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Threatened to distraction: Mind-wandering as a consequence of stereotype threat
Abstract
Two experiments tested the hypothesis that the threat of a negative stereotype increases the frequency of mind-wandering (i.e., task-unrelated thought), thereby leading to performance impairments. Study 1 demonstrated that participants anticipating a stereotype-laden test mind-wandered more during the Sustained Attention to Response Task. Study 2 assessed mind-wandering directly using thought sampling procedures during a demanding math test. Results revealed that individuals experiencing stereotype threat experienced more off-task thoughts, which accounted for their poorer test performance compared to a control condition. These studies highlight the important role that social forces can have on mind-wandering. More specifically, these results serve as evidence for task-unrelated thought as a novel mechanism for stereotype threat-induced performance impairments.
... To explore whether the relationship between PRW and attention and memory-related errors was independent of pre-existing trait anxiety and worry, these measures were entered into the regression model (Table 4). When added to the model, recalled trait anxiety was the primary predictor of both attention and memory-related errors, above recalled trait worry or any of the PRWQ subscales, consistent with anxiety linked impairments in executive functioning (Eysenck et al., 2007;Moran, 2016). ...
... For instance, worry has been linked to reduced academic performance over time, with earlier levels of worry predicting subsequent lower academic achievement (Owens et al., 2012). PRW may reduce academic achievement both through the ability to learn, by reducing the ability to focus in lectures and when reading (Risko et al., 2012;Unsworth et al., 2013), as well as performance in assessment situations, where current concerns increase off-task thoughts (Jordano & Touron, 2017;Mrazek et al., 2011). The novel PRW may therefore result in poorer academic performance during the pandemic due to its disruption of attentional mechanisms. ...
... missing bill payments, poorer exam grades), and that this indirectly increased negative affect. Both interpretations of the mediation relationship are not mutually exclusive and would likely interact (Moran, 2016). ...
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many individuals experiencing increased symptoms of anxiety. We predict that this increase may be underpinned by pandemic-related worry (PRW), characterised by repetitive negative thinking about pandemic-specific outcomes; and that this relationship is mediated through reduced attentional capacity required to regulate negative affect.
Methods
We developed a novel scale to measure the contents of PRW in an initial sample of 255 participants, and explored its relationship with cognitive functioning and negative affect in a sample of 382 UK-based university students, whilst controlling for recalled pre-pandemic trait anxiety.
Results
A five-factor model of PRW was identified, with factors reflecting worry about decline in quality of life (QoL) and probability of infection correlating with attention and memory-related errors. Importantly, attention-related errors partially mediated the positive relationship between PRW and negative affect, even when controlling for pre-pandemic trait anxiety.
Conclusion
PRW’s relationship with negative affect was partially mediated through attentional function, consistent with models of anxiety and attentional control. In UK-based students PRW may be predominantly focused on the decline in QoL; therefore, interventions targeting worry about the decline in QoL caused by COVID-19 are especially important in this population in the wake of the pandemic.
... Comme le soulignent Mrazek et al. (2011), il est possible que les pensées intrusives ne se limitent pas seulement à la tâche en cours. De manière consistante avec cette proposition, ils ont observé dans leurs études que les participantes confrontées à une menace du stéréotype avaient plus tendance à déclarer avoir des pensées non liées à la tâche (mind-wandering). ...
... Par exemple, des chercheurs ont observé que les participantes en situation de menace du stéréotype avaient tendance à lister plus de pensées négatives en lien avec les mathématiques que les participantes de la condition contrôle (Cadinu et al., 2005 ;voir aussi Beilock et al., 2007). Toutefois, des études ont montré que ces pensées intrusives n'étaient pas toujours liées au stéréotype ou à la performance en cours (e.g., « mind wandering » ; Mrazek et al., 2011 ;voir aussi Schuster, Martiny, & Schmader, 2015). Par exemple, les études de Mrazek et al. (2011) ont montré que les participantes en situation de menace du stéréotype montraient davantage de signes de distraction que les participantes de la condition contrôle. ...
... Toutefois, des études ont montré que ces pensées intrusives n'étaient pas toujours liées au stéréotype ou à la performance en cours (e.g., « mind wandering » ; Mrazek et al., 2011 ;voir aussi Schuster, Martiny, & Schmader, 2015). Par exemple, les études de Mrazek et al. (2011) ont montré que les participantes en situation de menace du stéréotype montraient davantage de signes de distraction que les participantes de la condition contrôle. Par ailleurs, les chercheurs ont demandé aux participantes d'effectuer un test de mathématiques au cours duquel une mesure de mind-wandering était prise. ...
Tous les groupes sociaux font face à des stéréotypes négatifs à leur encontre. Ces stéréotypes peuvent parfois représenter un poids pour les individus qui en sont la cible tel que proposé par la théorie de la menace du stéréotype. La menace du stéréotype correspond à la crainte d’être jugé en accord avec un stéréotype négatif associé à son groupe ou encore de le confirmer par son comportement. De nombreuses recherches se sont portées sur les conséquences de la menace du stéréotype. Toutefois, ces dernières portent majoritairement sur les conséquences en termes de performances cognitives. Dans cette thèse, nous faisons l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’agression constitue également une conséquence de la menace du stéréotype. À travers une série d’études, nous avons étudié l’agression comme conséquence de la menace du stéréotype. Ces études ont été menées sur différentes populations afin de déterminer si l’agression était observable chez l’ensemble des individus ou chez les individus appartenant à des groupes stéréotypés comme agressifs. Au cours de ce travail, nous avons aussi exploré le rôle potentiel de mécanismes cognitifs (i.e., accessibilité des pensées hostiles, contrôle de soi) et émotionnels (i.e., colère) dans le lien entre menace du stéréotype et agression. Dans leur ensemble, les résultats ne nous permettent pas de valider de manière consistante notre hypothèse de départ. Toutefois, la prise en compte de la multiplicité des menaces du stéréotype (i.e., la menace est-elle dirigée vers soi ou vers le groupe ?) semble être une piste prometteuse à explorer. Plus largement, nous discutons la nécessité de prendre en compte non seulement la multiplicité des menaces du stéréotype mais également celle des groupes stigmatisés et le contexte sociétal dans lequel ils s’inscrivent.
... To explore whether the relationship between PRW and attention and memory-related errors was independent of pre-existing trait anxiety and worry, these measures were entered into the regression model (Table 4). When added to the model, recalled trait anxiety was the primary predictor of both attention and memory-related errors, above recalled trait worry or any of the PRWQ subscales, consistent with anxiety linked impairments in executive functioning (Eysenck et al., 2007;Moran, 2016). ...
... For instance, worry has been linked to reduced academic performance over time, with earlier levels of worry predicting subsequent lower academic achievement (Owens et al., 2012). PRW may reduce academic achievement both through the ability to learn, by reducing the ability to focus in lectures and when reading (Risko et al., 2012;Unsworth et al., 2013), as well as performance in assessment situations, where current concerns increase off-task thoughts (Jordano & Touron, 2017;Mrazek et al., 2011). The novel PRW may therefore result in poorer academic performance during the pandemic due to its disruption of attentional mechanisms. ...
... missing bill payments, poorer exam grades), and that this indirectly increased negative affect. Both interpretations of the mediation relationship are not mutually exclusive and would likely interact (Moran, 2016). ...
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many individuals experiencing increased symptoms of anxiety. We predict that this increase may be underpinned by pandemic-related worry (PRW), characterised by repetitive negative thinking about pandemic-specific outcomes; and that this relationship is mediated through reduced attentional capacity required to regulate negative affect.
Methods
We developed a novel scale to measure the contents of PRW in an initial sample of 255 participants, and explored its relationship with cognitive functioning and negative affect in a sample of 382 UK-based university students, whilst controlling for recalled pre-pandemic trait anxiety.
Results
A five-factor model of PRW was identified, with factors reflecting worry about decline in quality of life (QoL) and probability of infection correlating with attention and memory-related errors. Importantly, attention-related errors partially mediated the positive relationship between PRW and negative affect, even when controlling for pre-pandemic trait anxiety.
Conclusion
PRW’s relationship with negative affect was partially mediated through attentional function, consistent with models of anxiety and attentional control. In UK-based students PRW may be predominantly focused on the decline in QoL; therefore, interventions targeting worry about the decline in QoL caused by COVID-19 are especially important in this population in the wake of the pandemic.
... In a field study, Chung and colleagues [73] found that self-reported state anxiety and specific self-efficacy sequentially mediated the influence of stereotype threat on African American's promotional exam performance. This finding is supported by Mrazek et al. [74] who found that anxiety and mind-wandering sequentially mediated the effects of stereotype threat on women's mathematical ability. Laurin [75] also found that self-reported somatic anxiety partially mediated the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women's motor performance. ...
... Less research has examined the role of thoughts unrelated to the task in hand as a potential mediator of stereotype threat effects. Directly testing this notion, Mrazek et al. (Experiment 2 [74]) found that a group-as-target stereotype threat hampered women's mathematical performance in comparison to a control condition. Furthermore, although self-report measures of mindwandering resulted in null findings, indirect measures revealed that women under stereotype threat showed a marked decrease in attention. ...
... Schmader and Johns' [89] research suggests that the performance deficits observed under stereotype threat may be influenced by intrusive thoughts. Further research [74] has included post-experimental measures of cognitive interference to assess the activation of distracting thoughts under stereotype threat. However, the content of these measures are predetermined by the experimenter and do not allow participants to report spontaneously on their experiences under stereotype threat. ...
This systematic literature review appraises critically the mediating variables of stereotypethreat. A bibliographic search was conducted across electronic databases between 1995and 2015. The search identified 45 experiments from 38 articles and 17 unique proposedmediators that were categorized into affective/subjective (n = 6), cognitive (n = 7) and motivationalmechanisms (n = 4). Empirical support was accrued for mediators such as anxiety,negative thinking, and mind-wandering, which are suggested to co-opt working memoryresources under stereotype threat. Other research points to the assertion that stereotypethreatened individuals may be motivated to disconfirm negative stereotypes, which canhave a paradoxical effect of hampering performance. However, stereotype threat appearsto affect diverse social groups in different ways, with no one mediator providing unequivocalempirical support. Underpinned by the multi-threat framework, the discussion postulatesthat different forms of stereotype threat may be mediated by distinct mechanisms.
... Mind wandering. Probe-caught mind wandering was assessed via a five-point Likert scale used in prior mind wandering studies see [38,39]. The five points on the scale are described as follows: 1 = Completely on task, 2 = Mostly on task, 3 = Both on task and on unrelated concerns, 4 = Mostly on unrelated concerns, and 5 = Completely on unrelated concerns [38]. ...
... Probe-caught mind wandering was assessed via a five-point Likert scale used in prior mind wandering studies see [38,39]. The five points on the scale are described as follows: 1 = Completely on task, 2 = Mostly on task, 3 = Both on task and on unrelated concerns, 4 = Mostly on unrelated concerns, and 5 = Completely on unrelated concerns [38]. Three mind wandering probes were distributed equally throughout the lecture as conducted in prior work [13,40]. ...
Post-secondary students experience acute stressors daily. Acute stress has been associated with poor cognitive and learning outcomes. Prior work has demonstrated a single bout of exercise can attenuate acute stress responses. The present study examined the effects of a single 30-minute bout of high intensity aerobic exercise on multidimensional stress reactivity and learning-related outcomes. Forty participants were randomized to either engaging in an exercise bout or seated rest. Participants were then exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test followed by a 20-minute video lecture. The video lecture contained embedded mind wandering probes. Acute exercise did not attenuate stress responses, however promoted greater on-task behaviour (i.e., less mind wandering) and improved lecture comprehension scores. Notably, state anxiety was positively associated with mind wandering and mind wandering was negatively associated with lecture comprehension. Collectively, examining the role of acute interventions that reduce state anxiety may promote favourable learning outcomes in young adults.
... In the link between the two variables, the academic performance of more anxious individuals tends to be weaker (Flore & Wicherts, 2015). In their experimental study, Mrazek et al. (2011) found that anxiety and stereotype threat have a mediating effect on women's mathematics achievement. Increased anxiety levels in women were found to play a mediation effect in diminishing mathematics achievement in a different experimental study conducted by Gerstenberg et al., (2012). ...
... The research that looked into the role of anxiety in mediating the relationship between stereotype threat and academic success found that it either has no effect (Chung et al., 2010;Pennington et al., 2016;Spencer & Steele, 1994) or has a negative effect. (Ben-zeev et al., 2005;Delgado & Prieto, 2008;Flore & Wicherts, 2015;Mrazek et al., 2011;Osborne, 2007). While the results of this study are consistent with the findings that anxiety has a mediating effect, the direction of the effect is inconsistent. ...
