research on stereotype threat indicates that students

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Twenty Years of Stereotype Threat Research: A Review of Psychological Mediators

Charlotte r. pennington.

Department of Psychology, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom

Andrew R. Levy

Derek t. larkin.

Analyzed the data: CRP DH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CRP DH ARL DTL. Wrote the paper: CRP. Developed the review design and protocol: CRP DH AL DL. Reviewed the manuscript: DH AL DL. Cross-checked articles in systematic review: CRP DH.

Associated Data

All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

This systematic literature review appraises critically the mediating variables of stereotype threat. A bibliographic search was conducted across electronic databases between 1995 and 2015. The search identified 45 experiments from 38 articles and 17 unique proposed mediators that were categorized into affective/subjective ( n = 6), cognitive ( n = 7) and motivational mechanisms ( n = 4). Empirical support was accrued for mediators such as anxiety, negative thinking, and mind-wandering, which are suggested to co-opt working memory resources under stereotype threat. Other research points to the assertion that stereotype threatened individuals may be motivated to disconfirm negative stereotypes, which can have a paradoxical effect of hampering performance. However, stereotype threat appears to affect diverse social groups in different ways, with no one mediator providing unequivocal empirical support. Underpinned by the multi-threat framework, the discussion postulates that different forms of stereotype threat may be mediated by distinct mechanisms.

Introduction

The present review examines the mediators of stereotype threat that have been proposed over the past two decades. It appraises critically the underlying mechanisms of stereotype threat as a function of the type of threat primed, the population studied, and the measures utilized to examine mediation and performance outcomes. Here, we propose that one reason that has precluded studies from finding firm evidence of mediation is the appreciation of distinct forms of stereotype threat.

Stereotype Threat: An Overview

Over the past two decades, stereotype threat has become one of the most widely researched topics in social psychology [ 1 , 2 ]. Reaching its 20 th anniversary, Steele and Aronson’s [ 3 ] original article has gathered approximately 5,000 citations and has been referred to as a 'modern classic' [ 4 , 5 , 6 ]. In stark contrast to theories of genetic intelligence [ 7 , 8 ] (and see [ 9 ] for debate), the theory of stereotype threat posits that stigmatized group members may underperform on diagnostic tests of ability through concerns about confirming a negative societal stereotype as self-characteristic [ 3 ]. Steele and Aronson [ 3 ] demonstrated that African American participants underperformed on a verbal reasoning test when it was presented as a diagnostic indicator of intellectual ability. Conversely, when the same test was presented as non-diagnostic of ability, they performed equivalently to their Caucasian peers. This seminal research indicates that the mere salience of negative societal stereotypes, which may magnify over time, can impede performance. The theory of stereotype threat therefore offers a situational explanation for the ongoing and intractable debate regarding the source of group differences in academic aptitude [ 1 ].

Stereotype threat has been used primarily to explain gaps in intellectual and quantitative test scores between African and European Americans [ 3 , 10 ] and women and men respectively [ 11 ]. However, it is important to acknowledge that many factors shape academic performance, and stereotype threat is unlikely to be the sole explanation for academic achievement gaps [ 12 ]. This is supported by research which has shown “pure” stereotype threat effects on a task in which a gender-achievement gap has not been previously documented [ 13 ], thus suggesting that performance decrements can be elicited simply by reference to a negative stereotype. Furthermore, stereotype threat effects may not be limited to social groups who routinely face stigmatizing attitudes. Rather, it can befall anyone who is a member of a group to which a negative stereotype applies [ 3 ]. For example, research indicates that Caucasian men, a group that have a relatively positive social status, underperform when they believe that their mathematical performance will be compared to that of Asian men [ 14 ]. White men also appear to perform worse than black men when motor tasks are related to 'natural athletic ability' [ 15 , 16 ]. From a theoretical standpoint, stereotype threat exposes how group stereotypes may shape the behavior of individuals in a way that endangers their performance and further reinforces the stereotype [ 10 ].

Over 300 experiments have illustrated the deleterious and extensive effects that stereotype threat can inflict on many different populations [ 17 ]. The possibility of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group is found to contribute to underperformance on a range of diverse tasks including intelligence [ 3 , 13 ], memory [ 18 , 19 ], mental rotation [ 20 – 23 ], and math tests [ 11 , 24 , 25 ], golf putting [ 26 ], driving [ 27 , 28 ] and childcare skills [ 29 ]. Given the generality of these findings, researchers have turned their efforts to elucidating the underlying mechanisms of this situational phenomenon.

Susceptibility to Stereotype Threat

Research has identified numerous moderators that make tasks more likely to elicit stereotype threat, and individuals more prone to experience it [ 30 , 31 ]. From a methodological perspective, stereotype threat effects tend to emerge on tasks of high difficulty and demand [ 32 , 33 ], however, the extent to which a task is perceived as demanding may be moderated by individual differences in working memory [ 34 ]. Additionally, stereotype threat may be more likely to occur when individuals are conscious of the stigma ascribed to their social group [ 32 , 35 ], believe the stereotypes about their group to be true [ 36 , 37 ], for those with low self-esteem [ 38 ], and an internal locus of control [ 39 ]. Research also indicates that individuals are more susceptible to stereotype threat when they identify strongly with their social group [ 40 , 41 , 42 ] and value the domain [ 10 , 13 , 15 , 33 , 43 ]. However, other research suggests that domain identification is not a prerequisite of stereotype threat effects [ 44 ] and may act as a strategy to overcome harmful academic consequences [ 45 , 46 ].

Mediators of Stereotype Threat

There has also been an exPLOSion of research into the psychological mediators of stereotype threat (c.f. [ 2 , 47 ] for reviews). In their comprehensive review, Schmader et al. [ 2 ] proposed an integrated process model, suggesting that stereotype threat heightens physiological stress responses and influences monitoring and suppression processes to deplete working memory efficiency. This provides an important contribution to the literature, signaling that multiple affective, cognitive and motivational processes may underpin the effects of stereotype threat on performance. However, the extent to which each of these variables has garnered empirical support remains unclear. Furthermore, prior research has overlooked the existence of distinct stereotype threats in the elucidation of mediating variables. Through the lens of the multi-threat framework [ 31 ], the current review distinguishes between different stereotype threat primes, which target either the self or the social group to assess the evidence base with regards to the existence of multiple stereotype threats that may be accounted for by distinct mechanisms.

