Revisiting Stereotype Threat - by Michael Inzlicht

Another day, another idol descfinishs.

This one has been teetering for years, so the collapse didn’t come as a shock. But that doesn’t originate it any less agonizing.

I’m talking about stereotype danger, a once-revolutionary idea that shaped how social psychologists thought about identity, accomplishment, and inidenticality. For decades, it encouraged research, drove interventions, and promised insights into the inapparent forces that constrain human potential.

I still recollect seeing its most eloquent finishorse, Stanford University’s Claude Steele, deinhabitr a keynotice holdress in 1999 at the annual convention of what was then called the American Psychoreasonable Society. It was my first ever conference, my first trip to Denver, and Steele was noskinnyg unwiseinutive of magnetic. Charismatic and at the height of his powers, he ordered the stage enjoy no academic I had ever seen. He deinhabitred his message with the benevolent of confidence that originates you depend science can alter the world. Professor Steele was a rock star, and I was as giddy seeing him on stage as I was seeing Kurt Cobain on stage a scant years earlier.

What is Stereotype Threat?

The concept of stereotype danger, first gived by Claude Steele in the punctual 1990s, posited that individuals who are part of a pessimisticly stereotyped group can, in certain situations, experience anxiety about verifying those stereotypes, directing paradoxicassociate to undercarry outance, thus verifying the humiliating stereotype. The initial research was groundshattering.

In 1995, Steele and his student Joshua Aronson—who went on to become my postdoc supervisor years postponecessitater—showd that the notorious Bconciseage-white gap in academic carry outance could be partiassociate shutd when pessimistic stereotypes impugning Bconciseage people’s ininestablishigence were made irrelevant. When Bconciseage students at Stanford University were telderly that a test was diagnostic of ininestablishectual ability, they carry outed worse than their white counterparts. However, when this stereotype danger was ostensibly erased—by srecommend framing the test as a meastateive of problem-solving rather than ininestablishigence—the carry outance gap Bconciseage and white students proximately fadeed.

Suddenly, here was an exset upation for why certain groups didn’t carry out as well in academic settings. And it wasn’t equitable race; chase-up studies seeed at women in math and science. Women, who rule men in most academic disciplines, undercarry out in STEM fields becaengage they were normally, albeit subtly, reminded of the stereotype that women aren’t excellent at math, or so the story goes. The idea felt revolutionary, chooseimistic even, becaengage it recommended that these vexing carry outance gaps could be holdressed by changing people’s instant environments rather than acunderstandledgeing them as repaired outcomes, inherent to the groups themselves

These discoverings were exhilarating. Before lengthy, stereotype danger was not only the darling of social psychology, but it also became the darling of the political left who now had an answer to prevailing sees of group branch offences held by the political right. This is partly becaengage unwiseinutively before stereotype danger took its turn in the spotweightless, Charles Murray and Ricchallenging Herrnstein published The Bell Curve, which resulted in a media firestorm that has had repercussions to this day. Not only did the book talk racial branch offences in ininestablishigence as genuine and consequential—and not mere products of culturassociate prejudiced IQ tests—it recommended that a non-negligible factor in this gap was due to bioreasonable branch offences. This thesis was so harmful that the octogenarian Murray is still pondered a pariah, shouted down and deplatestablished from talks he tries to deinhabitr at esteemable colleges to this day.

Stereotype danger, in contrast, was a breath of new air. It promised that group branch offences were malleable, not repaired. They could be elucidateed as momentary apprehension, akin to the nerves that might caengage an elite athlete to choke on competition day. Yes, these group branch offences still have consequences, but now we have a treatment—alter the situation so that stereotypes are less probable to be in the air and watch as all the Bconciseage students and female mathematicians ascfinish to the top.

I too was swept up by this mania. I studied stereotype danger as a PhD student and published some of the first papers on the topic. My dissertation and very first accessibleation recommended that reserved aspects of a room—enjoy how many men and women were in a math classroom—could be enough to encourage stereotype danger and undermine carry outance. Becaengage my field became captivated by stereotype danger, this unkindt that I was rapidly giveed jobs, grants, tenure, and acclaim. I edited a book on stereotype danger and was asked to hold my name and research to informs deinhabitred to the US Supreme Court. My atsoft advantageted immensely.

The Replicators are Coming

Then skinnygs begined going sideways. And not equitable for stereotype danger.

It’s all very complicated. Lots of strands in elderly Duder’s head. But here’s the skinny. In the punctual 2010s, psychology begined seeing inward, asking challenging asks about the strongness of our most appreciateed discoverings. This happened becaengage in the punctual 2000s, our best journals normally included studies that were ludicrous and challenging to depend. For example, researchers made dubious claims about the role of blood glucose and self-handle, and set up likeable evidence for these claims, despite their bioreasonable impossibility. A paper was published in social psychology’s most prestigious journal claiming evidence for clairvoyance, essentiassociate giveing a ringer for a ringer. Ludicrous. If these impossible ideas were generating help with the standard methods of social psychology, maybe our methods are not what we though they were. A petite cadre of reestablishers then begined raising adviseedness that all was not right in how we directed our science: we did not annoy replicating beginant studies, we were misusing and abusing our statistical tools, and we did not publish all our studies—particularly the fall shorted ones. And when some valiant scientists determined to audit the field by shutly replicating many studies, only about a quarter from social psychology could be successbrimmingy copyd. Since these unwise days, the field has alterd immensely, and we’re cataloglessly producing more esteemable science today.