Stereotype threat occurs when educational institutions remind us of the stereotype that men are more successful in mathematics and that women's mathematics achievement is negatively affected. In this study, the effect of stereotype threat on the academic achievement of high school students was examined. In the designed experimental study, there are two experimental groups (threat 1 and 2) and a control group. The effects of two different stereotype threats were compared in the experimental groups. After the explanations to reveal stereotype threat in the experimental groups, a mathematics test was used and the "State Anxiety and Stereotype Awareness Scale" was administered at the end of the test. In this study conducted in the 10th grade of high school, data was also obtained from male students. According to the data, while there was no significant difference in terms of academic success between the study groups consisting of female students, it was seen that the academic success of the threat 1 group was higher among males. In terms of academic achievement, threat 1 group shows the greatest inequality between genders. It was observed that the state anxiety levels of female students in the experimental groups increased. According to the findings, in addition to a positive and low-level significant relationship between anxiety and academic success in female students, there is also a mediating relationship between anxiety and stereotype threat and academic success. There is no difference between male student groups. Awareness of stereotypes was low in both genders, and it was concluded that boys' awareness was higher than girls.
... This relation between mind wandering and learning has been tested in typical lecture contexts with little attention to the additional effects of student distress. We suggest that feeling distressed during an online lecture may further impede students' learning potential, as mind wandering has been shown to mediate the relationship between daily life stressors (Banks & Boals, 2017) and experimentally induced stressors (Banks et al., 2015;Mrazek et al., 2011) on cognitive performance. ...
... Moreover, we found evidence to suggest that this distress was negatively related to students' ability to learn from a brief neuroscience lesson by increasing mind wandering during instruction. These findings build on prior work establishing distraction due to mind wandering as an important mechanism underlying distress-related decrements in learning and performance (Banks & Boals, 2017;Banks et al., 2015;Mrazek et al., 2011). We add to this by showing the same pathway can explain how students' distress regarding the COVID-19 pandemic may also affect their learning, even in one, brief learning opportunity. ...
Undergraduates’ distress has increased dramatically since the COVID-19 pandemic’s onset, raising concerns for academic achievement. Yet little is known about the mechanisms by which pandemic-related distress may affect students’ learning and performance, and consequently, how we might intervene to promote student achievement despite the continuing crisis. Across two studies with nearly 700 undergraduates, we highlight the mediating role of distraction: undergraduates higher in COVID-19 distress saw lower learning gains from an asynchronous neuroscience lesson due to increased mind wandering during the lesson. We replicate and extend this finding in Study 2: probing what pandemic-related stressors worried students and revealing systematic differences among students of marginalized identities, with largest impacts on first-generation, Latinx women. We also examined whether stress reappraisal or mindfulness practices may mitigate the observed distress-to-distraction pathway. Only mindfulness reduced mind wandering, though this did not translate to learning. We conclude with implications for practice and future research.
... As such, cognitive load has shown to decrease working memory capacity as the executive-control component of working memory is impacted; this decrease in working memory is observed in BIPOC populations (e.g., Latinx; Schmader & Johns, 2003). Decrease in working memory capacity has been shown through the use of an operational span task, which requires simultaneous storage and processing of information units (Schmader & Johns, 2003), the Stroop-color naming task (Richeson & Shelton, 2003), and an inhibition task (Mrazek et al., 2011). One explanation for this is a model proposed by Schmader et al. (2008) in which stereotype threat leads an individual to face negative affective, motivational, and physiological responses that together place demands on the executive-control components of working memory. ...
... There is less literature on the impact of stereotype threat on other cognitive domains such as attention or visuospatial skills. In terms of attention, individuals under stereotype threat have shown a marked decrease in the ability to focus at the task at hand due to increased mind-wandering and anxiety associated with stereotype threat (Mrazek et al., 2011). In regard to visuospatial skills and stereotype threat, the little research in this area is related to gender identities (e.g., gender differences for line judgement tasks; Campbell & Collaer, 2009), with no studies exploring racial/ ethnic identities. ...
Objective:
Abundant evidence documents stereotype threat's (ST) detrimental effect on test performance across identities and contexts (i.e., eliciting underperformance). Review of the literature shows varied aspects of both stereotyped identities and cognition are inconsistently explored across studies. Only a portion of the literature focuses on ST's impact on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). It is important to understand and learn to mitigate ST, particularly for historically marginalized and systemically oppressed BIPOC patients. Relevance exists for neuropsychologists, who engage in activities (i.e., assessments) that may activate ST, and should be aware of additional factors impacting testing results and clinical decision making.
Method:
Using scoping review criteria (Peters et al., 2015) and Preferred Reporting Item for Systemic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines, we reviewed literature across multiple databases (Google Scholar, PubMed, PsychINFO) on ST and cognition with a focus on BIPOC.
Results:
The current literature suggests that race-based ST may be implicated in underperformance for executive functioning and separately working memory. There is limited research on the effects of ST for memory, language, attention, and visuospatial skills.
Conclusion:
Research on ST requires additional attention to establish interventions to mitigate negative effects in practice. These results provide 1) an overview of the cognitive implications of ST, 2) address the scope of this impact for BIPOC, and 3) provide possible intervention and training strategies for neuropsychologists and other clinicians to work to mitigate the effects of ST on BIPOC.
... Our secondary aim was to explore the consequences of thought probes not including an option to report evaluative thoughts about performance ("task-related interference" [TRI]; Matthews et al., 1999;Smallwood, Obansawin, & Heim 2003). Subjects report TRI in response to both closedended (e.g., Jordano & Touron, 2017;Mrazek et al., 2011;Stawarczyk et al., 2011) and openended probes (Jordano, 2018). Most studies of TUT, however, do not include a TRI response option, so TRI must be reported as another category (perhaps as on-task, as it's task-related). ...
... Means are presented as triangles. Each dot represents an individual subject's accuracy rate preceding on-task, intentional TUT, or unintentional TUT reports Table 5 Correlations (with 99.5% confidence intervals) for TUT rates from subjects in the intentionality ("Why") condition, for intentional TUT rate, unintentional TUT rate, and proportion of all TUTs that were intentional, in the SART TUT task-unrelated thought, SART Sustained Attention to Response Task, Prop (Intent TUT / Total TUT) = proportion of a subject's TUT reports that were intentional TUTs, DSSQ Dundee Stress State Questionnaire (post-task retrospective report of TUT frequency); Executive Control = factor scores from a confirmatory factor analysis of four cognitive performance measures (see text for details); Distractibility-Restlessness = z-score composites of seven questionnaire measures of Distractibility and Restlessness (see text for details); Pos.-Constructive Daydream = z-score composites of four questionnaire measures of Positive-Constructive Daydreaming (see text for details) Subjects frequently endorse TRI when provided as a response option (e.g., Jordano & Touron, 2017;Mrazek et al., 2011), but most studies' probes don't do so. Only Robison et al. (2019) directly assessed the consequences of not probing for TRI. ...
Psychology faces a measurement crisis, and mind-wandering research is not immune. The present study explored the construct validity of probed mind-wandering reports (i.e., reports of task-unrelated thought [TUT]) with a combined experimental and individual-differences approach. We examined laboratory data from over 1000 undergraduates at two U.S. institutions, who responded to one of four different thought-probe types across two cognitive tasks. We asked a fundamental measurement question: Do different probe types yield different results, either in terms of average reports (average TUT rates, TUT-report confidence ratings), or in terms of TUT-report associations , such as TUT rate or confidence stability across tasks, or between TUT reports and other consciousness-related constructs (retrospective mind-wandering ratings, executive-control performance, and broad questionnaire trait assessments of distractibility–restlessness and positive-constructive daydreaming)? Our primary analyses compared probes that asked subjects to report on different dimensions of experience: TUT-content probes asked about what they’d been mind-wandering about, TUT-intentionality probes asked about why they were mind-wandering, and TUT-depth probes asked about the extent (on a rating scale) of their mind-wandering. Our secondary analyses compared thought-content probes that did versus didn’t offer an option to report performance-evaluative thoughts. Our findings provide some “good news”—that some mind-wandering findings are robust across probing methods—and some “bad news”—that some findings are not robust across methods and that some commonly used probing methods may not tell us what we think they do. Our results lead us to provisionally recommend content-report probes rather than intentionality- or depth-report probes for most mind-wandering research.
... To try to explain how the stereotype threat undermines performance in stigmatized individuals, Schmader et al. (2008) developed an integrated process model of the stereotype threat. According to their model, the stereotype threat activates three processes: the physiological stress response, such as increased activation of the sympathetic nervous system (Murphy et al., 2007); monitoring the self-relevance of performance, such as increased motivation to do well (Schmader et al., 2008); and suppression of thoughts or emotions, such as feeling self-doubt and worry or having a scattered mind (Beilock et al., 2007;Mrazek et al., 2011;Steele & Aronson, 1995). This model explains that these mechanisms, triggered by the stereotype threat, can interrupt the working memory of the stigmatized individual (e.g., women in math) that is essential for achieving difficult cognitive tasks (e.g., decision-making). ...
... Women are aware of negative stereotypes about their social group and are concerned about confirming negative stereotypes about their group when they perform a task (Steele & Aronson, 1995). As a result, under stereotype threat situations, women report monitoring their performance (for a review, see Spencer et al., 2016), worrying more about it (Beilock et al., 2007), feeling self-doubt (Steele & Aronson, 1995), or having a scattered mind (Mrazek et al., 2011). All of these cognitive activities interrupt working memory (Schmader et al., 2008), which is essential for good performance on difficult tasks (Régner et al., 2010). ...
Research has demonstrated gender differences in the decision‐making process, showing that women make more disadvantageous risk decisions than men. However, these differences have not been examined in terms of psychosocial or socio‐structural variables, such as the gender stereotype threat. We conducted an experimental study (Ns = 105) to test the well‐established stereotype threat effect on decision‐making through the Iowa Gambling Task and the possible moderation of this effect by sensitivity to punishment and fear of negative evaluation. The results revealed that women under a stereotype threat condition make more disadvantageous risk decisions than men in the same conditions or women in the nonstereotype threat condition. Moreover, women greatly fearing negative evaluation seemed to make more disadvantageous risk decisions compared with other groups. These findings highlight the relevance of psychosocial variables that legitimize gender inequality, such as the stereotype threat and fear of negative evaluation, in women's decision‐making process.
... In order to perform correctly in SART, it is requested that the participant sustains attention and cognitive control during the presentation of the series of stimuli, so that the accustomed response to the non-target is inhibited by the allocated executive resources. Performance measures in SART correlate with selfreport and probed-report of mind wandering, thus making the SART a validated indirect measure of mind wandering (Mrazek et al. 2011;Stawarczyk, Majerus, Catale, and D'Argembeau 2014). ...
... In line with our hypothesis and with earlier studies (Jha et al. 2017;Morrison et al. 2013), we found that MBSR training reduced errors during a task. This result can be regarded as a behavioral (indirect) index of mind wandering (Mrazek et al. 2011;Stawarczyk et al. 2014). These findings can be explained by the enhancement of sustained attention and executive function derived from a mindfulness training (e.g., Malinowski 2013; Moore and Malinowski 2009;Raffone and Srinivasan 2017). ...
Mind wandering is characterized by the absence of cognitive focus on a task, due to interfering spontaneous mentation. Despite a large number of investigations on mind wandering and mindfulness training in recent years, very few studies have directly investigated the effects of mindfulness training on mind wandering. In this study, we originally investigated the effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) training on objective and subjective indices of mind wandering, by using the sustained attention to response task (SART), in combination with the assessment of dispositional mindfulness facets through the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). To this aim, 60 participants were distributed into two groups using a stratified random assignment, based on meditation experience. One group took part in the training, whereas the other was a control, waiting condition. From this original sample, 37 people completed all assignments and were included in the study (20 in the experimental group and 17 in the control). We compared the performance at SART, as well as the dispositional measures of the two groups, before and after the intervention. We found that MBSR training led to a reduction of attentional lapses and to increased scores in self-reported dispositional mindfulness facets. However, we did not find such reduction in thought probe reports of attentional focus and meta-awareness. The collective results highlight the importance of studying the association of behavioral, self-reported thought probes and dispositional mindfulness while investigating the effects of mindfulness training on cognitive and metacognitive functions.