A Multi-threat Approach to Mediation

Stereotype threat is typically viewed as a form of social identity threat: A situational predicament occurring when individuals perceive their social group to be devalued by others [ 48 , 49 , 50 ]. However, this notion overlooks how individuals may self-stigmatize and evaluate themselves [ 51 , 52 , 53 ] and the conflict people may experience between their personal and social identities [ 54 ]. More recently, researchers have distinguished between the role of the self and the social group in performance-evaluative situations [ 31 ]. The multi-threat framework [ 31 ] identifies six qualitatively distinct stereotype threats that manifest through the intersection of two dimensions: The target of the threat (i.e., is the stereotype applicable to one’s personal or social identity?) and the source of threat (i.e., who will judge performance; the in-group or the out-group?). Focusing on the target of the stereotype, individuals who experience a group-as-target threat may perceive that underperformance will confirm a negative societal stereotype regarding the abilities of their social group. Conversely, individuals who experience a self-as-target threat may perceive that stereotype-consistent performance will be viewed as self-characteristic [ 31 , 55 ]. Individuals may therefore experience either a self or group-based threat dependent on situational cues in the environment that heighten the contingency of a stereotyped identity [ 2 ].

Researchers also theorize that members of diverse stigmatized groups may experience different forms of stereotype threat [ 31 , 56 ], and that these distinct experiences may be mediated by somewhat different processes [ 31 , 57 ]. Indeed, there is some indirect empirical evidence to suggest that this may be the case. For example, Pavlova and colleagues [ 13 ] found that an implicit stereotype threat prime hampered women’s performance on a social cognition task. Conversely, men’s performance suffered when they were primed with an explicit gender-related stereotype. Moreover, Stone and McWhinnie [ 58 ] suggest that subtle stereotype threat cues (i.e., the gender of the experimenter) may evoke a tendency to actively monitor performance and avoid mistakes, whereas blatant stereotype threat cues (i.e., stereotype prime) create distractions that deplete working memory resources. Whilst different stereotype threat cues may simultaneously exert negative effects on performance, it is plausible that they are induced by independent mechanisms [ 58 ]. Nonetheless, insufficient evidence has prevented the multi-threat framework [ 31 ] to be evaluated empirically to date. It therefore remains to be assessed whether the same mechanisms are responsible for the effects of distinct stereotype threats on different populations and performance measures.

The current article offers the first systematic literature review aiming to: 1), identify and examine critically the proposed mediators of stereotype threat; 2), explore whether the effects of self-as-target or group-as-target stereotype threat on performance are the result of qualitatively distinct mediating mechanisms; and 3), evaluate whether different mediators govern different stereotyped populations.

Literature Search

A bibliographic search of electronic databases, such as PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, Web of Knowledge, PubMed, Science Direct and Google Scholar was conducted between the cut-off dates of 1995 (the publication year of Steele & Aronson’s seminal article) and December 2015. A search string was developed by specifying the main terms of the phenomenon under investigation. Here, the combined key words of stereotype and threat were utilized as overarching search parameters and directly paired with either one of the following terms; mediator , mediating , mediate(s) , predictor , predicts , relationship or mechanism(s) . Additional references were retrieved by reviewing the reference lists of relevant journal articles. To control for potential publication bias [ 59 , 60 , 61 ], the lead author also enquired about any ‘in press’ articles by sending out a call for papers through the European Association for Social Psychology. The second author conducted a comparable search using the same criteria to ensure that no studies were overlooked in the original search. Identification of relevant articles and data extraction were conducted in line with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Statement (PRISMA; See S1 Table ) [ 62 ]. A literature search was conducted separately in each database and the records were exported to citation software, after which duplicates were removed. Relevant articles were screened by examining the title and abstract in line with the eligibility criteria. The remaining articles were assessed for eligibility by performing a full text review [ 63 , 64 ].

Eligibility Criteria

Studies were selected based on the following criteria: 1), researchers utilized a stereotype threat manipulation; 2), a direct mediation analysis was conducted between stereotype threat and performance; 3), researchers found evidence of moderated-mediation, and 4), the full text was available in English. Articles were excluded on the following basis: 1), performance was not the dependent variable, 2), investigations of “stereotype lift”; 3), doctorate, dissertation and review articles (to avoid duplication of included articles); and 4), moderating variables. Articles that did not find any significant results in relation to stereotype threat effects were also excluded in order to capture reliable evidence of mediation [ 65 ]. See Table 1 for details of excluded articles.

Distinguishing Different Stereotype Threats

The current review distinguished between different experiences of stereotype threat by examining each stereotype threat manipulation. Self-as-target threats were categorized on the basis that participants focused on the test as a measure of personal ability whereas group-as-target threats were classified on the basis that participants perceived performance to be diagnostic of their group’s ability [ 31 ].

A total of 45 studies in 38 articles were qualitatively synthesized, uncovering a total of 17 distinct proposed mediators. See Fig 1 for process of article inclusion (full details of article exclusion can be viewed in S1 Supporting Information ). These mediators were categorized into affective/subjective ( n = 6), cognitive ( n = 7) or motivational mechanisms ( n = 4). Effect sizes for mediational findings are described typically through informal descriptors, such as complete , perfect , or partial [ 66 ]. With this in mind, the current findings are reported in terms of complete or partial mediation. Complete mediation indicates that the relationship between stereotype threat ( X ) and performance ( Y ) completely disappears when a mediator ( M ) is added as a predictor variable [ 66 ]. Partial mediation refers to instances in which a significant direct effect remains between stereotype threat and performance when controlling for the mediator, suggesting that additional variables may further explain this relationship [ 67 ]. Instances of moderated mediation are also reported, which occurs when the strength of mediation is contingent on the level of a moderating variable [ 68 ]. The majority of included research utilized a group-as-target prime ( n = 36, 80%) compared to a self-as-target prime ( n = 6; 13.33%). Three studies (6.66%) were uncategorized as they employed subtle stereotype threat primes, for example, manipulating the group composition of the testing environment.

