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Social identity, stereotype threat, and self-theories
Abstract
Each of us possesses multiple social identities. For example, our sex, age, race, social class, religion, political beliefs, and professions are all potential social identities. In certain contexts in which we find ourselves, that social identity may be devalued. For example, Democrats at the Republican National Convention, gays and lesbians at a custody hearing, a lone woman at a corporate board of directors meeting, black people in an all-white, southern neighborhood, or an Arab flight attendant with an American or European airline - all are at risk of having a component of their social identities devalued in the respective contexts. In response to this devaluation, they may find that their behavior or sense of self changes. Perhaps the female corporate board member speaks less persuasively than she is capable of speaking, or perhaps the Arab flight attendant chooses a different occupation, thus changing his professional identity. One need not be in an extreme situation to feel the weight of a devalued social identity. More subtle situations may also place a burden upon individuals who are in some way stigmatized. For example, when a woman takes a math test in the presence of men, she may be reminded about the stereotype of male superiority in mathematics that is alive in our culture (Spencer, Steele, and Quinn 1999; Steele and Aronson 1995). Being a woman, and thus, having a social identity that is devalued vis-à-vis mathematics ability, she may have a sense that she could be judged or treated in terms of the stereotype or that she might inadvertently confirm the stereotype. This sense can disrupt her ability to perform up to her potential, a predicament known as "stereotype threat" (Steele and Aronson 1995). In this chapter we will review the literature on stereotype threat as it relates to social identity. Specifically, we will discuss not only how people's social identity can either protect them from or create vulnerability to stereotype threat, but also how the experience of stereotype threat can influence their social identity. Thus, we will show that social identity and stereotype threat have a reciprocal relationship. Finally, we will discuss methods of protecting both social identity and achievement from the negative effects of stereotypes1.
... It is generally believed that everyone maintains multiple social identities (Good, Dweck, & Aronson, 2007 ). Moreover, these identities can be degraded in particular contexts. ...
... However, when positive group perceptions are challenged, individuals may experience a sense of social identity threat. Whilst there are several types of social identity threat (Branscombe, Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 1999 ), stereotype threat is the most well-known and moststudied in social psychology (Ben-Zeev, Fein, & Inzlicht, 2005; Cadinu, Maass, Frigerio, Impagliazzo, & Latinotti, 2003; Good et al., 2007; Inzlicht & Kang, 2010; Keller & Dauenheimer, 2003). It is induced by evaluative situations in which negative stereotyping of a group causes its members to fear the risk of confirming it as a self-characterization (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995). ...
... First of all, it is crucial to inquire into performance as previous studies have shown that the effects of stereotype threat often manifest themselves in performance deficits (Cadinu, Maass, Rosabianca, & Kiesner, 2005 ). For instance, it has been found that the unpleasant idea that one's behavior could be judged in terms of the stereotype might paradoxically confirm this stereotype by underperforming to someone's potential (Good et al., 2007 ). Likewise , research has revealed that stereotyped identities anticipate this process by having low performance expectations prior to an evaluative task (Cadinu et al., 2003 ). ...
... Stereotype threat is a related process associated with the racial and cultural oppression of African Americans that has been used to explain the under-academic performance of African American students (Good, Dweck, & Aronson, 2007;King et al., 2014;Steele, 1997). Stereotype threat can be defined as the underperformance on a task by members of a group when that group is negatively stereotyped to perform poorly on that task and said stereotype has been recently cued or brought to their attention (Good et al., 2007). ...
... Stereotype threat is a related process associated with the racial and cultural oppression of African Americans that has been used to explain the under-academic performance of African American students (Good, Dweck, & Aronson, 2007;King et al., 2014;Steele, 1997). Stereotype threat can be defined as the underperformance on a task by members of a group when that group is negatively stereotyped to perform poorly on that task and said stereotype has been recently cued or brought to their attention (Good et al., 2007). Stereotype threat has been directly linked to the academic underperformance of African American students through the prompting of negative societal stereotypes in the minds of these students regarding the lower IQ of African Americans and/or the lower academic abilities of African American students (Woodcock et al., 2012). ...