... Furthermore, successful BCI and NF performance requires top-down cognitive control (Emmert et al. 2016;Lacroix and Gowen 1981;Lacroix et al. 1986;Ninaus et al. 2013aNinaus et al. , 2015aWood et al. 2014), so that the user can stay focused and concentrated on the BCI or NF task over a long training period. Monotonous or boring feedback modalities might increase the occurrence of mind-wandering episodes and task-irrelevant thoughts, leading to reduced task performance (Mrazek et al. 2011;Ros et al. 2013;Smallwood and Schooler 2006). Such monotonous feedback methods might not attract users to focus on them (Yan et al. 2008), leading to decreased motivation, interest, concentration, and finally to a lower performance and success rate (Keller 2010;Kleih et al. 2010). ...
... More interesting and immersive feedback modalities might also attract users' attention and might reduce the number of task-irrelevant thoughts or mind-wandering episodes, which often occur in monotonous and boring tasks and reduce task performance (Mrazek et al. 2011;Ros et al. 2013;Smallwood and Schooler 2006). Generally, there is evidence that an increased ability to focus on the BCI/NF task leads to an improved BCI/NF performance (Tan et al. 2014). ...
Play, that is, self-motivated activities for enjoyment, is a significant aspect for human devel- opment and essential to learning and skill acquisition. Games, the structured form of play, are increasingly being used in brain–computer interface (BCI) and neurofeedback (NF) applications. In BCI and NF applications, patterns of the users’ brain activation are assessed in real time and fed back to the users. When users become successful in modulating their own brain activation, improvements in behavior, cognition, or motor function follow or they are able to control external devices such as a computer, wheelchair, or neuroprosthe- sis. In electroencephalogram-based applications, however, a large number of users cannot attain control over their own brain signals. Current approaches to attaining control require lengthy repetitive trainings. The use of games and game-like feedback aims at keeping user motivation and engagement high over time. This chapter provides an overview of existing game-like feedback modalities and critically discusses their potential value and also possible drawbacks in BCI and NF applications.
... Generally, stress and anxiety are stable predictors of mind wandering. The relationship has been established in both natural and experimental conditions (Mrazek et al., 2011). The occurrence of mind wandering is higher when people are unhappy or anxious (Aldao et al., 2010;Figueiredo et al., 2020;Robison et al., 2020). ...
Students reported engaging in mind wandering, often called task-unrelated thoughts, in the classroom and personal study hours for a large portion of their student life. Considering the substantial negative consequences of these unwanted thoughts, the present study aims to understand the relationship of academic stress and academic expectations with the mind wandering of college students. Based on the attentional control models, inhibitory control is proposed as a protective factor resisting these stimuli-irrelevant thoughts. A sample of 268 participants, who are pursuing either undergraduate or postgraduate programs from the state of Kerala, India, is included in the study. Self-reported instruments are administered through an online survey to measure the variables. Results of the correlational analysis indicated that the occurrence of mind wandering is positively related to both academic stress and academic expectations and negatively related to inhibitory control. Further, inhibitory control moderated the relationship between academic stress and mind wandering, whereas the moderating role on the relationship between academic expectations and mind wandering is insignificant. Complex relationships among the variables are discussed in the context of various theoretical perspectives.
... More generally, the findings suggest that it may be difficult to promote more mind wandering in older adults or younger adults (see also Robison et al., 2019) through manipulations like this one. Studies that have had large success in increasing rates of mind wandering typically use manipulations that either increase attentional task demands (e.g., Randall et al., 2019;Seli et al., 2018) or increase psychological stress or strain on participants (e.g., Banks & Boals, 2017;Jordano & Touron, 2017a;Mrazek et al., 2011). The manipulation in the current study did not place such a heavy psychological or attentional demand on participants which may have hindered our ability to find any effects. ...
Age-related differences in mind wandering are robust, with older adults reporting less mind wandering compared to younger adults. While several theories have been put forth to explain this difference, one view has received less attention than others. Specifically, age-related differences in mind wandering might occur because older adults are reluctant to report on their mind wandering. The aim of the current study was to explicitly test this hypothesis. Older and younger adults completed a go/no-go task with intermittent thought probes to assess mind wandering. In one condition, participants were provided with standard instructions about how to respond to questions about their thoughts. In a second condition, participants were provided with a positive framing of mind wandering. Mind wandering was assessed both subjectively (i.e., via thought probes) and objectively (i.e., using different behavioral measures from the go/no-go task). The results of the study suggest that positively framing mind wandering did not impact rates of mind wandering or objective indicators of mind wandering for older or younger adults. Older adults reported less mind wandering, regardless of condition, compared to younger adults. Older adults also had generally better performance on the go/no-go task compared to younger adults. Bayesian analyses suggested that the main effect of framing condition, although not significant in Frequentist terms, did provide moderate evidence of an overall effect on mind wandering rates. We interpret the results as evidence against the reluctance hypothesis, consistent with previous work.
... The biological mechanism behind this appears to be related to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which has been shown to be involved in ERN production. More specifically, the dorsal part of the ACC (dACC) or the middle cingulate cortex appears to be particularly important for ERN production [13,14]. There is also a cloud analysis of anxiety disorders that shows reduced grey matter volume in the right anterior cingulate cortex (ACG) in patients with anxiety disorders [15]. ...
This paper examines how stress impacts depression and anxiety through neural responses to mistakes and rewards. Currently, mental health problems, specifically anxiety and depression, are on the rise. This paper presents a study on how stress affects depression and anxiety. To begin with, this paper describes two neural responses: Error-Related Negative Wave (ERN) and Reward Positive (RewP). ERN could be a significant biomarker of anxiety symptoms. RewP, however, is linked to depression. Based on previous studies, this paper posits that depressed patients exhibit lower RewP amplitude indicative of reduced sensitivity to rewards. Moreover, this paper combines previous studies to demonstrate that stress could impact the amplitude of ERN and RewP. To be more precise, stress could amplify the magnitude of ERN, indicating that people's neural response to errors is heightened, thereby resulting in higher levels of anxiety. However, stress may reduce the magnitude of RewP, indicating a decrease in reward sensitivity and potentially increasing the susceptibility to depression. In summary, this article offers insights on how to articulate the connections among stress, anxiety, depression, and related factors. Furthermore, this article introduces a novel perspective on approaches to treating and preventing anxiety and depression.
... However, contrary to the increased anxiety or effort as proposed by classic stereotype-threat theory, our results showed no evidence of changed levels of anxiety or threat. Instead, our data suggest that girls and young women reported significantly reduced effort (consistent with past studies such as Jamieson & Harkins, 2007Mrazek et al., 2011;Seitchik & Harkins, 2015), possibly from lowered self-confidence and selfexpectations and increased distracting concerns (though our design cannot distinguish between a direct effect and a conditional effect). The prior theory also noted that targets of negative stereotypes must identify with the domain in which the threat occurs in order to be affected by a threat cue (Aronson et al., 1999;Deaux et al., 2007;Shih et al., 1999). ...
We studied how gendered beliefs about intellectual abilities transmit through peers and differentially impact girls' academic performance relative to boys'. Study 1 (N = 8,029; 208 classrooms) exploited randomly assigned variation in the proportion of a child's middle school classmates who believe that boys are innately better than girls at learning math. An increase in exposure to peers who report this belief generated losses for girls and gains for boys in math performance. This peer exposure also increased children's likelihood of believing the gender-math stereotype, increased the perceived difficulty of math, and reduced aspirations among girls. Study 2 (N = 547) provided proof of concept that activating a gender-math performance gap among college students reduces women's math performance but not verbal performance. Men's task performance was not affected. Our findings highlight how the prevalence of stereotypical beliefs in one's ambient and peer environment, even when readily contradictable, can shape children's beliefs and academic ability.
... Participants' metacognition was measured using the Metamemory in Adulthood Questionnaire (MIA; Dixon et al., 1988), the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (Klumb, 1995), as well as the Thinking about Life Experience (TALE) Questionnaire (Bluck et al., 2005). Mind wandering was measured using two different scales (Carriere et al., 2008;Mrazek et al., 2011), complemented by the Daydreaming Frequency Scale (Giambra, 1989). ...
Prominent theories of aging emphasize the importance of resource allocation processes as a means to maintain functional ability, well-being and quality of life. Little is known about which activities and what activity patterns actually characterize the daily lives of healthy older adults in key domains of functioning, including the spatial, physical, social, and cognitive domains. This study aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of daily activities of community-dwelling older adults over an extended period of time and across a diverse range of activity domains, and to examine associations between daily activities, health and well-being at the within- and between-person levels. It also aims to examine contextual correlates of the relations between daily activities, health, and well-being. At its core, this ambulatory assessment (AA) study with a sample of 150 community-dwelling older adults aged 65 to 91 years measured spatial, physical, social, and cognitive activities across 30 days using a custom-built mobile sensor (“uTrail”), including GPS, accelerometer, and audio recording. In addition, during the first 15 days, self-reports of daily activities, psychological correlates, contexts, and cognitive performance in an ambulatory working memory task were assessed 7 times per day using smartphones. Surrounding the ambulatory assessment period, participants completed an initial baseline assessment including a telephone survey, web-based questionnaires, and a laboratory-based cognitive and physical testing session. They also participated in an intermediate laboratory session in the laboratory at half-time of the 30-day ambulatory assessment period, and finally returned to the laboratory for a posttest assessment. In sum, this is the first study which combines multi-domain activity sensing and self-report ambulatory assessment methods to observe daily life activities as indicators of functional ability in healthy older adults unfolding over an extended period (i.e., 1 month). It offers a unique opportunity to describe and understand the diverse individual real-life functional ability profiles characterizing later life.
... In addition, stereotype threat specifically impairs performance on high rather than low attentionally demanding tasks [39,84]. It also induces mind wandering [39,[83][84][85][86][87], which are thoughts that might be attentionally demanding [14,88,89], therefore reducing WM performance [90,91]. In addition, neurophysiological studies evidenced that stereotype threat interferes with WM efficiency [92,93]. ...
Stereotype threat arises when the activation of negative stereotypes about a group impairs performance of stigmatized individuals on stereotype relevant tasks. There is ample evidence that stereotype threat leads to performance detriments by consuming executive resources. Several studies indeed showed that working memory (WM) mediates stereotype threat effects among young adults. More recently, researchers have sought to understand whether the same mechanisms underlie age-based stereotype threat, but findings are mixed regarding the role of WM and some authors rather favor a motivational explanation based on regulatory fit. The present review critically appraises the empirical support for distinct forms of stereotype threat effects mediated by distinct mechanisms. We propose a novel approach based on one of the most recent WM models, the time-based resource sharing model, to evaluate the impact of stereotype threat on attentional resources in WM among both young and older adults.
... There is evidence suggesting two possible reactions: Similar to the goal conflict idea explained earlier (e.g., Kehr, 2003), our distraction hypothesis suggests that after receiving threatening feedback, people may be distracted by negative thoughts or by the goal of reciprocating the threat, leading to less persistence on a subsequent task. For example, people who are targets of stereotype threat experience impairments to their working memory and engage in mind-wandering, which reduce their task performance (e.g., Schmader & Johns, 2003;Mrazek et al., 2011). Alternatively, the compensation hypothesis suggests that people who receive negative feedback or threats to their self-esteem may work harder and show increased motivation and persistence in subsequent tasks (e.g., van Dellen et al., 2011). ...
In honor cultures, maintaining a positive moral reputation (e.g., being known as an honest person) is highly important, whereas in dignity cultures, self-respect (e.g., competence and success) is strongly emphasized. Depending on their cultural background, people respond differently to threats to these two dimensions of honor. In two studies, we examined the effects of morality-focused and competence-focused threats on people’s goal pursuit in two honor cultures (Turkey, Southern United States, and Latinx) and in a dignity culture (Northern United States). In Study 1, Turkish participants were more likely to reject a highly qualified person as a partner in a future task if that person threatened their morality (vs. no-threat), even though this meant letting go of the goal of winning an award. Participants from the U.S. honor and dignity groups, however, were equally likely to choose the people who gave them threatening and neutral feedback. In Study 2, Turkish and U.S. honor participants were more likely to persist in a subsequent goal after receiving a morality threat (vs. no-threat), whereas U.S. dignity participants were more likely to persist in a subsequent goal after receiving a competence threat (vs. no-threat). These results show that people’s responses to honor threats are influenced by the dominant values of their culture and by the tools that are available to them to potentially restore their reputation (e.g., punishing the offender vs. working hard on a different task). This research can have implications for multicultural contexts in which people can have conflicting goals such as diverse work environments.