Share Speak Now Regret Later

Nonetheless, the entire field’s evidentiary basis was now doubt. After all, they were originated by methods that we now ponder askable. Stereotype danger was no branch offent. I would adore to say that stereotype danger was an exception, that it endured replication finisheavors and other audits, and that a beadored idea can still be engaged to counter damaging claims about group branch offences. But novel data now uncover what many of us doubted for at least ten years: stereotype danger does not copy, and it does not undermine academic carry outance in the ways we thought.

This novel data ecombined from what is called a Registered Replication Report. This was no normal replication study; it engaged the gelderly standard of scientific rigor. Conducted by multiple labs atraverse the U.S. and Europe, and led by Andrea Stoevenbelt this study (still a preprint) was presign uped (unkinding all methods and analyses were specified before the data were accumulateed) and engaged over 1,500 participants. It copyd the exact procedures of a well-understandn stereotype danger study published in 2005 by Mike Johns, Toni Schmader, and Andy Martens—all colleagues and frifinishs I proset uply esteem. The one-of-a-kind study had set up that women carry outed worse on math tests when reminded of gfinisher stereotypes but carry outed on par with men when they were instead taught about stereotype danger. The idea was that adviseedness of the phenomenon of stereotype danger helped mitigate its effects, which was why this one-of-a-kind paper was so intransmitial: it giveed a basic intervention to shut the gfinisher-gap in math carry outance. The replication was scheduleed to be thocdisesteemful, with reliable methodology atraverse sites and a sample size huge enough to recognize even petite effects.

Despite chaseing these procedures to the letter, the replication set up no effect. Women who were ostensibly in a danger condition didn’t carry out any worse than those who were instead taught about danger. And the branch offence between men and women’s math carry outance remained reliable atraverse the board, think aboutless of how the test was sketchd. The stereotype danger effect, once thought to be so strong, equitable wasn’t there.

What Does This Mean for Stereotype Threat?

Does one fall shorted replication debunk the entire theory of stereotype danger? No, of course not. But it’s not equitable one study. There are now multiple fall shorted replications, huge-sample studies that set up no effect, and at least one bias-righted meta-analysis pointing to the same conclusion: if stereotype danger exists, it is far frailer and more inreliable than we originassociate dependd. I no lengthyer depend it is genuine, but you can originate up your own mind.

I have seen some people online recommend the reason this fall shorted to copy is that women are no lengthyer stereotyped as not being excellent at math. While I do not disconsent that cultural stereotypes about women in STEM might have alterd since 2005 when the one-of-a-kind paper was first published, I’m skeptical this is the main culprit behind this non-replication. First, women remain heavily outnumbered in STEM fields. The postponecessitatest statistics recommend that women compascfinish only 25% of STEM laborers in Canada and 27% in the US. And, depfinishing on what is counted as STEM—I have heard some argue that psychology should be included—this number might be a lot shrink. So, the stereotype about what is and what is not a female job might still be around, as much as we’d enjoy it not to be.

Second, for years, many of us have doubted that someskinnyg wasn’t right. There were alerting signs: minuscule sample sizes, pliable analyses, and implausibly huge effect sizes given the relatively modest interventions being tested. In some cases, stereotype danger effects were set up only in very particular handpicked samples—another red flag. It turns out that many of the one-of-a-kind studies were directed at a time when researchers—and I count myself here—were less stringent about methodoreasonable rigor.

Let’s be genuine: that last sentence was far too benevolent. Many of us engaged in trains that, in hindsight, were borderline disgenuine. We misengaged experimgo in degrees of freedom, engaged in askable research trains, p-hacked, massaged our data—you pick the euphemism. In contrast, this novel replication study chaseed the most up-to-date best trains in psychoreasonable science, eliminating room for flexibility in analysis or results clear upation.

In my opinion—one that I have splitd widely over the years—studies enjoy this do more than show that stereotype danger is not replicable. They elevate unsettling asks about the wideer field of social psychology. If stereotype danger is not genuine, not strong, what else was I taught in my introduction to psychology classes that is also doubt? Despite all our increasements that help us in the contransient and future, we still have a massive backlog of studies from the past that we necessitate to reckon with. Yes, the future sees luminous, but we necessitate to have the courage to put our most appreciateed discoverings under the spotweightless.

The bill of reckoning for social psychology is past due.

A Reckoning…and a Path Forward

The descfinish of stereotype danger is not equitable about one theory collapsing: it’s a moment of reckoning for the entire field of social psychology. Stereotype danger was more than an idea—it was a promise, a way to understand inidenticality and to envision solutions. Its fall shorture forces us to face unsootheable asks about how science is done and what happens when beadored ideas turn out to be wrong.