Affective/Subjective Mechanisms

Researchers have conceptualized stereotype threat frequently as a fear, apprehension or anxiety of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group [ 3 , 69 , 70 ]. Accordingly, many affective and subjective variables such as anxiety, individuation tendencies, evaluation apprehension, performance expectations, explicit stereotype endorsement and self-efficacy have been proposed to account for the stereotype threat-performance relationship.

Steele and Aronson’s [ 3 ] original study did not find self-reported anxiety to be a significant mediator of the effects of a self-relevant stereotype on African American’s intellectual performance. Extending this work, Spencer et al. (Experiment 3, [ 11 ]) found that anxiety was not predictive of the effects that a negative group stereotype had on women’s mathematical achievement, with further research confirming this [ 14 , 44 , 71 ]. Additional studies have indicated that self-reported anxiety does not influence the impact of self-as-target stereotype elicitation on African American’s cognitive ability [ 72 ], white students’ athletic skills [ 15 ], and group-as-target stereotype threat on older adults’ memory recall [ 18 , 32 ].

Research also suggests that anxiety may account for one of multiple mediators in the stereotype threat-performance relationship. In a field study, Chung and colleagues [ 73 ] found that self-reported state anxiety and specific self-efficacy sequentially mediated the influence of stereotype threat on African American’s promotional exam performance. This finding is supported by Mrazek et al. [ 74 ] who found that anxiety and mind-wandering sequentially mediated the effects of stereotype threat on women’s mathematical ability. Laurin [ 75 ] also found that self-reported somatic anxiety partially mediated the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s motor performance. Nevertheless, it is viable to question whether this finding is comparable to other studies as stereotype threat had a facilitating effect on performance.

The mixed results regarding anxiety as a potential mediator of performance outcomes may be indicative of various boundary conditions that enhance stereotype threat susceptibility. Consistent with this claim, Gerstenberg, Imhoff and Schmitt (Experiment 3 [ 76 ]) found that women who reported a fragile math self-concept solved fewer math problems under group-as-target stereotype threat and this susceptibility was mediated by increased anxiety. This moderated-mediation suggests that women with a low academic self-concept may be more vulnerable to stereotype threat, with anxiety underpinning its effect on mathematical performance.

Given that anxiety may be relatively difficult to detect via self-report measures [ 3 , 29 ], researchers have utilized indirect measures. For instance, Bosson et al. [ 29 ] found that physiological anxiety mediated the effects of stereotype threat on homosexual males’ performance on an interpersonal task. Nevertheless, this effect has not been replicated for the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on older adults’ memory recall [ 32 ] and self-as-target threat on children’s writing ability [ 77 ].

Individuation tendencies

Steele and Aronson [ 3 ] proposed that stereotype threat might occur when individuals perceive a negative societal stereotype to be a true representation of personal ability. Based on this, Keller and Sekaquaptewa [ 78 ] examined whether gender-related threats (i.e., group-as-target threat) influenced women to individuate their personal identity (the self) from their social identity (female). Results revealed that participants underperformed on a spatial ability test when they perceived that they were a single in-group representative (female) in a group of males. Moreover, stereotype threat was partially mediated by ‘individuation tendencies’ in that gender-based threats influenced women to disassociate their self from the group to lessen the applicability of the stereotype. The authors suggest that this increased level of self-focused attention under solo status conditions is likely related to increased levels of anxiety.

Evaluation apprehension

Steele and Aronson [ 3 ] also suggested that individuals might apprehend that they will confirm a negative stereotype in the eyes of out-group members. Despite this, Mayer and Hanges [ 72 ] found that evaluation apprehension did not mediate the effects of a self-as-target stereotype threat on African American’s cognitive ability. Additional studies also indicate that evaluation apprehension does not mediate the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance [ 11 , 79 ].

Performance expectations

Under stereotype threat, individuals may evaluate the subjective likelihood of success depending on their personal resources. As these personal resources are typically anchored to group-level expectations, in-group threatening information (i.e., women are poor at math) may reduce personal expectancies to achieve and diminish performance [ 80 ]. Testing this prediction, Cadinu et al. (Experiment 1 [ 80 ]) found that women solved fewer math problems when they were primed with a negative group-based stereotype relative to those who received a positive or no stereotype. Furthermore, performance expectancies partially mediated the effect of group-as-target threat on math performance, revealing that negative information was associated with lower expectancies. A second experiment indicated further that performance expectancies partially mediated the effects of group-as-target threat on Black participants’ verbal ability. Research by Rosenthal, Crisp and Mein-Woei (Experiment 2 [ 81 ]) also found that performance expectancies partially mediated the effects of self-based stereotypes on women’s mathematical performance. However, rather than decreasing performance expectancies, women under stereotype threat reported higher predictions for performance relative to a control condition.

Research has extended this work to examine the role of performance expectancies in diverse stigmatized populations. For example, Hess et al. [ 32 ] found evidence of moderated-mediation for the effects of a group-as-target stereotype threat on older adults’ memory recall. Here, the degree to which performance expectancies mediated stereotype threat effects was moderated by participants’ education. That is, elderly individuals with higher levels of education showed greater susceptibility to stereotype threat. These findings add weight to the assertion that lowered performance expectations may account for the effects of stereotype threat on performance, especially among individuals who identify strongly with the ability domain. Conversely, Appel et al. [ 43 ] found that performance expectancies do not mediate the effects of group-based stereotype threat among highly identified women in the domains of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Further research suggests that stereotype threat can be activated through subtle cues in the environment rather than explicit stereotype activation [ 58 , 82 ]. It is therefore plausible that expectancies regarding performance may be further undermined when stigmatized in-group members are required to perform a stereotype-relevant task in front of out-group members. Advancing this suggestion, Sekaquaptewa and Thompson [ 82 ] examined the interactive effects of solo status and stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance. Results revealed that women underperformed when they completed a quantitative examination in the presence of men (solo status) and under stereotype threat. However, whilst performance expectancies partially mediated the relationship between group composition and mathematical ability, they did not mediate the effects of stereotype threat on performance.