Social justice, ensuring that all students receive access to equitable educational resources and opportunities to succeed academically, is a guiding principle for school counselors. With this ideal in mind, specific sociocultural factors that affect the academic achievement of African American students in urban school settings are considered. Subsequently, the four themes of the American School Counselor Association’s National Model—leadership, advocacy, collaboration, and systematic change—are used to provide school counselors in urban schools with guidelines to address the academic achievement of African American students related to these sociocultural factors.
... An example of this is the disproportionate number of Indigenous scientists (McAllister, 2022) and academics working in universities (McAllister et al., 2019). In essence, Indigenous students are more likely to disidentify and disengage from domains in which they experience a threat and remove the influence these domains have on their identities (Good et al., 2007). ...
Indigenous student academic identities are developed, experienced, and expressed in unique ways by Indigenous students. Drawing from Social Identity Theory, Stereotype Threat, and Indigenous Social-Psychological Theory this chapter explains how schools can create environments that enable Indigenous students to succeed alongside other students. Attention must also be paid to their identities, particularly their ethnic and cultural identities and what this means for them, their whānau and wider communities. The Mana Model presented in the second half of this chapter, developed from an Indigenous Māori worldview, provides a framework for understanding the important conditions that Indigenous students need to succeed and thrive at school.
... Research internationally and in New Zealand has shown that a strong sense of belonging and ethnic identity can provide protection from the effects of stereotype threat and bias (Altschul et al., 2006;Good et al., 2007;Webber et al., 2013;Webber & Macfarlane, 2018). An important lever to create a sense of belonging in schools are positive student-teacher relationships alongside high teacher expectations and beliefs in students' ability. ...
Previous research demonstrates that teacher judgments tend to be systematically lower for ethnic minority students, even after controlling for standardized achievement results. However, the extent to which such discrepancies differentially relate to students’ learning and achievement is less explored. The current study analyzed data from 46 schools, 198 classrooms, and 2,935 students in New Zealand to examine the association between teacher judgment inaccuracies and students’ subsequent progress in writing, in a context where teacher judgments were used as students’ final summative grade in school reports to parents and students. Results from hierarchical linear modelling showed that, overall, students who received teacher judgments that were higher than expected given their standardized achievement results, progressed faster the following year. The extent to which rate of progress was associated with discrepant teacher judgments was more pronounced for European students, than among students who were Indigenous Māori, Pacific, or of other ethnicities. These findings suggest that ethnic minority students may be more likely to form external (rather than internal) attributions in response to received teacher judgments that seem to be influenced by negative bias, potentially serving as a self-protective mechanism. Further, the resultant “boost” for European students may in fact contribute to the persistence of achievement inequities between different ethnic groups, particularly because positively biased teacher judgments are significantly more likely to occur for ethnic majority students.
... In bestimmten Situationen, wie etwa Leis tungssituationen in der Schule, kann die soziale Identität abgewertet werden. Bei einer starken Identifikation mit der stereotypisierten Gruppe ist eine höhere Vulnerabilität für ST gegeben und Leistungseinbußen treten auf (Good, Dweck & Aronson, 2007). Menschen mit einem MIG ent wickeln sowohl eine Identität als Mitglied ihrer Herkunfts kultur als auch eine Identität bezogen auf die Aufnahme kultur (Zander & Hannover, 2013 der Aufnahmekultur und weniger stark mit der Herkunfts kultur identifizierten. ...