... For instance, worry has been linked to reduced academic performance over time, with earlier worry predicting subsequent lower academic achievement (Owens et al., 2012). PRW may reduce academic achievement both through the ability to learn, by reducing the ability to focus in lectures and when reading (Unsworth et al., 2013;Risko et al., 2012), as well as performance in assessment situations, where current concerns increase off-task thoughts (Mrazek et al., 2011;Jordano & Touron, 2017). The novel PRW may therefore result in poorer academic performance during the pandemic due to its disruption of attentional mechanisms. ...
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many individuals experiencing increased symptoms of anxiety. We predict that this increase may be underpinned by pandemic-related worry (PRW), characterised by repetitive negative thinking about pandemic-specific outcomes; and that this relationship is mediated through reduced attentional capacity required to regulate negative affect.
Methods: We developed a novel scale to measure the contents of PRW in an initial sample of 255 participants; and explored its relationship with cognitive functioning and negative affect in a sample of 382 UK-based university students, whilst controlling for recalled pre-pandemic trait anxiety.
Results: A five-factor model of PRW was identified, with factors reflecting worry about decline in quality of life (QoL) and probability of infection correlating with attention and memory-related errors. Importantly, attention-related errors partially mediated the positive relationship between PRW and negative affect, even when controlling for pre-pandemic trait anxiety.
Conclusion: PRW’s relationship with negative affect was partially mediated through attentional function, consistent with models of anxiety and attentional control. In UK-based students PRW may be predominantly focused on the decline in QoL; therefore, interventions targeting worry about the decline in QoL caused by COVID-19 are especially important in this population in the wake of the pandemic.
... This does not exclude the possibility that threats are especially simulated in dreams as a specific function. 48 Social threats (negative stereotyping) seem to invoke mind wandering, however, and lead to worse task performance (Jordano & Touron, 2017;Mrazek et al., 2011). The contents of this mind wandering was not assessed. ...
Every night during sleep we experience an immersive world of dreams, woven together by our sleeping brain unbound by external stimulation. Despite considerable effort the question of why we dream has eluded a conclusive answer. Understanding dreams also arguably makes progress toward answering the broader question of consciousness: why do we experience anything at all? I attempt to illuminate these questions by concentrating on the quintessentially social nature of dreams. First, in Study I a novel theoretical accountthe Social Simulation Theory of dreaming (SST)is proposed, together with the first outlines of a research program for its empirical study. SST suggests the world simulation form of dreams provides clues for its function by preferentially simulating certain kinds of scenariosnamely social interactions. Second, in Studies II and III specific hypotheses derived from the SST in Study I are empirically evaluated. These provide evidence for dreams to contain more social content than corresponding waking life and to remain so even when social interactions are removed from waking life (Sociality Bias). Furthermore, the Strengthening Hypothesis that suggests dreams serve to maintain and/or increase social bonding with close others gains partial support. The Practise and Preparation Hypothesis gained support as dreams simulated positive interactions in one fifth of dream interactions and overall simulate complex social behaviours. The Compensation Hypothesis suggests dreams simulations to increase when waking social contacts are abolished, but this was not supported in the data as dream sociality remained stable despite social seclusion. When excluded from others our dreams reconfigure to decrease simulations of interactions with strangers. However, dreams during normal day-to-day life do not preferentially simulate bond-strengthening interactions with close others. In opposition to previous findings, Study II found no differences in social dream contents between either stage of sleep or time of night. In Study III a short social seclusion showed not only differences in dream content, but also in sleep structure, with an increase in REM sleep. Third, methodological development was undertaken by, both, developing a content analysis method for extracting social episodes in narrative reports (Social Content Scale, SCS; Study II), and by assessing the validity of a novel home sleep monitor device, the Beddit Sleep Tracker (BST). While the SCS proved useful for categorizing the social features in both studies II and III, BST failed to provide accurate sleep data as measured against a polysomnogram. Overall, the development of SST and the initial empirical evidence for some of its hypotheses brings us closer to understanding the twin problems of dreaming and consciousness.
... Assuming a perfect detection technology, such as the ones our participants propose, we also know that anticipation of a racist event, rather than adequately preparing a target, is likely to cause increased anxiety, paranoia, and stress. Anticipating a scenario where racism might occur contributes to confrmation bias around interpreting perceived slights and microaggressions (e.g., as in the case with stereotype threat [78]). Instead, psychological literature would lead us towards designs that, rather than anticipating specifc events of racism, educate potential targets about the nature of microaggressions -how to identify them, what they mean and why they are upsetting, and then how to respond and cope. ...
... higher) probability to discriminate against gay people through the generalization of threats perceived from the Roma to threats perceived from gay people (Zingora & Graf, 2019). Finally, we suggest that intergroup anxiety and threat may have implications for tertiary transfer effects as higher levels of threat and stress can impair cognitive performance (Mrazek et al., 2011;Richeson & Shelton, 2012). ...
Intergroup contact is one of the most promising and effective strategies for reducing prejudice. Importantly, intergroup contact not only improves attitudes towards an encountered outgroup member but also to the outgroup as a whole (i.e., primary transfer effects), to other outgroups (i.e., secondary transfer effects), and even enhances cognitive functioning beyond intergroup relations (i.e., tertiary transfer effect). In this article, we first review the recent developments on primary, secondary, and tertiary contact generalization. We then summarize mechanisms that underlie and condition each of these generalizations. Third, we highlight key critiques against the contact literature identifying avenues for future research on generalization processes. Lastly, we underline the policy value of research on generalization effects.
... In more detail, individuals report on average 59 future-oriented thoughts per day, resulting in about one thought every 16 minutes (D'Argembeau et al., 2011). These off-task thoughts may be triggered for different reasons (e.g., unattained goals, negative mood; Mrazek et al., 2011;Smallwood & Schooler, 2015;Watkins, 2008), yet research did not address the question when more or less off-task thoughts occur during an employee's working day (Beal et al., 2005;Merlo et al., 2018). Thus, it remains unclear whether off-task thoughts might follow a systematic time trend. ...
During the working day, employees do not only think of their work but also occasionally of their upcoming leisure time. Accordingly, we introduce two constructs, namely thoughts of leisure time (ToLT) and thoughts of a planned leisure activity (ToPLA). We assumed that employees report more ToLT/ToPLA at the beginning and the end of the working day. We further hypothesized that employees with higher pleasant anticipation of a planned leisure activity generate more ToPLA.
As leisure thoughts distract attention from work, we expected a negative relationship
between ToLT/ToPLA and work engagement within one hour and across the
working day. Regarding the subsequent hour, we assumed that when the leisure plan
is positive/negative, the relationship between ToPLA and work engagement is
positive/negative. We conducted an hourly online-survey across one working day
(N = 89 employees, 438 measurement points). Our results revealed the expected time
trend for ToLT/ToPLA and a positive relationship between pleasant anticipation and
ToPLA. We further found negative relationships between ToPLA and work
engagement (within one hour) and between ToLT and work engagement (across the
day). Contrary to our expectations, for positive leisure plans, the relationship
between ToPLA and work engagement in the subsequent hour was negative.
... Measures of self-rated attentional control included the attentional control scale (ACS) (Derryberry & Reed, 2002), attentional function index (Cimprich, Visovatti, & Ronis, 2011), cognitive failures questionnaire (Broadbent, Cooper, FitzGerald, & Parkes, 1982), deficits in EF scale (Barkley, 2011), frontal systems behavior scale (Grace & Malloy, 2001), probes assessing degree to which focus was on-task (vs. off task) during a task (Mrazek et al., 2011), and thought control questionnaire (TCQ) (Wells & Davies, 1994). These self-reports have displayed satisfactory-to-excellent internal consistency (α = .64-.96) and good two-to four-week retest reliability (r = .67-.83) (Barkley, 2014;Beerten-Duijkers, Vissers, Rinck, Barkley, & Egger, 2019;Bridger, Johnsen, & Brasher, 2013;Grace & Malloy, 2001;Wells & Davies, 1994). ...
Background: The past 30 years have witnessed growing scientific interest regarding the impact of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) on cognitive functions. Several theories propose that habitually exercising mindfulness skills can improve cognitive abilities, but no comprehensive quantitative reviews of the effect of MBIs on global and unique cognitive domains exist to date. Method: This systematic review thus examined the effects of MBI on global cognitive ability (GCA) and 16 specific cognitive domains. MBI randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that administered cognitive tests pre- and post-treatment were included. Open-trials, non-randomized MBIs, and case-control studies were excluded. Keywords included “mindful*,” AND “executive attention (EA),” OR “working memory (WM).” Robust variance estimation and moderator analyses were conducted. Results: Ninety-five RCTs (n = 7,408) met eligibility criteria. MBI (vs. waitlist or no-treatment) had small-to-moderate significant effects on GCA, WM accuracy, inhibition accuracy and latency, EA, sustained attention accuracy, processing speed, and subjective attentional control (SAC) (g = 0.24 – 0.52). Likewise, MBI (vs. active control) had small-to-moderate positive effects on GCA, orienting, EA, WM accuracy, sustained attention (indexed by intra-individual coefficient of variation), and SAC (average g = 0.17 – 0.41). Age, gender, study quality, treatment duration, publication year, retention, statistical analysis, and country, moderated some treatment effects. Publication bias analyses showed that reliable treatment effects were restricted to EA, WM accuracy, inhibition accuracy, sustained attention, and SAC, depending on the control group. Conclusion: MBIs confer notable neuropsychological benefits and dose-response effects on some specific (vs. global) cognitive domains. Limitations, theoretical, and applied implications are discussed. (Note: This paper has not been peer reviewed. Please do not copy or cite without author's permission.)
... Evidence suggests that the process through which stereotype threat impacts performance is through reduced working memory capacity [6,27,41]. Working memory is the "temporary storage of information in connection with the performance of other cognitive tasks such as reading, problem solving or learning" [2]. Women placed in stereotype threatening situations have been shown to generate fewer mathematical problem solving strategies [33] and have lower working memory capacity [41] compared to nonthreatening situations. ...
... This leads us to conclude that happy music was perceived as more disruptive, especially if participants did not have prior knowledge of the topic. The combination of disruptive music and new information could lead to a failure in the construction of a situation model for reading paragraphs, resulting in a higher frequency of mind wandering [63,64]. We also found that the presence of music in the reading task significantly increased the frequency of mind wandering compared with reading without music. ...
Mind wandering is a drift of attention away from the physical world and towards our thoughts and concerns. Mind wandering affects our cognitive state in ways that can foster creativity but hinder productivity. In the context of learning, mind wandering is primarily associated with lower performance. This study has two goals. First, we investigate the effects of text semantics and music on the frequency and type of mind wandering. Second, using eye-tracking and electrodermal features, we propose a novel technique for automatic, user-independent detection of mind wandering. We find that mind wandering was most frequent in texts for which readers had high expertise and that were combined with sad music. Furthermore, a significant increase in task-related thoughts was observed for texts for which readers had little prior knowledge. A Random Forest classification model yielded an F 1 -Score of 0.78 when using only electrodermal features to detect mind wandering, of 0.80 when using only eye-movement features, and of 0.83 when using both. Our findings pave the way for building applications which automatically detect events of mind wandering during reading.
... For example, empirical studies documented that negative stereotype activation reduced working memory capacity measured by an operational span task (Schmader and Johns 2003). Similar results were obtained using measures of executive functions such as antisaccade task (Jamieson and Harkins 2007), Stroop-color naming task (Richeson and Shelton 2003;Hutchison et al. 2013), or GO/NOGO task (Mrazek et al. 2011). Additional analyses showed that working memory capacity was a significant mediator of performance in mathematical tests in female samples (Schmader and Johns 2003), confirming its central role in the mechanism of stereotype threat. ...
A substantial number of experimental studies on stereotype threat explores performance of girls in mathematics. Only few concentrated on gender differences favoring girls in language performance. However, gender differences in a reading test in the Program for International Student Assessment are three times larger than in mathematics. Considerable research indicates that gender differences in achievement and academic attitudes are partly explained by stereotype threat. In this study, using structural equation modeling on representative data from a sample of schoolboys in three age cohorts, we examined the associations of repeated experiences of stereotype threat and two outcome variables: language achievement and domain identification with language arts. We demonstrated that working memory and intellectual helplessness were predicted by the level of stereotype threat. Moving beyond past work, we showed that the indirect effect explaining domain identification through intellectual helplessness was significant in older cohorts. Additionally, the indirect effect linking stereotype threat and language achievement through working memory was not significant in the oldest cohort. In this group, language identification significantly predicted language achievement. These results offer a tentative support of our prediction about a cumulative effect of stereotype threat on domain identification. The present study enriches a small but growing body of literature examining stereotype threat in male samples. Moreover, it identifies a new mediational path by which stereotype threat may be translated into lower domain identification and in turn lower language achievement.