Explicit stereotype endorsement

Research has examined whether targeted individuals’ personal endorsement of negative stereotypes is associated with underperformance. For example, Leyens and colleagues [ 83 ] found that men underperformed on an affective task when they were told that they were not as apt as women in processing affective information. Against predictions, however, stereotype endorsement was not found to be a significant intermediary between stereotype threat and performance. Other studies also indicate that stereotype endorsement is not an underlying mechanism of the effects of self-as-target [ 3 ] and group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical aptitude [ 11 , 84 ].

Self-efficacy

Research suggests that self-efficacy can have a significant impact on an individual’s motivation and performance [ 85 , 86 , 87 ], and may be influenced by environmental cues [ 88 ]. Accordingly, it has been proposed that the situational salience of a negative stereotype may reduce an individual’s self-efficacy. As mentioned, Chung et al. [ 73 ] found that state anxiety and specific self-efficacy accounted for deficits in African American’s performance on a job promotion exam. However, additional studies indicate that self-efficacy does not mediate the effects of self-as-target threat on African American’s cognitive ability [ 72 ] and group-as-target threat on women’s mathematical performance [ 11 ].

Cognitive Mechanisms

Much research has proposed that affective and subjective variables underpin the harmful effects that stereotype threat exerts on performance [ 89 ]. However, other research posits that stereotype threat may influence performance detriments through its demands on cognitive processes [ 2 , 89 , 90 ]. Specifically, researchers have examined whether stereotype threat is mediated by; working memory, cognitive load, thought suppression, mind-wandering, negative thinking, cognitive appraisals and implicit stereotype endorsement.

Working memory

Schmader and Johns [ 89 ] proposed that performance-evaluative situations might reduce working memory capacity as stereotype-related thoughts consume cognitive resources. In three studies, they examined whether working memory accounted for the influence of a group-as-target threat on women’s and Latino American’s mathematical ability. Findings indicated that both female and Latino American participants solved fewer mathematical problems compared to participants in a non-threat control condition. Furthermore, reduced working memory capacity, measured via an operation span task [ 91 ], mediated the deleterious effects of stereotype threat on math performance. Supporting this, Rydell et al. (Experiment 3 [ 92 ]) found that working memory mediated the effects of a group-relevant stereotype on women’s mathematical performance when they perceived their performance to be evaluated in line with their gender identity. Here results also showed that these performance decrements were eliminated when women were concurrently primed with a positive and negative social identity (Experiment 2).

Further research has also examined how stereotype threat may simultaneously operate through cognitive and emotional processes. Across four experiments, Johns et al. [ 90 ] found that stereotype threat was accountable for deficits in women’s verbal, intellectual and mathematical ability. Moreover, emotion regulation − characterized as response-focused coping − mediated the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on performance by depleting executive resources.

Nonetheless, executive functioning is made up of more cognitive processes than the construct of working memory [ 93 ]. Acknowledging this, Rydell et al. [ 93 ] predicted that updating (i.e., the ability to maintain and update information in the face of interference) would mediate stereotype threat effects. They further hypothesized that inhibition (i.e., the ability to inhibit a dominant response) and shifting (i.e., people’s ability to switch between tasks) should not underpin this effect. Results indicated that women who experienced an explicit group-as-target threat displayed reduced mathematical performance compared to a control condition. Consistent with predictions, only updating mediated the stereotype threat-performance relationship. These results suggest that the verbal ruminations associated with a negative stereotype may interfere with women’s ability to maintain and update the calculations needed to solve difficult math problems.

The extent to which updating accounts for stereotype threat effects in diverse populations, however, is less straightforward. For example, Hess et al. [ 32 ] found that working memory, measured by a computational span task, did not predict the relationship between group-based stereotype threat and older participants’ memory performance.

Cognitive load

There is ample evidence to suggest that stereotype threat depletes performance by placing higher demands on mental resources [ 89 , 93 ]. These demands may exert additional peripheral activity (i.e., emotional regulation) that can further interfere with task performance [ 90 ]. In order to provide additional support for this notion, Croizet et al. [ 94 ] examined whether increased mental load, measured by participants’ heart rate, mediated the effects of stereotype threat on Psychology majors’ cognitive ability. Here, Psychology majors were primed that they had lower intelligence compared to Science majors. Results indicated that this group-as-target stereotype threat undermined Psychology majors’ cognitive ability by triggering a psychophysiological mental load. Moreover, this increased mental load mediated the effects of stereotype threat on cognitive performance.

Thought suppression

Research suggests that individuals who experience stereotype threat may be aware that their performance will be evaluated in terms of a negative stereotype and, resultantly, engage in efforts to disprove it [ 3 , 94 , 95 ]. This combination of awareness and avoidance may lead to attempts to suppress negative thoughts that consequently tax the cognitive resources needed to perform effectively. In four experiments, Logel et al. (Experiment 2 [ 95 ]) examined whether stereotype threat influences stereotypical thought suppression by counterbalancing whether participants completed a stereotype-relevant lexical decision task before or after a mathematical test. Results indicated that women underperformed on the test in comparison to men. Interestingly, women tended to suppress stereotypical words when the lexical decision task was administered before the math test, but showed post-suppression rebound of stereotype-relevant words when this task was completed afterwards. Mediational analyses revealed that only pre-test thought suppression partially mediated the effects of stereotype threat on performance.

Mind-wandering

Previous research suggests that the anticipation of a stereotype-laden test may produce a greater proportion of task-related thoughts and worries [ 93 , 95 ]. Less research has examined the role of thoughts unrelated to the task in hand as a potential mediator of stereotype threat effects. Directly testing this notion, Mrazek et al. (Experiment 2 [ 74 ]) found that a group-as-target stereotype threat hampered women’s mathematical performance in comparison to a control condition. Furthermore, although self-report measures of mind-wandering resulted in null findings, indirect measures revealed that women under stereotype threat showed a marked decrease in attention. Mediation analyses indicated further that stereotype threat heightened anxiety which, in turn, increased mind-wandering and contributed to the observed impairments in math performance. Despite these findings, other studies have found no indication that task irrelevant thoughts mediate the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance [ 24 ] and African American participants’ cognitive ability [ 72 ].