Zusammenfassung. Erwachsene und Jugendliche ohne Migrationshintergrund (MIG) schreiben Personen mit türkischem MIG, der größten Migrationsgruppe in Deutschland, geringere Kompetenzen und Leistungen zu. Inwiefern bereits bei Kindern solche (negativen) impliziten Einstellungen gegenüber Menschen mit türkischem MIG vorliegen, ist bislang ungeklärt und wurde daher in dieser Studie überprüft. Auch wurde analysiert, ob sich Grundschulkinder mit türkischem und ohne MIG in ihren Einstellungen unterscheiden. Zudem wurde geprüft, ob die soziale Integration, die wahrgenommene Diskriminierung sowie die Identifikation mit der Aufnahme- und Herkunftskultur mit impliziten Einstellungen in Zusammenhang standen. Datengrundlage bildeten Angaben von 240 Viertklässlerinnen und -klässlern (44.6% weiblich, 18.3% mit türkischem MIG). Zur Messung impliziter Einstellungen bearbeiteten die Kinder einen Impliziten Assoziationstest. Des Weiteren beantworteten sie Fragen zu den interessierenden Variablen. Bei den Grundschulkindern lagen negative implizite Einstellungen vor ( d = 0.21). Konkret verfügten Kinder ohne MIG im Gegensatz zu Kindern mit türkischem MIG im Mittel über negative implizite Einstellungen ( d = 0.39). Für die Gesamtstichprobe zeigte sich, dass eine stärkere Identifikation mit Deutschland (ß = .14), der Aufnahmekultur, in Zusammenhang mit negativen impliziten Einstellungen stand ( R ² = .03). Die Ergebnisse werden sowohl inhaltlich als auch hinsichtlich methodischer Gesichtspunkte diskutiert. Implikationen für Forschung und Praxis werden vorgestellt.
... Imagine a social context like the contemporary USA, where blacks have been and still are discriminated because of their visible traits. For them, interpreting their racial identity as a social construct with no biological basis is of fundamental importance to perceive themselves free of racist stereotype threats and most importantly free to be who they want to be (Good et al., 2007). All the worse racist prejudices are in fact founded on biological conceptions of race, as the literature in social psychology clearly shows (Williams and Eberhardt, 2008). ...
Purpose
This study aims to explore whether face recognition technology – as it is intensely used by state and local police departments and law enforcement agencies – is racism free or, on the contrary, is affected by racial biases and/or racist prejudices, thus reinforcing overall racial discrimination.
Design/methodology/approach
The study investigates the causal pathways through which face recognition technology may reinforce the racial disproportion in enforcement; it also inquires whether it further discriminates black people by making them experience more racial discrimination and self-identify more decisively as black – two conditions that are shown to be harmful in various respects.
Findings
This study shows that face recognition technology, as it is produced, implemented and used in Western societies, reinforces existing racial disparities in stop, investigation, arrest and incarceration rates because of racist prejudices and even contributes to strengthen the unhealthy effects of racism on historically disadvantaged racial groups, like black people.
Practical implications
The findings hope to make law enforcement agencies and software companies aware that they must take adequate action against the racially discriminative effects of the use of face recognition technology.
Social implications
This study highlights that no implementation of an allegedly racism-free biometric technology is safe from the risk of racially discriminating, simply because each implementation leans against our society, which is affected by racism in many persisting ways.
Originality/value
While the ethical survey of biometric technologies is traditionally framed in the discourse of universal rights, this study explores an issue that has not been deeply scrutinized so far, that is, how face recognition technology differently affects distinct racial groups and how it contributes to racial discrimination.
... This insidious dynamic occurs almost automatically in response to dialogue, curricula, and other didactic exchanges that are, more often than not, based primarily on an Anglo-Saxon perspective (Diemer, 2007). This cultural switching is learned behavior that facilitates survival and acceptance in a society that, historically, has not embraced people of African descent (Good, Dweck, & Aronson, 2007). ...
E-learning, increasingly employed in nursing education, has been embraced as a means to enhance options for all students, particularly those with limited educational opportunities. Although a desire to increase access for underserved students is often cited, disparities in availability, usage, and quality of e-learning persist among diverse households and student populations when compared to the general population. In this article, these issues will be examined along with reflection on the extent to which culture has been integrated into on-line design and instruction. Historical and cultural aspects, circumscribing virtual classrooms, are discussed using African Americans as an exemplar. The imperative to harness the democratizing potential of this educational format is underscored. In this article, culture will be examined in light of the significant growth in on-line nursing education over the past several decades.
