Joshua Aronson

New York University | NYU · Department of Applied Psychology

Monitoring a negative stereotype coupled with the fear of conforming to it poses the risk for targeted groups to underperform when completing a relevant task. We investigated the impact of a fabricated (empirically invalidated and not socially instilled) stereotype threat on an object location memory task, which tends to show a sex difference in fa...

This study used a novel approach to examine the link between gender ability stereotype endorsement and academic interests by examining not only stereotypes people hold within the domains of mathematics and language arts, but also between them. Grade 6 and 8 students (285 males, 363 females) reported their degree of stereotype endorsement and intere...

Background Achievement gaps continue to garner a great deal of attention both in academic and in popular circles. Many students continue to struggle despite broad educational reforms aimed at narrowing these gaps in learning and performance.AimsIn this article, we review a number of social psychological interventions that show promise in reducing g...

Hundreds of laboratory experiments have shown that stereotype threat can undermine intellectual performance in the laboratory. But do the same processes demonstrated in the laboratory operate in the real world? And, can they help us explain and remediate achievement gaps between blacks and whites, well to do and poor, and women and men? In this cha...

In two experiments, we found that the performance-inhibiting consequences of stereotype threat were eliminated when the threat was subtly reframed as a challenge. In Experiment 1, Black school children in North Carolina completed a 10-item mathematics test. Participants who reported their race before taking the test performed more poorly than parti...

Each of us possesses multiple social identities. For example, our sex, age, race, social class, religion, political beliefs, and professions are all potential social identities. In certain contexts in which we find ourselves, that social identity may be devalued. For example, Democrats at the Republican National Convention, gays and lesbians at a c...

Stereotype threat research provides insight into how the low standardized test scores of students from stigmatized social groups may derive in part from the negative performance expectations about these groups. Because these students belong to many social groups, one means of mitigating the threat is to remind them of their membership in groups for...

This comment notes that P. R. Sackett et al (see record 2004-10043-001) have raised a concern: that 29 mischaracterizations of an experiment from C. M. Steele and J. Aronson (see record 1996-12938-001) spread over 8 years of media reports, journal articles, and textbooks could mislead teachers, students, researchers, policymakers, and parents into...

This comment notes that P. R. Sackett et al (see record 2004-10043-001) have raised a concern: that 29 mischaracterizations of an experiment from C. M. Steele and J. Aronson (see record 1996-12938-001) spread over 8 years of media reports, journal articles, and textbooks could mislead teachers, students, researchers, policymakers, and parents into...

Stereotype threat is partly situational. It is induced by features of the situation that can be changed and can be minimized by teaching students adaptive ways of coping with it. Stereotypes can spoil a person's experience–in school or in many social situationsStereotype threat arises in situations where a negative stereotype is relevant to evaluat...