Negative thinking

Schmader and Johns’ [ 89 ] research suggests that the performance deficits observed under stereotype threat may be influenced by intrusive thoughts. Further research [ 74 ] has included post-experimental measures of cognitive interference to assess the activation of distracting thoughts under stereotype threat. However, the content of these measures are predetermined by the experimenter and do not allow participants to report spontaneously on their experiences under stereotype threat. Overcoming these issues, Cadinu and colleagues [ 96 ] asked women to list their current thoughts whilst taking a difficult math test under conditions of stereotype threat. Results revealed that female participants underperformed when they perceived a mathematical test to be diagnostic of gender differences. Moreover, participants in the stereotype threat condition listed more negative thoughts relative to those in the control condition, with intrusive thoughts mediating the relationship between stereotype threat and poor math performance. It seems therefore that negative performance-related thoughts may consume working memory resources to impede performance.

Cognitive appraisal

Other research suggests that individuals may engage in coping strategies to offset the performance implications of a negative stereotype. One indicator of coping is cognitive appraisal, whereby individuals evaluate the significance of a situation as well as their ability to control it [ 97 ]. Here, individuals may exert more effort on a task when the situational presents as a challenge, but may disengage from the task if they evaluate the situation as a threat [ 98 , 99 ]. Taking this into consideration, Berjot, Roland-Levy and Girault-Lidvan [ 100 ] proposed that targeted members might be more likely to perceive a negative stereotype as a threat to their group identity rather than as a challenge to disprove it. They found that North African secondary school students underperformed on a visuospatial task when they perceived French students to possess superior perceptual-motor skills. Contrary to predictions, threat appraisal did not mediate the relation between stereotype threat and performance. Rather, perceiving the situation as a challenge significantly mediated the stereotype threat-performance relationship. Specifically, participants who appraised stereotype threat as a challenge performed better than those who did not. These results therefore suggest that individuals may strive to confront, rather than avoid, intellectual challenges and modify the stereotype held by members of a relevant out-group in a favorable direction [ 101 ].

Implicit stereotype endorsement

Situational cues that present as a threat may increase the activation of automatic associations between a stereotyped concept (i.e., female), negative attributes (i.e., bad), and the performance domain (i.e., math; [ 102 ]). Implicit measures may be able to detect recently formed automatic associations between concepts and stereotypical attributes that are not yet available to explicitly self-report [ 103 ]. In a study of 240 six-year old children, Galdi et al. [ 103 ] examined whether implicit stereotype threat endorsement accounted for the effects of stereotype threat on girls’ mathematical performance. Consistent with the notion that automatic associations can precede conscious beliefs, results indicated that girls acquire implicit math-gender stereotypes before they emerge at an explicit level. Specifically, girls showed stereotype-consistent automatic associations between the terms ‘boy-mathematics’ and ‘girl-language’, which mediated stereotype threat effects.

Motivational Mechanisms

Most of the initial work on the underlying mechanisms of stereotype threat has focused on affective and cognitive processes. More recently, research has begun to examine whether individuals may be motivated to disconfirm a negative stereotype, with this having a paradoxical effect of harming performance [ 104 , 105 , 106 ]. To this end, research has elucidated the potential role of effort, self-handicapping, dejection, vigilance, and achievement goals.

Effort/motivation

Underpinned by the “mere effort model” [ 104 ], Jamieson and Harkins [ 105 ] examined whether motivation plays a proximal role in the effect of stereotype threat on women’s math performance. Here they predicted that stereotype threat would lead participants to use a conventional problem solving approach (i.e., use known equations to compute an answer), which would facilitate performance on ‘solve’ problems, but hamper performance on ‘comparison’ problems. Results supported this hypothesis, indicating that stereotype threat debilitated performance on comparison problems as participants employed the dominant, but incorrect, solution approach. Furthermore, this incorrect solving approach mediated the effect of stereotype threat on comparison problem performance. This suggests that stereotype threat motivates participants to perform well, which increases activation of a dominant response to the task. However, as this dominant approach does not always guarantee success, the work indicates that different problem solving strategies may determine whether a person underperforms on a given task [ 105 , 107 ].

Stereotype threat may have differential effects on effort dependent on the prime utilized [ 27 ]. For example, Skorich et al. [ 27 ] examined whether effort mediated the effects of implicit and explicit stereotypes on provisional drivers’ performance on a hazard perception test. Participants in the implicit prime condition ticked their driving status (provisional, licensed) on a questionnaire, whereas participants in the explicit prime condition were provided with stereotypes relating to the driving ability of provisional licensees. Results revealed that participants detected more hazards when they were primed with an explicit stereotype relative to an implicit stereotype. Mediational analyses showed that whilst increased effort mediated the effects of an implicit stereotype on performance, decreased effort mediated the effects of an explicit stereotype prime. Research also indicates that reduced effort mediates the effects of an explicit stereotype on older adults’ memory recall [ 18 ]. Taken together, these results suggest that implicit stereotype primes may lead to increased effort as participants aim to disprove the stereotype, whereas explicit stereotype threat primes may lead to decreased effort as participants self-handicap [ 27 ]. Nevertheless, other studies utilizing self-reported measures of effort have resulted in non-significant findings (Experiment 1 & 2 [ 14 ]; Experiment 4 [ 44 ]; Experiment 2 [ 77 ]; Experiment 2, 4 & 5, [ 108 ]).

Self-handicapping

Individuals may engage in self-handicapping strategies to proactively reduce the applicability of a negative stereotype to their performance. Here, people attempt to influence attributions for performance by erecting barriers to their success. Investigating this notion, Stone [ 15 ] examined whether self-handicapping mediated the effects of stereotype threat on white athletes’ sporting performance. Self-handicapping was measured by the total amount of stereotype-relevant words completed on a word-fragment task. Results indicated that white athletes practiced less when they perceived their ability on a golf-putting task to be diagnostic of personal ability, thereby confirming a negative stereotype relating to ‘poor white athleticism’. Moreover, these athletes were more likely to complete the term ‘awkward’ on a word fragment completion test compared to the control condition. Mediation analyses revealed that the greater accessibility of the term ‘awkward’ partially mediated the effects of stereotype threat on psychological disengagement and performance. The authors suggest that stereotype threat increased the accessibility of thoughts related to poor athleticism to inhibit athletes' practice efforts. However, a limitation of this research is that analyses were based on single-item measures (i.e., the completion of the word ‘awkward’) rather than total of completed words on the word-fragment test.