... African American students are presented as behaving in ways that are predominantly identified with being Black (e.g., speaking Ebonics, playing basketball, wearing pants that sag) and are " schooled " to adopt behaviors and competencies deemed acceptable within White culture as a key to gaining or maintaining academic achievement (Diemer, 2007; Oyserman, Brickman, & Rhodes, 2007). However, there appears to be little room within the U.S. education system for Black students to exhibit their own culture without being subject to misrecognition, misunderstanding, and disciplinary sanctions (Good, Dweck, & Aronson, 2007; Maryshow, Hurley, Allen, Tyler, & Boykin, 2005 ). Students' cultural assets are frequently misrecognized (George, 2012; Walshaw, 2011), causing Black students to be misidentified as deficient in their level of learning, language, ideologies, and practices (Hand & Taylor, 2008; Malloy & Malloy, 1998; Martin, 2007 Martin, , 2009). ...
In this article, the author discusses the complex challenges of high-achieving Black students who are successful in becoming immersed in predominately White STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) spaces and how such immersion can exacerbate their experiences of racial stereotyping and other forms of racial bias. The author illustrates these complex racialized experiences through the story of Maurice, a high-achieving high school mathematics student who successfully negotiated the White spaces he occupied yet did not indicate interest in pursuing a STEM-related career. Although Maurice developed sophisticated bicultural competencies that allowed STEM professionals and educators to view him positively, he decided that compromising his own racial, cultural, and individual identities to pursue a STEM college major and career was too costly. The discussion in general highlights how racial and ethnic stereotyping which is endemic throughout STEM education and careers can push mathematically competent Black students out of the STEM pipeline prematurely.
... Kafai and Peppler (2011) point out that while research shows that online communities can provide abundant and complex learning opportunities, effective participation in large-scale groups is largely unknown. Following up on decades of research first published by Steele and Aronson (1995) , research shows that environments play a role in shaping womens' and minorities' interest and performance in STEM educational environments and careers (Hill, Corbett & St Rose, 2010; Good, Dweck & Aronson, 2007; Inzlicht & Good, 2006). A study from the American Association of University Women (Hill, Corbett & St Rose, 2010) found that environments played a big role in undermining female performance and interest in STEM fields, despite their skills and expertise. ...
We explore the relationship between online gaming communities (which literature shows act as informal learning environments) and experience in game culture, which has been shown to be inequitable, harassing and otherwise unsupportive to certain players, like females. Specifically, this study explores the experiences of gamers in gaming clans, both explicitly gender supportive and not, to see if they can serve as protective spaces for vulnerable players. Ultimately, the goal is to inform the design of equitable gaming environments.
... Regardless of the specific age or grade level at which negative stereotypes were found to affect performance, these studies illustrate that stereotype threat begins to undermine performance in children's elementary years. And by late adolescence, its cumulative effects can undermine students' career plans (Good et al., in preparation-a), social identities (Good, Dweck, & Aronson, 2007), and performance on high-stakes evaluations. ...
It is well established that negative stereotypes can undermine women's performance on mathematics tests. Despite considerable laboratory evidence for the role of “stereotype threat” in girls' and women's math test performance, the relevance of such findings for the “real world” gender test-score gap remains unclear and debates about causes focus primarily on innate sex differences in cognitive capacity. Reported here are results of a field experiment that tested the usefulness of the stereotype threat formulation for understanding women's performance in upper levels of college mathematics — men and women who are highly motivated and proficient mathematicians and who are in the pipeline to mathematics and science professions. Our primary hypothesis was confirmed. Test performance of women in a stereotype-nullifying presentation of the test in an experimental group was raised significantly to surpass that of the men in the course. In a control group, in which test-takers were given the test under normal test instructions, women and men performed equally. The pattern of results suggests that even among the most highly qualified and persistent women in college mathematics, stereotype threat suppresses test performance.
When academics, politicians, and advocates vie for your attention – and your vote – in educational reform, it is useful to have criteria to evaluate their proposals. The goal of this chapter is to introduce criteria for sound educational policies, programs, and practices.
