Date of Submission

Spring 2014

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Psychology

Project Advisor 1

Kristin Lane

Abstract/Artist's Statement

The current study investigates the relationship between stereotype threat (i.e. adverse effects of stereotypes on stereotyped individuals’ performance in stereotype-relevant tasks), gender identification, and math identification in women completing a mathematics test. Prior to test-completion, stereotype threat was induced by telling female participants that men had previously out-performed women on the test. Unthreatened women were told that both men and women had performed equally. Participants completed measures of implicit and explicit gender and math identification and rated traits on how typical they were of “male” or “female.” I hypothesized that stereotype threat would increase both gender and math identification, but that perceptions of the female gender would be different for women who were highly math identified. Stereotype threat did occur in the current sample, who reported fairly egalitarian attitudes about gender compared to samples in previous research. There was a non-significant trend for women’s female identification to increase in the face of stereotype threat. Interestingly (and counter to predictions) women under threat reported lowered identification with math compared to unthreatened women. In addition, math identification did not seem to have an effect on how the female gender was perceived by women. Implications and limitations are discussed.

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Open Access

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