Keller [ 109 ] also tested the hypothesis that the salience of a negative stereotype is related to self-handicapping tendencies. Results showed that women who were primed with a group-as-target stereotype underperformed on a mathematical test relative to their control group counterparts. Furthermore, they expressed stronger tendencies to search for external explanations for their weak performance with this mediating the effects of stereotype threat on performance. Despite these preliminary findings, Keller and Dauenheimer [ 44 ] were unable to provide support for the notion that self-reported self-handicapping is a significant intermediary between stereotype threat and women’s mathematical underperformance.

Research on performance expectations suggests that stereotype threat effects may be mediated by goals set by the participants. Extending this work, Keller and Dauenheimer [ 44 ] hypothesized that female participants may make more errors on a mathematical test due to an overly motivated approach strategy. Results indicated that women underperformed when a math test was framed as diagnostic of gender differences (a group-as-target threat). Furthermore, their experiences of dejection were found to mediate the relation between stereotype threat and performance. The authors suggest that individuals may be motivated to disconfirm the negative stereotype and thus engage in a promotion focus of self-regulation. However, feelings of failure may elicit an emotional response that resultantly determines underperformance.

In contrast to Keller and Dauenheimer [ 44 ], Seibt and Förster (Experiment 5; [ 108 ]) proposed that under stereotype threat, targeted individuals engage in avoidance and vigilance strategies. They predicted that positive stereotypes should induce a promotion focus, leading to explorative and creative processing, whereas negative stereotypes should induce a prevention focus state of vigilance, with participants avoiding errors. Across five experiments, male and female participants were primed with a group-as-target stereotype suggesting that women have better verbal abilities than men. However, rather than showing a stereotype threat effect, results indicated a speed-accuracy trade off with male participants completing an analytical task slower but more accurately than their counterparts in a non-threat control condition. Furthermore, this prevention focus of vigilance was found to partially mediate the effects of stereotype threat on men’s analytical abilities (Experiment 5). The authors conclude that the salience of a negative group stereotype elicits a vigilant, risk-averse processing style that diminishes creativity and speed while bolstering analytic thinking and accuracy.

Achievement goals

Achievement goals theory [ 110 ] posits that participants will evaluate their role in a particular achievement context and endorse either performance-focused or performance-avoidance goals. In situations where the chances of success are low, individuals engage in performance-avoidance goals, corresponding to a desire to avoid confirming a negative stereotype. Accordingly, Chalabaev et al. [ 111 ] examined whether performance avoidance goals mediated the effects of stereotype threat on women’s sporting performance. Here, the impact of two self-as-target stereotypes (i.e., poor athletic and soccer ability) on performance were assessed relative to a control condition. Results indicated that women in the athletic ability condition performed more poorly on a dribbling task, but not in the soccer ability condition. Furthermore, although these participants endorsed a performance-avoidance goal, this did not mediate the relationship between stereotype threat and soccer performance.

Highlighting the possible interplay between affective, cognitive and motivation mechanisms, Brodish and Devine [ 112 ] proffered a multi-mediator model, proposing that anxiety and performance-avoidance goals may mediate the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance. Achievement goals were measured by whether participants endorsed performance-avoidant (the desire to avoid performing poorly) or approach goals (trying to outperform others). Results indicated that women under stereotype threat solved fewer mathematical problems relative to those in a control condition. Mediation analyses revealed that performance avoidance goals and anxiety sequentially mediated women’s mathematical performance. That is, stereotype threatened women were motivated to avoid failure, which in turn heightened anxiety and influenced underperformance. Table 2 summarizes the articles reviewed and details their key findings and respective methodologies. See S2 Table for overview of significant mediational findings.

The current review evaluated empirical support for the mediators of stereotype threat. Capitalizing on the multi-threat framework [ 31 ], we distinguished between self-relevant and group-relevant stereotype threats to examine the extent to which these are mediated by qualitatively distinct mechanisms and imperil diverse stigmatized populations. On the whole, the results of the current review indicate that experiences of stereotype threat may increase individuals’ feelings of anxiety, negative thinking and mind-wandering which deplete the working memory resources required for successful task execution. Research documents further that individuals may be motivated to disconfirm the negative stereotype and engage in efforts to suppress stereotypical thoughts that are inconsistent with task goals. However, many of the mediators tested have resulted in varying degrees of empirical support. Below we suggest that stereotype threat may operate in distinct ways dependent on the population under study, the primes utilized, and the instruments used to measure mediation and performance.

Previous research has largely conceptualized stereotype threat as a singular construct, experienced similarly by individuals and groups across situations [ 31 , 55 ]. Consequently, research has overlooked the possibility of multiple forms of stereotype threats that may be implicated through concerns to an individual’s personal or social identity [ 31 ]. This is highlighted in the present review, as the majority of stereotype threat studies employed a group-as-target prime. Here stereotype threat is typically instantiated to highlight that stereotype-consistent performance may confirm, or reinforce, a negative societal stereotype as being a true representation of one’s social group [ 48 ]. This has led to a relative neglect of situations in which individuals may anticipate that their performance may be indicative of personal ability [ 31 , 55 ].

