“Don't Call Me a Student-Athlete”: The Effect of Identity Priming on Stereotype Threat for Academically Engaged African American College Athletes

Abstract

Academically engaged African American college athletes are most susceptible to stereotype threat in the classroom when the context links their unique status as both scholar and athlete. After completing a measure of academic engagement, African American and White college athletes completed a test of verbal reasoning. To vary stereotype threat, they first indicated their status as a scholar-athlete, an athlete, or as a research participant on the cover page. Compared to the other groups, academically engaged African American college athletes performed poorly on the difficult test items when primed for their athletic identity, but they performed worse on both the difficult and easy test items when primed for their identity as a scholar-athlete. The unique stereotype threat processes that affect the academic performance of minority college athletes are discussed.

Notes

¹The varsity sports (N) included track (30), football (79), basketball (17), rowing (16), baseball (5), soccer (2), and golf and softball (1 each).

²Preliminary analysis revealed no gender differences on the test performance, and thus conditions were collapsed across gender.