Stereotype threat among European Roma adults

ABSTRACT

Negative stereotypes associated with certain groups can lead to stereotype threat, a phenomenon that can negatively impact performance. The majority of existing studies that find negative effects of stereotype threat on performance are based on subpopulations such as students and older adults. This paper contributes by investigating the concept of stereotype threat in the context of adults at a range of ages of Roma ethnicity in Slovakia. The study is based on an incentivized lab-in-field experiment with 203 participants. Its main goal is to investigate whether reminding Roma adults of their ethnic identity affects their performance. The results suggest that making ethnicity salient reduces the performance of Roma adults by approximately 11%. These findings are consistent with the expectations of the stereotype threat hypothesis. The study further examines confidence as a potential channel, but the findings are ambiguous.

KEYWORDS:

• Stereotype threat
• lab-in-field experiment
• social identity
• Roma
• Slovakia

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J15
• D91

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under contract No. APVV-0125-12. IRB clearance obtained from the Technical University of Košice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency [APVV-0125-12].