... therefore, it appears that thought suppression may be a process linked to other mediators of STT, and may not be a mediating process that works in isolation. (10) Mind-wandering, resulting from increased anxiety, has also been linked to stereotype threat effects (Mrazek et al., 2011). ...
Despite a narrowing trend over the past forty years, the racial academic performance gap between non-Asian-American minority students and European-American students remains an overarching issue in K-12 schooling according to the Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis (2017). Du Bois’s (1903) theory of double consciousness is implicated in the performance gap phenomenon. Though not explicitly connected, Steele and Aronson’s 1995 study revealed stereotype threat (STT) to be an empirical explanation of the negative impact of double consciousness. Steele et al.’s study revealed a psycho-social contributor to the racial academic performance gap, STT. STT is characterized by performance suppression caused by the fear of fulfilling a negative stereotype or the fear of being judged based on a negative stereotype attributed to one’s social identity group. The activation of this phenomenon is related to identity threatening cues, a systemic issue laden in the academic environment (Purdie-Vaughns, Steele, Davies, Ditlmann, & Crosby, 2008). To date, over 300 studies have been conducted on STT according to a meta-analysis conducted by Pennington, Heim, Levy, and Larkin (2016). Though certain experimental studies featuring mentoring as a vehicle for shifting stereotype narratives have yielded useful practices for STT reduction (Good et al., 2003), qualitative design, which is seldomly employed in the STT field, may produce an understanding of the phenomenon that is not possible through a deductive approach (Ezzy, 2002; van Kaam, 1966). The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore African-American adolescent student perceptions of the impact that mentoring has on their schooling experiences while under STT conditions. The findings of this study demonstrated that African-American adolescents perceived mentoring to positively impact their schooling experiences and helped them to cope with STT activating cues in the environment. The participants discussed structural aspects of the relationships, personality attributes of the mentor, and specific mentor guidance. Participants also discussed a documented STT intervention that fell outside of the parameters of their mentoring relationships that positively impacted their schooling experiences and abilities to cope with STT cues – affirmations (Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, & Master, 2006; Walton et al., 2012). Recommendations for practice and future research are presented.
... For example, Schmader and Johns (2003) documented that negative stereotype activation reduced working memory capacity, as measured by the operational span task that required simultaneous storage and processing of information units. Similar results were obtained using other measures of working memory and its executive functions, such as antisaccade tasks (Jamieson and Harkins 2007), the Stroop-color naming task (Richeson and Shelton 2003;Hutchison et al. 2013) or a GO/NO-GO task (Mrazek et al. 2011). Additional analyses confirmed the mediational role of working memory capacity in explaining the effect of stereotype threat on math test results in female samples (Schmader and Johns 2003). ...
A large body of experimental research on stereotype threat concentrated on immediate consequences of this effect. Far less attention has been given to the underlying mechanisms that may explain accumulative and long-term consequences of stereotype threat. To shed new light on the dynamic of stereotype threat, the current research examined the strength of associations between experience of stereotype threat, working memory, mathematical achievement and intellectual helplessness using structural equation modeling on representative sample in three age cohorts (13–16 years). Corroborating previous research, working memory was a significant and stable mediator of the relation between chronic stereotype threat and achievement across cohorts. Moving beyond past work, the results showed that mediation through intellectual helplessness was stronger in older cohorts, offering preliminary support to the hypothesis about an accumulative effect of chronic stereotype threat on mathematical achievement. Results are discussed in terms of motivational models of stereotype threat.
... 20 There is also evidence to determine role of anxiety in increased episodes of mind-wandering through stereotypical threats. 13 Due to impairment of encoding of information, mind-wandering could lead to failures in building a propositional model of a sentence. Thereby, it could affect learning abilities by impairing the construction of a narrative model having sufficient details to allow generating inferences. ...
Background and Objective: The practice of yoga is associated with enhanced psychological wellbeing. The current study assessed the correlation between the duration of yoga practice with state mindfulness, mind wandering and state anxiety. Also, we examined if an additional 20 min of yoga breathing with intermittent breath holding (experimental group) for 8 weeks would affect these psychological variables more than regular yoga practice (control group) alone.
Methods: One hundred sixteen subjects were randomly assigned to experimental (n=60) and control (n=56) groups. State mindfulness attention awareness scale (SMAAS), Mind Wandering Questionnaire (MWQ) and State anxiety inventory were administered at baseline and at the end of 8 weeks.
Results: Baseline assessment revealed a positive correlation of duration of yoga practice with SMAAS scores and negative correlation with MWQ and state anxiety scores. At the end of 8 weeks, both groups demonstrated enhanced psychological functions, but the experimental group receiving additional yoga breathing performed better than the group practicing yoga alone.
Conclusion: An additional practice of yoga breathing with intermittent breath holding was found to enhance the psychological state of young adult yoga practitioners.
... In the same vein, the N170 appears to be sensitive to variations related to social and motivational aspects (Senholzi & Ito, 2013), and it has been considered a crucial ERP component for the study of social interactions (Ito, 2011;Bartholow & Amodio, 2009). Despite an extensive research effort to achieve a better understanding of the factors that can influence face perception, as indexed by N170, it remains unclear how face perception is affected by MW, which is a topic at the intersection of attention research (Thomson, Besner, & Smilek, 2015) and social neuroscience research (Mrazek et al., 2011). ...
Mind wandering (MW) has been recently investigated in many studies. It has been suggested that, during MW, processing of perceptual stimuli is attenuated in favor of internal thoughts, a phenomenon referred to as perceptual decoupling. Perceptual decoupling has been investigated in ERP studies, which have used relatively simple perceptual stimuli, yet it remains unclear if MW can impact the perceptual processing of complex stimuli with real-world relevance. Here, we investigated the impact of MW on behavioral and neural responses to faces. Thirty-six participants completed a novel sustained attention to response task with faces. They were asked to respond to upright faces (nontargets) and withhold responses to inverted faces (targets) and to report intermittently if they were “On task” or “Off task.” Behavioral analyses revealed greater intraindividual coefficient of variation for nontarget faces preceding Off task versus On task. ERP analyses focused primarily on the N170 component associated with face processing but also included the P1 and P3 components. The results revealed attenuated amplitudes to nontarget faces preceding Off task versus On task for the N170, but not for the P3 or P1. These findings suggest decoupled visual processing of faces during MW, which has implications for social neuroscience research.
... 276) and more recent studies have reinforced the idea that MW might constitute a cause of increased difficulty in scholastic setting (e.g., Smallwood et al., 2007). Some studies also suggested that the negative effects of MW on performance might be mediated by stereotype threat (Mrazek et al., 2011;Schuster, Martiny, & Schmader, 2015), such as, in the context of the present study, that of being an unsuccessful student. This stereotype might increase students' MW and anxiety. ...
Background. Mind wandering has commonly been linked to bad scholastic performance; however, such association has rarely been investigated in the classroom. Moreover, in examining such association, motivational variables have been largely ignored.
Aim. We aimed at examining the associations between the dispositional tendency to engage in mind wandering and a series of reading comprehension skills and measures of academic self-concept above and beyond the role of sex, age, test anxiety, self-efficacy and self-regulation strategies.
Sample. Late adolescents (N = 272, 133 females; 17.23 ± 1.10 years) recruited from 15 classes in public high schools.
Methods. Students were examined in their classroom during regular teaching activities and first performed a reading comprehension test. Then, they underwent a battery assessing literacy skills, academic self-concept, the dispositional tendency to mind wander, and aspects related to self-regulated learning.
Results. Reading comprehension and literacy skills (decoding, orthographic awareness, spelling skills, and phonological abilities) were not associated with the tendency to mind wander. Instead, mind wandering, test anxiety and self-efficacy –but not self-regulatory strategies- were independent predictors of academic self-concept.
Conclusions. The present study highlights the importance of evaluating the effects of mind wandering on academic self-concept, taking into account a complex pattern of motivational and emotional variables.
... Finally, if prosecutors believe their position is prejudiced due to a lack of forensic evidence, they may subconsciously behave with less confidence and decisiveness, an effect known in psychology as stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is defined as behaving in a way that substantiates a negative stereotype (Mrazek et al, 2011). It is caused by several mechanisms, such as being distracted and overly monitoring one's own performance. ...
The CSI Effect posits that exposure to television programs that portray forensic science (e.g., CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) can change the way jurors evaluate forensic evidence. The most commonly researched hypothesis under the CSI Effect suggests that shows like CSI depict an unrealistically high standard of forensic science and thus unreasonably inflate the expectations of jurors. Jurors are thus more likely to vote to acquit, and prosecutors face higher burden of proof. We review (1) the theory behind the CSI Effect, (2) the perception of the effect among legal actors, (3) the academic treatment of the effect, and (4) how courts have dealt with the effect. We demonstrate that while legal actors do see the CSI Effect as a serious issue, there is virtually no empirical evidence suggesting it is a real phenomenon. Moreover, many of the remedies employed by courts may do no more than introduce bias into juror decision making or even trigger the CSI Effect when it would not normally occur (i.e., the self-fulfilling prophesy). We end with suggestions for the proper treatment of the CSI Effect in courts, and directions for future scholarly work.
... To the extent that SES predicts differential exposure to stressors, it may also predict patterns in mind wandering and distraction. Studies have reported evidence of mind wandering related to stress (e.g., Banks & Boals, 2017), negative affect (e.g., Smallwood & O'Connor, 2011;Stawarczyk, Majerus, & D'Argembeau, 2013), cued personal concerns (e.g., McVay & Kane, 2013), stereo-type threat (e.g., Mrazek et al., 2011), and sleep deprivation (Poh, Chong, & Chee, 2016). SES is also related to student learning motivation (Briley & Tucker-Drob, 2014). ...
This review proposes that socioeconomic status (SES) may predispose individuals to certain patterns of thought, such as mind wandering, that ultimately contribute to the SES academic achievement gap. We base this hypothesis on the importance of working memory and the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system to mind wandering; as well as on evidence that differences in educational environments contribute to socioeconomic disparities in achievement. This review also argues that mind wandering research has potential for translational and interdisciplinary scholarship. In contrast to fatalistic accounts of academic achievement, which tend to focus on unmalleable student deficits, mind wandering research is already generating evidence of instructional strategies that can help students in authentic educational settings. Moreover, mind wandering research frequently utilizes biographical methods of data collection, such as thought-probes and diary-keeping. In so doing, it can make new contributions to research programs aimed at promoting student-centered perspectives on academic achievement.
The advancement of technology in education has transformed traditional classrooms into virtual learning environments yet concerns persist about how these technologies may inadvertently perpetuate racial stereotypes. Our study employed a 2 × 2 factorial design, with the first factor being the race of participants (Black, White) and the second factor being the gamified environment (stereotyped environment for Black, stereotyped environment for White) to which they were randomly assigned. The dependent variables measured included anxiety levels recorded before and after the main experimental task, performance on an intellectual logic task, and the flow experience. The primary objective of the experiment was to investigate whether racial stereotypes influence the flow experience, anxiety levels, and performance of undergraduate students during a gamified educational intelligence test. Conducted with undergraduate students, the research revealed significant variations in performance and psychological mediators based on race, gender, and university admission method. These findings underscore the importance of considering these factors when designing inclusive educational technologies. This study offers critical insights for integrating racial stereotypes into digital learning environments and emphasizes the need to cultivate learning environments that are equitable and empowering for all students, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds. Additionally, the study identifies limitations such as sample size and the absence of a control condition, and recommends avenues for future research, highlighting the importance of optimal research conditions and more comprehensive experimental designs.
