The distinct effect of multiple sources of stereotype threat

ABSTRACT

Stereotype threat (ST) refers to the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group. Distinct forms of ST can be elicited based on both the target and the source of the threat. Here, we focused on how peculiar ST sources distinctly impact performance for individuals who face self-based threats. More particularly, we hypothesized that the decrease in performance would be stronger for individuals who face a self-concept threat (triggered by a private self-evaluation) in comparison with those who face an own-reputation threat (triggered by a public evaluation). In two studies, participants were randomly assigned to one of the following experimental conditions: control, self-concept, or own-reputation threat. Results confirmed the hypothesis by showing that participants in the control condition perform better than those in the own-reputation threat condition, who performed better than those in the self-concept threat condition. The contributions of this work as well as the limitations are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability
• performance
• self-threat
• stereotype threat
• stereotyping

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Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Dr. Cristina Aelenei, Dr. Mathilde Lamotte, and Wendy Stevenson for their careful reading, advice, and time. Additionally, we would like to thank the Ecole Supérieure du Professorat et de l’Education Lille Nord de France for their support.

data-availability

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/fy5dk/

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/fy5dk/

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. It should be noted that, in the present study, we will not focus on the own-reputation (outgroup) threat.

2. For these two studies, the type of disability was not important. The purpose of these experimental manipulations was to examine the ST effect through an identity rarely activated in order to limit the influence of participants’ history within one domain. This choice was driven by the will to strictly examine the effect of the different ST. Nonetheless, as evoked in the general discussion, this choice could have also generated some issues for consideration in future studies.

3. A pilot study was conducted to verify the stereotype awareness of visual impairment and memory. Forty-nine French participants without sensory impairment aged from 17 to 69 (M = 39, SD = 11.5) were asked to estimate the level of memory performance of people with and people without visual impairment (on a 7-point Likert-type scale, from 1, “rather poor” to 7, “rather excellent”). A stereotype awareness score was calculated by computing a difference between these two estimations (Bonnot & Croizet, 2007). The result confirmed stereotype awareness, since participants estimated that people with visual impairment (M = 6.37, SD = .70) have a higher level of memory performance than people without visual impairment (M = 4.45, SD = .79). This difference was statistically different from zero, t(48) = 17.08; p < .001.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ecole Supérieur du Professorat et de l’Education, Lille Nord de France.