Stereotype threat and inflexible perseverance in problem solving

The present research examines whether women burdened by stereotype threat, a threat of confirming negative ingroup stereotypes (Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797–811), are less able to abandon old strategies and employ newer, more efficient ones when conditions change. In two studies, stereotype threat was found to increase inflexible perseverance: women made to believe they were taking a diagnostic math/spatial ability test, compared to those not threatened by stereotypes, were more likely to use previously successful but presently inefficient or incorrect strategies. In Study 1, participants under stereotype threat also suppressed relevant stereotypes to the greatest degree, and their inflexible perseverance was predicted by the degree to which they suppressed these stereotypes. Implications for test performance and potential decision-making effects of stereotype threat are discussed. ! 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. While developing and following routines in thinking and persisting in previously successful strategies often serve us well, such routines and persistence implicitly rely on an unchanging world. However, change is inevitable and constant, and cognitively adapting to new contexts becomes necessary: test-takers find that approaches that succeeded on easy problems fail on difficult ones. Those who change jobs discover that their previous ways of thinking no longer suffice. People given novel problems learn that their old approaches do not lend themselves to success. And, academics who venture into an interdisciplinary world discover that they must adapt a new, more flexible way of thinking. Flexibly changing with changing situations is important for adaptive decision-making (Payne, Bettman, & Johnson, 1993), and persevering in old strategies that are no longer optimal can interfere with success. Are there factors that interfere with our ability to do this? The central hypothesis of the present research is that the burden of negative stereotypes about one’s group interferes with one’s capacity to adapt to new situations. Specifically, we propose that stereotype threat, the threat of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group (Steele & Aronson, 1995), may induce a perseverant way of thinking in those who experience it, interfering with their ability to replace old strategies with more successful ones when the situation changes. Stereotype threat Stereotype threat theory proposes that the performance situation, infused with cues about the devaluation of one’s social identity, creates an extra burden for individuals from stereotyped groups, undermining their performance in the stereotyped domain (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Research has demonstrated this impaired performance for many stigmatized groups in many domains: women in math and science domains (Ben-Zeev, Fein, & Inzlicht, 2005; Davies, Spencer, Quinn, & Gerhardstein, 2002; Johns, Schmader, & Martens, 2005; O’Brien & Crandall, 2003; Pronin, Steele, & Ross, 2004; Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999), African–Americans in intellectual domains (Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002; Blascovich, Spencer, Quinn, & Steele, 2001), Latinos in intellectual domains (Gonzales, Blanton, & Williams, 2002), White males in athletics (Stone, 2002; Stone, Lynch, Sjomeling, & Darley, 1999), and children from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds in intellectual domains (Croizet & Claire, 1998). However, while there is overwhelming evidence that stereotype threat interferes with performance and achievement, and while many emotional and cognitive mediators—anxiety (Bosson, Haymovitz, & Pinel, 2004; Spencer et al., 1999), arousal (BenZeev et al., 2005; Blascovich et al., 2001), changing performance expectancies (Cadinu, Maass, Frigerio, Impagliazzo, & Latinotti, 2003), working-memory interference (Schmader, 2002), and cognitive load (Croizet et al., 2004)—have been examined, little research has explored what changes in cognitive strategies and styles of thinking—independent of how it might affect performance—this threat induces. Inflexible perseverance, perseveration in strategies that were successful once but that are no longer 0022-1031/$ see front matter ! 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.03.003 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (P.B. Carr). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology xxx (2009) xxx–xxx