Bu araştırmada üniversite düzeyinde dil öğrenimi alanındaki kalıpyargı tehdidinin erkek öğrencilerin akademik başarısı üzerinde etkisinin incelenmesi amaçlanmıştır. Araştırma amacı doğrultusunda tasarlanan yarı deneysel çalışmada, bir deney ve bir kontrol grubu yer almaktadır. Deney grubunda kalıpyargı tehdidini ortaya çıkarmak için, akademik alanda kızlar lehine görülen cinsiyet farkına vurgu yapılmış ve bu çalışmanın amacının cinsiyet farkını belirlemek olduğu vurgulanmıştır. Açıklama sonrası, okuduğunu anlama testi yapılmış, test bitiminde durumluk kaygı ve kalıpyargı farkındalığı ölçekleri uygulanmıştır. Kontrol grubunda ise başta herhangi bir açıklama yapılmamış, bunun dışındaki uygulamalar deney grubu ile benzer biçimde gerçekleştirilmiştir. Araştırmaya üniversite ikinci sınıfa devam eden 140 öğrenci katılmıştır. Araştırmaya katılan öğrencilerin, 71’i deney 69’u ise kontrol grubunda yer almaktadır. Araştırma verileri, okuduğunu anlama testi, durumluk kaygı envanteri ve kalıpyargı farkındalığı ölçeği ile toplanmıştır. Bu çalışmada elde edilen bulgular, dil öğrenimi alanında erkek öğrencilere yönelik kalıpyargı tehdidinin, erkeklerin akademik başarıları üzerine etkisinin olmadığını göstermektedir. Deney ve kontrol gruplarında yer alan erkek katılımcıların dil öğrenimi alanındaki akademik başarıları benzerdir. Deney grubundaki erkek katılımcıların akademik başarıları ile durumluk kaygıları ve kalıpyargı farkındalıkları arasında anlamlı bir ilişki tespit edilmemiştir.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. One important candidate factor underlying the inattention deficits is a failure of cognitive control, the voluntary goal-oriented control of behavior. Mind-wandering is an example of cognitive control failure, and is characterized by a decoupling of attention from the present task context toward unrelated concerns. Heightened ADHD symptomatology has been associated with increased mind-wandering, and both increased mind-wandering and increased ADHD symptomatology have been linked to increased errors in which participants fail to inhibit a response. However, these studies have important limitations of generalizability. Furthermore, there is a need to investigate compensatory strategies that may influence performance. This dissertation had two primary objectives: (1) to evaluate the relationship between mind-wandering, response inhibition, and ADHD; (2) to assess a potential compensatory strategy to reduce performance deficits in ADHD. We used modified versions of the continuous performance task (CPT) which requires subjects to respond to the majority of trials (90%) and creates a strong prepotent tendency to respond. For the first aim, we adapted the CPT to include embedded mind-wandering probes to measure mind-wandering and ADHD symptomatology in both non-clinical and clinical samples. Results indicated that inattention is linked to increased task-unrelated thoughts, and that task-unrelated thoughts can negatively influence overall task performance and performance on a trial-by-trial level. Based on research suggesting that rest breaks can ameliorate performance declines attributed to diminished attentional control resources, for the second aim we assessed the utility of breaks for individuals with ADHD. The first experiment allowed participants to choose if and when to take breaks in a standard CPT to evaluate if they were able to monitor their thoughts and/or performance and insert breaks to benefit their performance. The second experiment added experimenter-imposed breaks to test if the initiation of the break was a critical variable. Finally, we tested ADHD participants on and off of stimulant medication in the second experiment to measure the effects of medication on performance. Results indicated that stimulant medication and the incorporation of both types of rest breaks can normalize ADHD behavior to the level of control participants.
Despite the explosive growth in stereotype threat (ST) research over the decades, a substantive amount of variability in ST effects still cannot be explained by extant research. While some attribute this unexplained heterogeneity to yet unidentified ST mechanisms, we explored an alternate hypothesis that ST theory is often misspecified in experimental research design, which introduces experimental noise (and hence variability) in stereotype threat effects unlikely to be explained by extant moderators. This study used multilevel meta-analysis to examine the impact of ST misspecification in research design on ST outcomes. Results revealed that ST effects were artificially inflated in studies that failed to include essential conditions necessary for its occurrence. Because most studies in the meta-analysis had either excluded or partially included these conditions, findings from this study suggest that ST effects on women’s performance might be smaller than previously reported in primary and secondary (meta-analytic) studies.
In the present paper, we investigated the link between stereotype threat, school achievement, and domain identification in language arts. We hypothesized that stereotype threat may lead to higher intellectual helplessness, lower working memory capacity, lower achievement, and domain identification but only in young men highly identified with their gender group. To test these assumptions we used self‐descriptive measures of stereotype threat, intellectual helplessness, gender identification, and domain identification. We also evaluated working memory capacity by working memory test and school achievement using grade point average. Our predictions were tested in structural equation modeling on a nationwide sample of 319 young men from coeducational schools, aged 14–16 years. The results revealed that working memory was a mediator of achievement (γ = 0.45, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.34, 0.55]), while intellectual helplessness was related to both domain identification (γ = −0.13, 95% CI = [−0.22, −0.04]) and achievement (γ = −0.13, 95% CI = [−0.21, −0.06]). The proposed model extends our previous work on the role of intellectual helplessness in mathematics by testing the same intervening variable in a different domain, that is, in language arts. We discuss these results in light of previous research on stereotype threat and present practical implications.
Stereotype sind in vielen Bereichen des alltäglichen Lebens von Kindern und Jugendlichen omnipräsent, wobei auch die Schule keine Ausnahme bildet. So gilt Mathematik immer noch als klassisches Jungenfach, während die Mädchen besser lesen und insgesamt besser abschneiden. Inwiefern Stereotype jedoch nicht nur die Fachpräferenz, sondern auch das Leistungspotenzial der Schüler*innen beeinflussen, wurde erst in den letzten 25 Jahren in der Stereotyp-Forschung thematisiert. Im folgenden Kapitel wird daher gezielt dargestellt, welche Effekte Geschlechtsstereotype über Fähigkeiten auf die Leistung von Mädchen und Jungen in der Schule haben können. Die Basis dazu bildet der Stereotype-Threat-Ansatz (Steele und Aronson 1995), dessen Wurzeln und Entwicklungslinien mit Fokus auf die stereotype Bedrohung Lernender in verschiedenen Domänen, nachfolgend aufgezeigt werden.
Conventional wisdom suggests that there is an encoding decrement prior to performing in front of others. We hypothesized that this pre-performance memory deficit—the next-in-line effect (Brenner, 1973)—should also occur in the context of mixed-list memory experiments where one of the conditions requires performance. As the testing ground for this prediction, we used the production effect (i.e., enhanced memory for words that are read aloud vs. silently). Specifically, we examined whether performance anticipation imposes a memorial cost on silent items studied in a mixed list (among “performed” aloud items) relative to a pure-silent list. Experiment 1 established this mixed-list cost in recognition (replicating Bodner, Taikh, & Fawcett, 2014). In Experiments 2 and 3, providing foreknowledge of the task to be performed on upcoming study items—thereby allowing participants to see when they would have to read aloud—led to diminished memory for silent items that were studied immediately before aloud items. In Experiment 4, in the absence of an experimenter, the pre-performance cost to silent items was non-significant (with Bayesian evidence supporting the null), consistent with the notion that the presence of the experimenter (a social factor) contributed to performance anticipation. Taken together, these results imply that performance anticipation drives the mixed-list cost of production shown by the silent items (and may explain costs observed in other memory research). Performance anticipation may reduce memory for pre-performance information by diverting attention away from that information.
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Streszczenie W pracy tej przedstawiony jest matematyczny model opisuj ˛acy odruch
rozszerzania i zw˛e˙zania si˛e ´zrenic szczura wprowadzonego farmakologicznie w stan
narkozy. Na pocz ˛atku przedstawiony jest proces usypiania oraz zastosowane w nim
´srodki farmakologiczne, nast˛epnie stan w jakim znajdował si˛e obiekt badany podczas
snu. Kolejnym krokiem jest opracowanie danych zebranych na potrzeby badania,
a nast˛epnie zbudowanie na ich podstawie poprawnego modelu matematycznego.
Na koncu pracy zaprezentowano jej wyniki.
How does confiding secrets relate to well-being? The current work presents the first empirical examination of mechanisms by which confiding diverse real-world secrets to known others predicts well-being. We examined over 800 participants with more than 10,000 secrets in total, finding that confiding a secret does not predict reduced instances of concealment. Rather, confiding a secret predicts higher well-being through perceived coping efficacy. Correlational and experimental studies find that through confiding a secret, people feel they obtain social support and are more capable in coping with the secret. Additionally, through perceived coping efficacy, confiding a secret predicts less frequent mind wandering to the secret. Confiding predicts higher well-being through changing the way and how often people think about their secret.
Menschen mit psychischen Erkrankungen haben nach wie vor unter Stigmatisierung zu leiden. Das Phänomen Stereotype Threat beschreibt dabei einen situationsabhängigen Stigmaeffekt, welcher die individuelle kognitive und soziale Leistungsfähigkeit beeinträchtigen kann. Bei der Entstehung des Leistungsabfalls in einer Situation, in welcher negative Stereotype zur Gruppe der Betroffenen salient werden, spielt das Auslösen einer Stressreaktion sowie die konsekutive Belegung von Arbeitsgedächtniskapazität eine zentrale Rolle. Erstmals wurde in der vorliegenden Arbeit die Auswirkung von Stereotype Threat auf Menschen mit einer Depression in der Vorgeschichte unter Erhebung psychophysiologischer Stressparameter sowie einer Arbeitsgedächtnistestung untersucht. Die Hypothesen lauteten, dass durch die Intervention messbarer Stress ausgelöst würde und es in der Folge zu einer niedrigeren Arbeitsgedächtnisleistung in der Interventionsgruppe käme.
60 Probanden mit einer Depression in der Vorgeschichte wurden randomisiert einer Interventions- und Kontrollgruppe zugeordnet. Die Induktion von Stereotype Threat erfolgte durch Instruktionen, welche unter anderem die Befragung nach stattgehabten psychischen Erkrankungen enthielten. Unter regelmäßiger Messung des Stressniveaus erfolgte eine Arbeitsgedächtnistestung mittels einer 2-back-Aufgabe. Ferner wurden mit Fragebögen potentielle Moderatoren erhoben.
Die Hypothesen ließen sich nicht bestätigen. Es zeigten sich keine Gruppenunterschiede hinsichtlich der Stressreaktion oder der Arbeitsgedächtnisleistung. Diesbezüglich wurden potentielle methodische Einschränkungen der Arbeit diskutiert, welche in der Rekrutierung und hinsichtlich des Versuchsablaufs bestanden. Als Stärke der Arbeit kann das kontrollierte und randomisierte Design der Studie sowie die umfassende und differenzierte Erhebung der psychologischen und physiologischen Stressparameter angeführt werden.
Es zeigten sich Korrelationen zwischen dem Stressappraisal und der Gruppenidentifikation. Demnach schätzten Probanden, welche sich stark mit der Gruppe der Depressiven identifizierten, die Testsituation als stressiger ein, ihre eigenen Ressourcen, mit der Situation umzugehen, als größer ein. Ferner fanden sich Korrelationen zwischen einem schlechteren Abschneiden in der Arbeitsgedächtnistestung und der Stressreaktion nach der Intervention sowie der expliziten Selbststigmatisierung. Diese Ergebnisse konnten einerseits bestehende Erkenntnisse untermauern, andererseits Implikationen für Folgestudien sowie Hinweise für die weitere Reduktion von Stigmaeffekten bei psychischen Erkrankung liefern.
Investigated, in 2 experiments, whether judgments of happiness and satisfaction with one's life are influenced by mood at the time of judgment. In Exp I, moods were induced by asking 61 undergraduates for vivid descriptions of a recent happy or sad event in their lives. In Exp II, moods were induced by interviewing 84 participants on sunny or rainy days. In both experiments, Ss reported more happiness and satisfaction with their life as a whole when in a good mood than when in a bad mood. However, the negative impact of bad moods was eliminated when Ss were induced to attribute their present feelings to transient external sources irrelevant to the evaluation of their lives; but Ss who were in a good mood were not affected by misattribution manipulations. The data suggest that (a) people use their momentary affective states in making judgments of how happy and satisfied they are with their lives in general and (b) people in unpleasant affective states are more likely to search for and use information to explain their state than are people in pleasant affective states. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Although research has established that stigmatized individuals suffer impaired performance under stereotype threat conditions, the anxiety presumed to mediate this effect has proven difficult to establish. In the current investigation, we explored whether non-verbal measures would fare better than self-reports in capturing stereotype threat anxiety. Gay and heterosexual men interacted with preschool children under stereotype threat or control conditions. As predicted, stereotype-threatened gay men demonstrated more non-verbal anxiety, but not more self-reported anxiety, than non-threatened gays during these interactions. Furthermore, non-verbal anxiety appeared to mediate the effects of stereotype threat on the quality of participants’ childcare skills. We discuss how these findings advance stereotype threat research, and highlight their potential implications for gay childcare workers.
