Gender difference does not mean genetic difference: Externalizing improves performance in mental rotation

a r t i c l e i n f o The fear of underperforming owing to stereotype threat affects women's performance in tasks such as mathematics , chess, and spatial reasoning. The present research considered mental rotation and explored effects on performance and on regulatory focus of instructions pointing to different explanations for gender differences. Two hundred and one participants were asked to perform the Mental Rotation Test (MRT) and were told that men perform better than women. Then they were divided into four subgroups and provided with no additional information (control condition) or one of three explanations: (a) genetic factors, (b) widely-held stereotype, or (c) time limit. A decrease in performance was predicted for the genetic instruction and an increase for the two alternative explanations based on externalizing. Results showed that both women and men are harmed by the genetic explanation and relieved by both the stereotype and the time limit explanations. Explanations stressing genetics and time limit as factors affecting performance favor prevention focus. Individual differences based on gender or gender roles have been often studied. Many researchers have studied the differences between the performances of men and women in completing various cognitive tasks. Their results confirmed that there are many gender-related stereotypes or beliefs and few true differences. One difference did show up in a test of mental rotation, the ability to rotate mental representations of two-and three-dimensional objects, a task that men perform better than women due to a wide range of factors. Research has demonstrated that one's performance is not dependent on ability alone but on situational factors, such as gender role beliefs and test instructions. Imagine that in the instructions you are told that there is a gender difference for a task you are asked to perform. What would you think? You may consider genetic factors to be the reason for the difference. Indeed, there is a tendency to attribute differences in ascribed identities (e.g., gender or ethnicity) to biologically-rooted reasons (Prentice & Miller, 2006). Research, however, has widely demonstrated that many other explanations may be valid. One is based on the fear of confirming a widely-held stereotype (Aronson, Quinn, & Spencer, 1998), known as stereotype threat. Reminding a common-held stereotype causes performance decrements in minority members (e.g., women told that men perform better in math, elderly told having poor memory). Common ways to raise stereotype threat are priming gender in some preliminary …