Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

310 CHAPTER 7 Thinking, Language, and IntelligenceCULTURE AND HUMAN BEHAVIORPerforming with a Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Undermine PerformanceYour anxiety intensifies as you walk into the testing center. Youknow how much you’ve prepared for this test. You should feelconfident, but you can’t ignore the nagging awareness that noteveryone expects you to do well. Can your performance beinfluenced by your awareness of those expectations?Standardized testing situations are designed so that everyoneis treated as uniformly as possible. Nevertheless, some factors,such as the attitudes and feelings that individuals bring to thetesting situation, can’t be standardized. Among the most powerfulof these factors are the expectations that you think otherpeople might hold about your performance.As psychologist Claude Steele (1997) discovered, if thoseexpectations are negative, being aware of that fact can causeyou to perform below your actual ability level. Steele coined theterm stereotype threat to describe this phenomenon. It’s a responsethat occurs when members of a group are aware of anegative stereotype about their group and fear they will bejudged in terms of that stereotype. Even more unsettling is thefear that you might somehow confirm the stereotype, evenwhen you know that the negative beliefs are false.For example, one common stereotype is that women performpoorly in math, especially advanced mathematics. Multiple studieshave shown that when women are reminded of their genderidentity before taking an advanced mathematics test, theirscores are lower than would be expected (see Steele & others,2007). Even mathematically gifted women show a drop in scoreswhen they are made aware of gender stereotypes (Good & others,2008; Kiefer & Sekaquaptewa, 2007).What about positive stereotypes, such as the racial stereotypethat Asians are good at advanced mathematics? In a relatedphenomenon, called stereotype lift, awareness of positiveexpectations can actually improve performance on tasks(Walton & Cohen, 2003).Psychologist Margaret Shih and her colleagues (1999, 2006)showed how easily gender and racial stereotypes can be manipulatedto affect test performance. In one study, mathematicallygifted Asian-American female college students were randomlyassigned to three groups. Group 1 filled out a questionnaireabout their Asian background, designed to remind them of theirAsian identity. Group 2 filled out a questionnaire designed toremind them of their female identity. Group 3 was the controlgroup and filled out a neutral questionnaire.The results? The students who were reminded of their racialidentity as Asians scored significantly higher on the exam than thestudents who were reminded of their gender identity as women.The control group of female students who filled out the neutralquestionnaire scored in the middle of the other two groups.In another study, Shih and her colleagues (2006) assessed theperformance of Asian-American women on a test of verbal ability,an area in which women are stereotypically expected toexcel but Asians are not. In this study, the women scored higheron the verbal test when reminded of the gender identity, butscored lower on the test when reminded of their racial identity.Members of virtually any group can experience a decline inperformance due to stereotype threat (Schmader & others,2008). For example:• When a test was described as measuring “problem-solvingskills,” African-American students did just as well as white students.But when told that the same test measured “intellectualability,” African-American students scored lower than whitestudents (Aronson & others, 2002; Steele & Aronson, 1995).Testing, Testing, Testing . . . Virtually allcollege students will be evaluated withstandardized tests at some point in theircollege careers. Although great pains aretaken to make tests as unbiased andobjective as possible, many factors, bothpersonal and situational,can affect performance ontests. Cultural factors,familiarity with the testingprocess, and anxiety ornervousness are just a fewof the factors that canskew test results. So perhapsthe best way to viewstandardized tests is asjust one of many possibleindicators of a student’slevel of knowledge—andof his or her potential tolearn.Are IQ Tests Culturally Biased?Another approach to explaining group differences in IQ scores has been to look atcultural bias in the tests themselves. If standardized intelligence tests reflect white,middle-class cultural knowledge and values, minority-group members might dopoorly on the tests not because of lower intelligence but because of unfamiliaritywith the white, middle-class culture.Researchers have attempted to create tests that are “culture-fair” or “culturefree.”However, it is now generally recognized that it is virtually impossible to designa test that is completely culture-free. As cross-cultural psychologist PatriciaGreenfield (1997) argues, ability tests “reflect the values, knowledge, and communicationstrategies of their culture of origin.” Withinthat culture, the intelligence test may be a valid measure.Thus, a test will tend to favor the people from theculture in which it was developed.Cultural differences may also be involved in test-takingbehavior (Sternberg, 1995). People from different culturalbackgrounds may use strategies in solving problemsor organizing information that are different from thoserequired on standard intelligence tests (Miller-Jones,1989). In addition, such cultural factors as motivation,attitudes toward test taking, and previous experienceswith tests can affect performance and scores on tests.