Mind-wandering shares a number of important similarities with thinking in depression. This experiment examines whether mind-wandering provides a useful marker of cognition in dysphoria during a word learning task. Dysphoria was associated with more accessible mind-wandering when attempting to encode verbal items. In addition, in the dysphoric population, periods when the mind wandered led to greater decoupling from task-relevant processing as indexed by slower response times, and greater physiological arousal, as indexed by faster heart rates. In the general population, periods of mind-wandering when attempting to encode information were associated with poor retrieval and high skin conductance. Finally, the extent to which mind-wandering was associated with poor retrieval was associated with an individuals' latency to retrieve specific autobiographical memories from outside the laboratory. These results provide strong evidence for the utility of mind-wandering as a marker for depressive thinking and suggest a number of important implications for therapy for depression.
College students whose test anxiety was measured completed a working memory-intensive math exam with televised distractions. Students were provided with implementation intentions (if–then plans; Gollwitzer, 1999) designed to either help them ignore the distractions (i.e., temptation-inhibiting plans) or focus more intently on the math exam (i.e., task-facilitating plans). Regression analyses showed that as test anxiety increased, the effectiveness of temptation-inhibiting implementation intentions increased, whereas task-facilitating implementation intentions increasingly harmed performance as test anxiety increased. In addition, the consequences of these plans differed significantly for those high in test anxiety. Implications for effective self-regulation by test-anxious students are discussed.
In a series of experiments, a retraining paradigm was used to test the effects of attitudes and stereotypes on individuals' motivation and cognitive capacity in stereotype-threatening contexts. Women trained to have a more positive math attitude exhibited increased math motivation (Study 1). This effect was not observed for men but was magnified among women when negative stereotypes were either primed subtly (Study 2) or indirectly reinforced (Study 3). Although attitudes had no effect on working memory capacity, women retrained to associate their gender with being good at math exhibited increased working memory capacity (Studies 3 and 4), which in turn mediated increased math performance (Study 4) in a stereotype-threatening context. Results suggest that although positive attitudes can motivate stigmatized individuals to engage with threatening domains, stereotypes need to be retrained to give them the cognitive capacity critical for success. Implications for interventions to reduce stereotype threat are discussed.
When the mind wanders, conscious thoughts come to mind that are only loosely related to the task being performed. This phenomenon produces tension within the cognitive sciences because the interfering nature of these thoughts is at odds with the assumption that such processes are functional in daily life. In their comment, McVay and Kane (2010) suggested that failures in executive control can create the conditions that favor mind wandering-a control-failure hypothesis that questions whether mind wandering consumes resources. Whether mind wandering always occurs following a control failure, it is always a conscious reportable experience and so is globally available to the system. Such global availability suggests that mind wandering does indeed demand resources, in particular access to a global workspace that supports conscious experience. Although the control-failure view explains the transient occurrence of mind wandering during demanding tasks, the global availability hypothesis is consistent with all mind wandering, regardless of context; it is implied by many features of the argument proposed by McVay and Kane (2010). Consideration of these issues leads to the conclusion that when the mind wanders, specific information from the default mode becomes globally available to the system; in this respect, mind wandering is resource demanding inasmuch as it occupies the global workspace necessary for consciousness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
Although mind wandering occupies a large proportion of our waking life, its neural basis and relation to ongoing behavior remain controversial. We report an fMRI study that used experience sampling to provide an online measure of mind wandering during a concurrent task. Analyses focused on the interval of time immediately preceding experience sampling probes demonstrate activation of default network regions during mind wandering, a finding consistent with theoretical accounts of default network functions. Activation in medial prefrontal default network regions was observed both in association with subjective self-reports of mind wandering and an independent behavioral measure (performance errors on the concurrent task). In addition to default network activation, mind wandering was associated with executive network recruitment, a finding predicted by behavioral theories of off-task thought and its relation to executive resources. Finally, neural recruitment in both default and executive network regions was strongest when subjects were unaware of their own mind wandering, suggesting that mind wandering is most pronounced when it lacks meta-awareness. The observed parallel recruitment of executive and default network regions--two brain systems that so far have been assumed to work in opposition--suggests that mind wandering may evoke a unique mental state that may allow otherwise opposing networks to work in cooperation. The ability of this study to reveal a number of crucial aspects of the neural recruitment associated with mind wandering underscores the value of combining subjective self-reports with online measures of brain function for advancing our understanding of the neurophenomenology of subjective experience.
This study examined the effect of mood states on mind wandering. Positive, neutral, and negative moods were induced in participants prior to them completing a sustained attention task. Mind wandering was measured by using the frequencies of both behavioral lapses and retrospective indices of subjective experience. Relative to a positive mood, induction of a negative mood led participants to make more lapses, report a greater frequency of task irrelevant thoughts, and become less inclined to reengage attentional resources following a lapse. Positive mood, by contrast, was associated with a better ability to adjust performance after a lapse. These results provide further support for the notion that a negative mood reduces the amount of attentional commitment to the task in hand and may do so by enhancing the focus on task irrelevant personal concerns.
Three studies tested the hypothesis that negative metacognitive interpretations of anxious arousal under stereotype threat create cognitive deficits in intellectually threatening environments. Study 1 showed that among minority and White undergraduates, anxiety about an intelligence test predicted lower working memory when participants were primed with doubt as compared to confidence. Study 2 replicated this pattern with women and showed it to be unique to intellectually threatening environments. Study 3 used emotional reappraisal as an individual difference measure of the tendency to metacognitively reinterpret negative emotions and found that when sympathetic activation was high (indexed by salivary alpha-amylase), women who tended to reappraise negative feelings performed better in math and felt less self-doubt than those low in reappraisal. Overall, findings highlight how metacognitive interpretations of affect can undermine cognitive efficiency under stereotype threat and offer implications for the situational and individual difference variables that buffer people from these effects.
On the basis of the executive-attention theory of working memory capacity (WMC; e.g., M. J. Kane, A. R. A. Conway, D. Z. Hambrick, & R. W. Engle, 2007), the authors tested the relations among WMC, mind wandering, and goal neglect in a sustained attention to response task (SART; a go/no-go task). In 3 SART versions, making conceptual versus perceptual processing demands, subjects periodically indicated their thought content when probed following rare no-go targets. SART processing demands did not affect mind-wandering rates, but mind-wandering rates varied with WMC and predicted goal-neglect errors in the task; furthermore, mind-wandering rates partially mediated the WMC-SART relation, indicating that WMC-related differences in goal neglect were due, in part, to variation in the control of conscious thought.
Psychological disengagement allows stigmatized individuals to cope with negative outcomes in stereotype-relevant domains, but its role in online performance monitoring and adjustment is unknown. This study examined how two forms of disengagement (devaluing and discounting) predict performance monitoring at an early (motivational) and later (interpretational) stage of error processing. Among minority college students, event-related brain activity was measured in response to errors on tasks described neutrally or as diagnostic of intelligence. Results found dissociable effects for error-related negativity (ERN) and later positivity (Pe). When the task was linked to intelligence, valuing academics predicted larger ERNs. Unexpectedly, discounting tendencies predicted smaller Pes when the task was described neutrally, a relationship that was attenuated and somewhat reversed when explicitly linking the task to intelligence. In the diagnostic condition, valuing also predicted more efficient behavioral responses to errors, whereas discounting predicted more negative task construals. Results suggest that among stereotype threatened minority students, devaluing has implications for early stage motivational processes involved in monitoring and responding to errors, whereas discounting may have implications for later construal processes.
Research shows that stereotype threat reduces performance by diminishing executive resources, but less is known about the psychological processes responsible for these impairments. The authors tested the idea that targets of stereotype threat try to regulate their emotions and that this regulation depletes executive resources, resulting in underperformance. Across 4 experiments, they provide converging evidence that targets of stereotype threat spontaneously attempt to control their expression of anxiety and that such emotion regulation depletes executive resources needed to perform well on tests of cognitive ability. They also demonstrate that providing threatened individuals with a means to effectively cope with negative emotions--by reappraising the situation or the meaning of their anxiety--can restore executive resources and improve test performance. They discuss these results within the framework of an integrated process model of stereotype threat, in which affective and cognitive processes interact to undermine performance.
Attention plays an essential role in the construction of the mental models necessary to make sense of ongoing events. In this article, we consider the implications of temporary inattention during reading for the construction and updating of the situation model during text comprehension. We examined how self-reported mind wandering during reading relates to the online construction of the situation model of the narrative, which in this case involved the pseudonym used by a villain in a detective novella. In successful readers, mind wandering without awareness, referred to as zoning out, was less frequent when the text revealed a clue about the villain's identity. Additional analyses indicated that mind wandering interfered with the construction of the situation model independent of the participants' ability to retrieve factual information. The analysis of the temporal consequences of zoning out indicated that lapses had the greatest influence when they occurred early in the narrative. These results confirm the intuition that zoning out during reading is an indication that the construction of the situation model has gone awry, and underscore the fact that our ability to understand ongoing events depends on the ability to pay attention when it matters.
Stereotype threat is being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group. Studies 1 and 2 varied the stereotype vulnerability of Black participants taking a difficult verbal test by varying whether or not their performance was ostensibly diagnostic of ability, and thus, whether or not they were at risk of fulfilling the racial stereotype about their intellectual ability. Reflecting the pressure of this vulnerability, Blacks underperformed in relation to Whites in the ability-diagnostic condition but not in the nondiagnostic condition (with Scholastic Aptitude Tests controlled). Study 3 validated that ability-diagnosticity cognitively activated the racial stereotype in these participants and motivated them not to conform to it, or to be judged by it. Study 4 showed that mere salience of the stereotype could impair Blacks' performance even when the test was not ability diagnostic. The role of stereotype vulnerability in the standardized test performance of ability-stigmatized groups is discussed.
A general theory of domain identification is used to describe achievement barriers still faced by women in advanced quantitative areas and by African Americans in school. The theory assumes that sustained school success requires identification with school and its subdomains; that societal pressures on these groups (e.g., economic disadvantage, gender roles) can frustrate this identification; and that in school domains where these groups are negatively stereotyped, those who have become domain identified face the further barrier of stereotype threat, the threat that others’ judgments or their own actions will negatively stereotype them in the domain. Research shows that this threat dramatically depresses the standardized test performance of women and African Americans who are in the academic vanguard of their groups (offering a new interpretation of group differences in standardized test performance), that it causes disidentification with school, and that practices that reduce this threat can reduce these negative effects.
Mediation is said to occur when a causal effect of some variable X on an outcome Y is explained by some intervening variable M. The authors recommend that with small to moderate samples, bootstrap methods (B. Efron & R. Tibshirani, 1993) be used to assess mediation. Bootstrap tests are powerful because they detect that the sampling distribution of the mediated effect is skewed away from 0. They argue that R. M. Baron and D. A. Kenny's (1986) recommendation of first testing the X --> Y association for statistical significance should not be a requirement when there is a priori belief that the effect size is small or suppression is a possibility. Empirical examples and computer setups for bootstrap analyses are provided.
Although research has shown that priming negative stereotypes leads to lower performance among stigmatized individuals, little is understood about the cognitive mechanism that accounts for these effects. Three experiments tested the hypothesis that stereotype threat interferes with test performance because it reduces individuals' working memory capacity. Results show that priming self-relevant negative stereotypes reduces women's (Experiment 1) and Latinos' (Experiment 2) working memory capacity. The final study revealed that a reduction in working memory capacity mediates the effect of stereotype threat on women's math performance (Experiment 3). Implications for future research on stereotype threat and working memory are discussed.
This article reviews the hypothesis that mind wandering can be integrated into executive models of attention. Evidence suggests that mind wandering shares many similarities with traditional notions of executive control. When mind wandering occurs, the executive components of attention appear to shift away from the primary task, leading to failures in task performance and superficial representations of the external environment. One challenge for incorporating mind wandering into standard executive models is that it often occurs in the absence of explicit intention--a hallmark of controlled processing. However, mind wandering, like other goal-related processes, can be engaged without explicit awareness; thus, mind wandering can be seen as a goal-driven process, albeit one that is not directed toward the primary task.
Stereotype threat (ST) occurs when the awareness of a negative stereotype about a social group in a particular domain produces suboptimal performance by members of that group. Although ST has been repeatedly demonstrated, far less is known about how its effects are realized. Using mathematical problem solving as a test bed, the authors demonstrate in 5 experiments that ST harms math problems that rely heavily on working memory resources--especially phonological aspects of this system. Moreover, by capitalizing on an understanding of the cognitive mechanisms by which ST exerts its impact, the authors show (a) how ST can be alleviated (e.g., by heavily practicing once-susceptible math problems such that they are retrieved directly from long-term memory rather than computed via a working-memory-intensive algorithm) and (b) when it will spill over onto subsequent tasks unrelated to the stereotype in question but dependent on the same cognitive resources that stereotype threat also uses. The current work extends the knowledge of the causal mechanisms of stereotype threat and demonstrates how its effects can be attenuated and propagated.