Similar processes such as arousal, deficits in working memory, and motivation may be triggered by self-as-target and group-as-target stereotype threats. However, it is important to note that the experiences of these stereotype threats may be fundamentally distinct [ 31 ]. That is, deficits in working memory under self-as-target stereotype threat may be evoked by negative thoughts relating to the self (i.e., ruining one’s opportunities, letting oneself down). Conversely, group-based intrusive thoughts may mediate the effects of group-as-target threat on performance as individuals view their performance in line with their social group (i.e., confirming a societal stereotype, letting the group down) [ 31 ]. Moreover, research suggests that when a group-based stereotype threat is primed, individuals dissociate their sense of self from the negatively stereotyped domain [ 78 ]. Yet, this may be more unlikely when an individual experiences self-as-target stereotype threat as their personal ability is explicitly tied to a negative stereotype that governs their ingroup. As such, the activation of a group-based stereotype may set in motion mechanisms that reflect a protective orientation of self-regulation, whereas self-relevant knowledge may heighten self-consciousness. To date, however, research has not explicitly distinguished between self-as-target and group-as-target stereotype threat in the elucidation of mediating variables. Future research would therefore benefit from a systematic investigation of how different stereotype threats may hamper performance in qualitatively distinguishable ways. One way to investigate the hypotheses set out here would be to allow participants to spontaneously report their experiences under self-as-target and group-as-target stereotype threat, and to examine differences in the content of participants’ thoughts as a function of these different primes.

In a similar vein, different mechanisms may mediate the effects of blatant and subtle stereotype threat effects on performance [ 27 , 58 , 111 ]. Blatant threat manipulations explicitly inform participants of a negative stereotype related to performance (e.g., [ 3 , 11 ]), whereas placing stigmatized group members in a situation in which they have minority status may evoke more subtle stereotype threat [ 78 , 82 ]. Providing evidence consistent with this notion, Sekaquaptewa and Thompson [ 82 ] found that performance expectancies partially mediated the effects of solo status, but not stereotype threat on performance. These results suggest that women may make comparative judgments about their expected performance when they are required to undertake an exam in the presence of out-group members, yet may not consciously recognize how a negative stereotype can directly impair performance. Further research suggests that working memory may mediate the effects of subtle stereotype threat cues on performance as individuals attend to situational cues that heighten the salience of a discredited identity [ 88 , 94 ]. Alternatively, motivation may mediate the effects of blatant stereotype threat as individuals strive to disprove the negative stereotype [ 27 , 44 , 58 , 108 ]. Although stereotype threat effects appear to be robust [ 30 ], it is plausible that these distinct manipulations diverge in the nature, the focus, and the intensity of threat they produce and may therefore be mediated by different mechanisms [ 31 ].

It is also conceivable that different groups are more susceptible to certain types of stereotype threat [ 13 , 31 , 56 ]. For example, research indicates that women’s performance on a social cognition task was influenced to a greater extent by implicit gender-related stereotypes, whereas men were more vulnerable to explicit stereotype threat [ 13 ]. Further research suggests that populations who tend to have low group identification (e.g., those with a mental illness or obesity) are more susceptible to self-as-target threats. Conversely, populations with high group identification, such as individuals of a certain ethnicity, gender or religion are more likely to experience group-as-target threats [ 56 ]. Whilst this highlights the role of moderating variables that heighten individuals’ susceptibility to stereotype threat, it also suggests that individuals may experience stereotype threat in different ways, dependent on their stigmatized identity. This may explain why some variables (e.g., anxiety, self-handicapping) that have been found to mediate the effects of stereotype threat on some groups have not emerged in other populations.

Finally, it is conceivable that diverse mediators account for the effects of stereotype threat on different performance outcomes. For example, although working memory is implicated in tasks that typically require controlled processing, it is not required for tasks that rely more on automatic processes [ 24 , 58 , 93 ]. In line with this notion, Beilock et al. [ 24 ] found that experts’ golf putting skills were harmed under stereotype threat when attention was allocated to automatic processes that operate usually outside of working memory. This suggests that well-learned skills may be hampered by attempts to bring performance back under step-by-step control. Conversely, skills such as difficult math problem solving appear to involve heavy processing demands and may be harmed when working memory is consumed by a negative stereotype. As such, distinct mechanisms may underpin different threat-related performance outcomes.

Limitations of Stereotype Threat Research

We now outline methodological issues in current stereotype threat literature with a view to inform the design of future research. First, researchers have predominantly utilized self-report measures in their efforts to uncover the mediating variables of stereotype threat. However, it has long been argued that individuals have limited access to higher order mental processes [ 113 , 114 ], such as those involved in the evaluation and initiation of behavior [ 115 , 116 ]. Resultantly, participants under stereotype threat may be unable to observe and explicitly report the operations of their own mind [ 29 , 114 , 117 , 118 , 119 ]. Consistent with this assertion, Bosson et al. [ 29 ] found that although stereotype threat heightened individuals’ physiological anxiety, the same individuals did not report an awareness of increased anxiety on self-report measures. Participants may thus be mindful of the impression they make on others and engage in self-presentational behaviors in an effort to appear invulnerable to negative stereotypes [ 29 ]. This is supported by research suggesting that stereotype threatened participants tend not to explicitly endorse stereotypes [ 29 , 37 , 83 , 84 ] and are more likely to claim impediments to justify poor performance [ 3 , 14 , 109 ]. Moreover, it is possible that stereotype threat processes are non-conscious [ 119 ] with research indicating that implicit–but not explicit–stereotype endorsement mediates stereotype threat effects [ 103 ]. This suggests that non-conscious processing of stereotype-relevant information may influence the decrements observed in individuals’ performance under stereotype threat. Furthermore, this research underscores the greater sensitivity of indirect measures for examining the mediators of stereotype threat. From this perspective, future research may benefit from the use of physiological measures, such as heart rate, cortisol and skin conductance to examine anxiety (c.f., [ 94 , 120 , 121 ]), the IAT to measure implicit stereotype endorsement [ 103 ] and the sustained response to attention task to measure mind-wandering [ 74 ].

In the investigation of stereotype threat, self-report measures may be particularly susceptible to order effects. For example, Brodish and Devine [ 112 ] found that women reported higher levels of anxiety when they completed a questionnaire before a mathematical test compared to afterwards. This suggests that pre-test anxiety ratings may have reflected participants’ uneasiness towards the upcoming evaluative test, with this apprehension diminishing once the test was completed. Research by Logel and colleagues [ 95 ] provides support for this notion, indicating that women who completed a lexical decision task after a math test were quicker to respond to stereotype-relevant words compared to women who subsequently completed the task. These results exhibit the variability in individuals’ emotions under stereotype threat and suggest that they may be unable to retrospectively report on their feelings once the threat has passed. This emphasizes the importance of counterbalancing test instruments in the investigation of stereotype threat, purporting that the order in which test materials are administered may influence mediational findings.

