult test. In Study 3, we directly manipulated the relevance of the gender stereotype to performance on the math test. Equally-prepared men and women took a math test that was characterized as producing gender differences and a math test that was characterized as not producing gender differences. When subjects thought gender was relevant to the test, women underperformed in comparison to men; however, when the stereotype was irrelevant, women performed just as well as men. In Studies 4 & 5, we manipulated subjects' expectancies about the test demonstrating that the effects of the stereotype vulnerability manipulations in these experiments were not mediated by their effect on subjects' performance expectations. These experiments also demonstrated that when women could attribute their problems and frustrations on the test to the nature of the test rather than to their gender, their stereotype vulnerability decreased and their performance increased. The theoretical significance of stereotype vulnerability was outlined and the practical implications were discussed.