Successful learning requires that individuals integrate information from the external environment with their own internal representations. In this article, we consider the role that mind wandering plays in education. Mind wandering represents a state of decoupled attention because, instead of processing information from the external environment, our attention is directed toward our own private thoughts and feelings. In principle, because mind wandering is a state of decoupled attention, it represents a fundamental breakdown in the individual's ability to attend (and therefore integrate) information from the external environment. We consider evidence that mind wandering impairs the encoding of information, leading to failures in building a propositional model of a sentence and, ultimately, impairing the building of a narrative model with sufficient detail to allow generating inferences. Next, because recognizing and correcting for mind wandering is a metacognitive skill, certain client groups, such as those suffering from dysphoria or attention deficit disorder, may be unable to correct for the deficits associated with mind wandering, and so may suffer greater negative consequences during education. Finally, we consider how to apply this research to educational settings.
Although the fact that stereotype threat impacts performance is well established, the underlying process(es) is(are) not clear. Recently, T. Schmader and M. Johns (2003) argued for a working memory interference account, which proposes that performance suffers because cognitive resources are expended on processing information associated with negative stereotypes. The antisaccade task provides a vehicle to test this account because optimal performance requires working memory resources to inhibit the tendency to look at an irrelevant, peripheral cue (the prepotent response) and to generate volitional saccades to the target. If stereotype threat occupies working memory resources, then the ability to inhibit the prepotent response and to launch volitional saccades will be impaired, and performance will suffer. In contrast, S. Harkins's (2006) mere effort account argues that stereotype threat participants are motivated to perform well, which potentiates the prepotent response, but also leads to efforts to counter this tendency if participants recognize that the response is incorrect, know the correct response, and have the opportunity to make it. Results from 4 experiments support the mere effort but not the working memory interference account.
Research showing that activation of negative stereotypes can impair the performance of stigmatized individuals on a wide variety of tasks has proliferated. However, a complete understanding of the processes underlying these stereotype threat effects on behavior is still lacking. The authors examine stereotype threat in the context of research on stress arousal, vigilance, working memory, and self-regulation to develop a process model of how negative stereotypes impair performance on cognitive and social tasks that require controlled processing, as well as sensorimotor tasks that require automatic processing. The authors argue that stereotype threat disrupts performance via 3 distinct, yet interrelated, mechanisms: (a) a physiological stress response that directly impairs prefrontal processing, (b) a tendency to actively monitor performance, and (c) efforts to suppress negative thoughts and emotions in the service of self-regulation. These mechanisms combine to consume executive resources needed to perform well on cognitive and social tasks. The active monitoring mechanism disrupts performance on sensorimotor tasks directly. Empirical evidence for these assertions is reviewed, and implications for interventions designed to alleviate stereotype threat are discussed.
A general theory of domain identification is used to describe achievement barriers still faced by women in advanced quantitative areas and by African Americans in school. The theory assumes that sustained school success requires identification with school and its subdomains; that societal pressures on these groups (e.g., economic disadvantage, gender roles) can frustrate this identification; and that in school domains where these groups are negatively stereotyped, those who have become domain identified face the further barrier of stereotype threat, the threat that others' judgments or their own actions will negatively stereotype them in the domain. Research shows that this threat dramatically depresses the standardized test performance of women and African Americans who are in the academic vanguard of their groups (offering a new interpretation of group differences in standardized test performance), that it causes disidentification with school, and that practices that reduce this threat can reduce these negative effects.
Two experiments examined the use of behavioral self-handicapping as a strategy for coping with stereotype threat. Using sports as the performance context, it was predicted that if a sports test was framed as a measure of “natural athletic ability,” White participants would feel threatened about confirming the negative stereotype about poor White athleticism and would practice less before the test as compared to control groups. The data from Experiment 1 supported the prediction and showed that the effect of stereotype threat on self-handicapping was moderated by participants’ level of psychological engagement in sports. Experiment 2 showed that engaged White participants practiced less than engaged Hispanic participants when their performance was linked to natural athletic ability. The discussion focuses on the processes by which the salience of a negative stereotype in a performance context induces proactive strategies for coping with the implications of a poor performance.
Insufficient attention to tasks can result in slips of action as automatic, unintended action sequences are triggered inappropriately. Such slips arise in part from deficits in sustained attention, which are particularly likely to happen following frontal lobe and white matter damage in traumatic brain injury (TBI). We present a reliable laboratory paradigm that elicits such slips of action and demonstrates high correlations between the severity of brain damage and relative-reported everyday attention failures in a group of 34 TBI patients. We also demonstrate significant correlations between self-and informant-reported everyday attentional failures and performance on this paradigm in a group of 75 normal controls. The paradigm (the Sustained Attention to Response Task—SART) involves the withholding of key presses to rare (one in nine) targets. Performance on the SART correlates significantly with performance on tests of sustained attention, but not other types of attention, supporting the view that this is indeed a measure of sustained attention. We also show that errors (false presses) on the SART can be predicted by a significant shortening of reaction times in the immediately preceding responses, supporting the view that these errors are a result of `drift' of controlled processing into automatic responding consequent on impaired sustained attention to task. We also report a highly significant correlation of −0.58 between SART performance and Glasgow Coma Scale Scores in the TBI group.
Seemingly insignificant features of the context can undermine the quantitative performance of skilled females—an effect attributed to stereotype threat. The present studies tested the hypotheses that stereotype threat triggers arousal, and that attributions about that arousal could moderate the effects of stereotype threat on performance. To examine whether arousal is triggered by stereotype threat, we conducted two experiments in which female participants were asked to take a math test under conditions of stereotype threat or not. In Study 1, women under stereotype threat performed better on an easy threat-irrelevant task, but worse on a difficult threat-irrelevant task than women not under threat. In Study 2, threatened women underperformed on a math test, but this underperformance was attenuated for women directed to misattribute their arousal. These results suggest that arousal—and how arousal is attributed—may play an important role in the debilitating effects of stereotype threat.
The mere effort account argues that stereotype threat motivates participants to want to perform well, which potentiates prepotent responses. If the prepotent response is correct, performance is facilitated. If incorrect and participants do not know, or lack the knowledge or time required for correction, performance is debilitated. The Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) quantitative test is made up of two problem types: (a) solve problems, which require the solution of an equation, and (b) comparison problems, which require the use of logic and estimation. Previous research shows that the prepotent tendency is to attempt to solve the equations. Consistent with mere effort predictions, Experiment 1 demonstrates that threatened participants perform better than controls on solve problems (prepotent response correct) but worse than controls on comparison problems (prepotent response incorrect). Experiment 2 shows that a simple instruction as to the correct solution approach eliminates the performance deficit on comparison problems.
We present arguments and evidence for a three-state attentional model of task engagement/disengagement. The model postulates three states of mind-wandering: occurrent task inattention, generic task inattention, and response disengagement. We hypothesize that all three states are both causes and consequences of task performance outcomes and apply across a variety of experimental and real-world tasks. We apply this model to the analysis of a widely used GO/NOGO task, the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). We identify three performance characteristics of the SART that map onto the three states of the model: RT variability, anticipations, and omissions. Predictions based on the model are tested, and largely corroborated, via regression and lag-sequential analyses of both successful and unsuccessful withholding on NOGO trials as well as self-reported mind-wandering and everyday cognitive errors. The results revealed theoretically consistent temporal associations among the state indicators and between these and SART errors as well as with self-report measures. Lag analysis was consistent with the hypotheses that temporal transitions among states are often extremely abrupt and that the association between mind-wandering and performance is bidirectional. The bidirectional effects suggest that errors constitute important occasions for reactive mind-wandering. The model also enables concrete phenomenological, behavioral, and physiological predictions for future research.
A distinction is drawn between non-conscious (unexperienced), conscious (experienced), and meta-conscious (re-represented) mental processes. There is evidence for two types of dissociations between consciousness and meta-consciousness, the latter being defined as the intermittent explicit re-representation of the contents of consciousness. Temporal dissociations occur when an individual, who previously lacked meta-consciousness about the contents of consciousness, directs meta-consciousness towards those contents; for example, catching one's mind wandering during reading. Once meta-consciousness is triggered, translation dissociations can occur if the re-representation process misrepresents the original experience, such as when one verbally reflects on non-verbal experiences or takes stock of subtle or ambiguous experiences.
Task unrelated thought (TUT) refers to thought directed away from the current situation, for example a daydream. Three experiments were conducted on healthy participants, with two broad aims. First, to contrast distributed and encapsulated views of cognition by comparing the encoding of categorical and random lists of words (Experiments One and Two). Second, to examine the consequences of experiencing TUT during study on the subsequent retrieval of information (Experiments One, Two, and Three). Experiments One and Two demonstrated lower levels of TUT and higher levels of word-fragment completion whilst encoding categorical relative to random stimuli, supporting the role of a distributed resource in the maintenance of TUT. In addition the results of all three experiments suggested that experiencing TUT during study had a measurable effect on subsequent retrieval. TUT was associated with increased frequency of false alarms at retrieval (Experiment One). In the subsequent experiments TUT was associated with no advantage to retrieval based on recollection, by manipulating instructions at encoding (Experiment Two), and/or at retrieval (Experiment Three). The implications of the results of all three experiments are discussed in terms of recent accounts of memory retrieval and conscious awareness.
We tested whether informing women about stereotype threat is a useful intervention to improve their performance in a threatening testing situation. Men and women completed difficult math problems described either as a problem-solving task or as a math test. In a third (teaching-intervention) condition, the test was also described as a math test, but participants were additionally informed that stereotype threat could interfere with women's math performance. Results showed that women performed worse than men when the problems were described as a math test (and stereotype threat was not discussed), but did not differ from men in the problem-solving condition or in the condition in which they learned about stereotype threat. For women, attributing anxiety to gender stereotypes was associated with lower performance in the math-test condition but improved performance in the teaching-intervention condition. The results suggest that teaching about stereotype threat might offer a practical means of reducing its detrimental effects.
This study investigated the role of negative thinking as a potential mediator of performance deficits under stereotype threat. After being assigned to a stereotype-threat or a no-threat condition, 60 female participants were asked to complete a difficult math task. Using the thought-listing technique, women under stereotype threat reported a higher number of negative thoughts specifically related to the test and to mathematics compared with women in the no-threat condition. Moreover, women under stereotype threat also showed a sharp decrease in performance that (a) was most pronounced in the second half of the test and (b) was mediated by the increase in negative thinking.
This research examined whether stigma diminishes people's ability to control their behaviors. Because coping with stigma requires self-regulation, and self-regulation is a limited-capacity resource, we predicted that individuals belonging to stigmatized groups are less able to regulate their own behavior when they become conscious of their stigmatizing status or enter threatening environments. Study 1 uncovered a correlation between stigma sensitivity and self-regulation; the more Black college students were sensitive to prejudice, the less self-control they reported having. By experimentally activating stigma, Studies 2 and 3 provided causal evidence for stigma's ego-depleting qualities: When their stigma was activated, stigmatized participants (Black students and females) showed impaired self-control in two very different domains (attentional and physical self-regulation). These results suggest that (a) stigma is ego depleting and (b) coping with it can weaken the ability to control and regulate one's behaviors in domains unrelated to the stigma.
Validation of a comprehensive stress state questionnaire: Towards a state big three? In I. Merville, I
- G Matthews
- L Joyner
- K Gilliland
- J Huggins
- S Falconer
Matthews, G., Joyner, L., Gilliland, K., Huggins, J., & Falconer, S. (1999). Validation of a comprehensive stress state questionnaire: Towards a state big three? In I. Merville, I. J. Deary, F. DeFruyt, & F. Ostendorf (Eds.), Personality psychology in Europe (pp. 335–350). Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.
Retraining implicit attitudes and stereotypes to distinguish motivation from performance in a stereotype threatening domain
- C E Forbes
- T Schmader
Forbes, C. E., & Schmader, T. (2010). Retraining implicit attitudes and stereotypes to distinguish motivation from performance in a stereotype threatening domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 740–754.
Knowing is half the battle: Teaching stereotype threat as a means of improving women's math performance
- M Johns
- T Schmader
- A Martens
Johns, M., Schmader, T., & Martens, A. (2005). Knowing is half the battle: Teaching
stereotype threat as a means of improving women's math performance.
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