Biculturalism was examined as a factor that may positively affect the academic achievement of African American high school students, beyond cultural identity and self-esteem. Hierarchical regression analyses determined that cultural identity and academic self-esteem were important factors for academic achievement, but not biculturalism. Implications and future research are discussed.
Se examinó el biculturalismo como un factor que puede afectar positivamente al rendimiento académico de los alumnos de educación secundaria Afroamericanos, más allá de la identidad cultural y la autoestima. Los análisis de regresión jerárquica determinaron que la identidad cultural y la autoestima académica fueron factores importantes para el rendimiento académico, pero no el biculturalismo. Se discutieron implicaciones e investigaciones futuras.
The data drawn from interviews with 55 second-generation Iranian American adolescents revealed that pride in ancient Persian culture, the adolescents’ physical characteristics, perceived stereotypes, and community point of reference all combined to affect ethnic identity as well as to reinforce a sense of ethnic loyalty. The contextual factors that influenced ethnic identity retention were family connectedness, language, community ties, ethnic pride, engagement in cultural activities and traditions, and cultural beliefs including mannerisms and an emphasis on education. Females were more likely than their male counterparts to retain the Persian language and to engage in Persian entertainment. Furthermore, the majority of the participants self-identified themselves as Persian instead of Iranian, due to the stereotypes and negative portrayals of Iranians in the media and politics. Adolescents from Jewish and Baha’i faiths asserted their religious identity more than their ethnic identity.
The study proposes that in order to design educational games that address equitable learning outcomes, we need to understand contextual factors that can have differential effects on achievement across gender, ethnicity, culture and sexuality. Research on social identity formation, stereotype threat, school climate and the digital identity divide all underscore the importance of social context in shaping identification with, as well as confidence and performance in learning content areas, particularly math, science and technology (which includes computers and gaming). Past literature highlights that females and ethnic minorities are the most vulnerable to bias and negative stereotypes in these domains. Gender and its intersections with ethnicity and sexuality were investigated in game culture through an exploratory mixed-methods study. It consisted of a multi-year ethnography of online gaming activities in the greater gaming culture and a female-supportive online gaming community (with members across gender), as well as surveys developed from ethnographic themes. Ethnographic findings confirm that harassment is a pervasive gatekeeping practice that particularly targets and affects females and ethnic minorities in game culture and leads to silencing and marginalizing female game play; female gamers continuously wrestle with competing gendered expectations that undermined their play, particularly in co-ed environments, though also in female-supportive ones; and the female-oriented "clan" creates learning opportunities and access to female role models (that defy stereotypes) in ways that help level the playing field. Survey results demonstrate that stereotype threat, which has implications for learning and long-term outcomes through lowered confidence, performance and interest in a domain, can occur in game culture, and that females and ethnic minorities are statistically significantly more vulnerable to it. However, latent internalized gender schema (or one's internalized sense of masculinity or femininity) significantly interacts with vulnerability. Male and female members of a female-supportive clan scored significantly higher in their gaming identification and self-concept, and females of that clan were more likely to play frequently online, helping to demonstrate the positive role of supportive communities in mitigating the potential negative effects of bias and stereotype threat. The dissertation further makes recommendations for the design of efficacious and equitable educational games and learning environments.
"Like many other Blacks," recounted African American tennis great Arthur Ashe, "when I find myself in a new public situation, I will count" (Ashe, 1993, p. 131). Ashe, who played a sport that was and still is dominated by Whites, counted his "Blackness" frequently. By "counting", Ashe was referring to the difficulty he encountered as a member of a group that is outnumbered and devalued in American society; he counted the number of Black faces in a room to determine how well his social identity was valued and represented. It turns out that many of us engage in a similar, albeit less conscious, form of mental arithmetic. We scan the environment and "count" those features about ourselves that stand out. When those features are related to a stigmatized social identity, we, like Ashe, may be distressed and burdened by negative stereotypes associated with our identity. For the past few years, our research
