Canadian Study Reaffirms Aronson's Findings on Stereotype Threat

Source: Toronto Globe & Mail

Researchers at the University of British Columbia have reaffirmed the concept of “stereotype threat” in a study released this week. Their findings showed that women who are told that their gender affects their math skills do poorly on tests while those told that their math skills depend on how they were raised perform better.

The concept of stereotype threat, a performance-debilitating anxiety about conforming to stereotypes individuals believe others have them when taking standardized tests, was introduced by Stanford University Psychology Professor Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson in 1995.

“When people think about biology, they tend to confuse it with things that are fixed and immutable. That's incorrect,” Aronson told the Toronto Globe and Mail.