Linking Stereotype Threat and Anxiety

Abstract

Claude Steele’s stereotype threat hypothesis has attracted significant attention in recent years. This study tested one of the main tenets of his theory—that stereotype threat serves to increase individual anxiety levels, thus hurting performance—using real‐time measures of physiological arousal. Subjects were randomly assigned to either high or low stereotype threat conditions involving a challenging mathematics task while physiological measures of arousal were recorded. Results showed significant physiological reactance (skin conductance, skin temperature, blood pressure) as a function of a stereotype threat manipulation. These findings are consistent with the argument that stereotype threat manipulations either increase or decrease situational‐specific anxiety, and hold significant implications for thinking about fair assessment and testing practices in academic settings.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Chris Walker, Max Simmons, and Jacklyn Starrett for help with data collection. Some of these data were collected while I was on the faculty of, and with support from, the University of Oklahoma.

Notes

1. Note that although many of these studies claim to manipulate “stereotype threat” there is no direct measure of stereotype threat used in these studies, so this claim is based on inference.

2. In the case of some physiological measurement, there are occasionally missed or dropped measurements due to occurrences such as participant finger movement. These are fairly rare, and in this study were primarily missed heart rate measurements.