In two experiments, we found that the performance-inhibiting consequences of stereotype threat were eliminated when the threat was subtly reframed as a challenge. In Experiment 1, Black school children in North Carolina completed a 10-itemmathematics test. Participants who reported their race before taking the test performed more poorly than participants who reported their race after completing...

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Stereotype threat occurs when stereotyped groups perform worse as their group membership is highlighted. We investigated whether stereotype threat is affected by accounts for the origins of stereotypes. In two studies, women who read of genetic causes of sex differences performed worse on math tests than those who read of experiential causes.

We address the problem of providing a logical characterization of reasoning based on stereotypes. Following [6] we take a semantic perspective and we base our model on a notion of semantic distance. While still leading to cumulative reasoning, our notion of distance does, unlike Lehmann’s, allow reasoning under inconsistent information.