This review highlights that, in some studies, individuals assigned to a control condition may have also experienced stereotype threat, thus potentially preventing reliable evidence of mediation. For instance, Chalabaev et al. [ 111 ] primed stereotype threat by presenting a soccer ability test as a diagnostic indicator of personal factors related to athletic ability. Nevertheless, participants in the control condition received information that the aim of the test was to examine psychological factors in athletic ability. Consequently, these participants may have also been apprehensive about their performance being evaluated, and this may have precluded evidence that achievement goals mediate the stereotype threat-performance relationship. Furthermore, research has manipulated the salience of stereotype threat by stating that gender differences in math performance are equal [ 82 ]. However, other research has utilized this prime within control conditions (e.g., [ 94 , 105 , 119 ]), underpinned by the rationale that describing a test as ‘fair’ or non-diagnostic of ability eliminates stereotype threat [ 122 ]. It is therefore possible that, in some instances, researchers have inadvertently induced stereotype threat. This outlines the importance of employing a control condition in which individuals are not made aware of any negative stereotypes, and are told that the test is non-diagnostic of ability, in order to detect possible mediators.

Two decades of research have demonstrated the harmful effects that stereotype threat can exert on a wide range of populations in a broad array of performance domains. However, findings with regards to the mediators that underpin these effects are equivocal. This may be a consequence of the heterogeneity of primes used to instantiate stereotype threat and the methods used to measure mediation and performance. To this end, future work is likely to benefit from the following directions: First, account for the existence of multiple stereotype threats; Second, recognize that the experiences of stereotype threat may differ between stigmatized groups, and that no one mediator may provide generalized empirical support across diverse populations; Third, utilize indirect measures, in addition to self-report measures, to examine reliably mediating variables and to examine further the convergence of these two methods; Fourth, counterbalance test instruments to control for order effects; and finally, ensure that participants in a control condition do not inadvertently encounter stereotype threat by stating explicitly that the task is non-diagnostic of ability.

Supporting Information

S1 supporting information, funding statement.

The authors acknowledge support toward open access publishing by the Graduate School and the Department of Psychology at Edge Hill University. The funders had no role in the systematic review, data collection or analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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• Published: 30 July 2022

Two billion registered students affected by stereotyped educational environments: an analysis of gender-based color bias

• Jário Santos   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5149-9305 1 ,
• Ig Bittencourt 2 ,
• Marcelo Reis   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9195-7750 2 ,
• Geiser Chalco 3 &
• Seiji Isotani   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1574-0784 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  9 , Article number:  249 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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• Cultural and media studies
• Environmental studies
• Science, technology and society

According to the literature, educational technologies present several learning benefits to promote online education. However, there are several associated challenges, and some studies illustrate the limitations in elaborating educational technologies, called Design limitations. This aspect is responsible for unleashing various issues in the learning process, such as gender inequality, creating adverse effects on cognitive, motivational, and behavioral mediators, which opposes the fifth UN’s Sustainable Development Goal. Therefore, many studies notice the harmful effects of stereotypes in educational technologies. These effects can be included in the design, like colors or other stereotyped elements, or how the activity is conducted. Based on this, the present study aimed to verify the predominance of color bias in educational technologies available on the WEB. This study developed a computational solution to calculate male and female color bias in the available educational technology web pages. The results suggest the prevalence of the development of educational technologies with a male color bias, with an imbalance among genders, without adequate customization for age groups. Furthermore, some environments, such as Computer Science, present a higher color bias for men when compared to women. Despite both scales being independent, results indicated interesting evidence of a substantial prevalence of colors associated with the male scale. According to the literature, this may be associated with dropout and lack of interest in female students, especially in sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics domains.

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Introduction.

Studies debated various features contained in educational technologies, including benefits, challenges, and strategies of online education (Bailey and Lee, 2020 ). The current scenario caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has expanded the niche, and the need for educational technologies in order to improve teaching-learning processes and styles (Dhawan, 2020 ). Moreover, according to Dhawan ( 2020 ), this promotes the growth of educational technologies, providing suggestions to academic institutions as to how to deal with the challenges associated with online learning, training, and further education to develop students’ independence by improving digital skills to an academic level (Jackman et al., 2021 ). This also provides support for teachers in the students’ inquiries (Goudeau et al., 2021 ), prevent cheating (Li et al., 2021 ), and increase engagement. Especially when it is not possible to have direct contact with students in the classroom due to the current pandemic scenario and when procedures need to be adjusted to manage academic subjects and teaching resources (Gillett-Swan, 2017 ; Hafeez et al., 2021 ). Alongside the issues mentioned above, opportunities also arise, such as possibilities to develop new teaching methods (Almossa and Alzahrani, 2022 ), learning support from artificial intelligence interactions (Pataranutaporn et al., 2021 ), improving access to education in rural zones, and study hours flexibility (Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020 ; Vlachopoulos, 2020 ).

Nevertheless, some studies illustrate the limitations in elaborating educational technologies (Schöbel et al., 2020 ), frequently called Design limitations. That is, attributes that may be used for an adequate elaboration of educational technologies (Klock et al., 2015 ), in a manner in which technologies become more customized, in aspects such as (i) age; (ii) gender; (iii) motivations; and, lastly, (iv) student profile. The latter is necessary because students of different profiles may interact differently with the teaching platforms (Espinoza et al., 2020 ). Students can be encouraged by different attributes such as videos, quizzes, experience points (Geving, 2007 ; Hill, 2006 ). This use of attributes may help prevent inequalities, such as (i) some students learn more than others; (ii) lower engagement in certain student groups (Forman et al., 2020 ); (iii) students of opposite genders not being able to understand the exact issue (Pedro et al., 2015 ); and (iv) high evasion rates per student group.

This stereotype limitation in educational technologies is responsible for unleashing many problems (Darling-Hammond et al., 2020 ). Learning inequalities lead to various adverse effects (Pennington et al., 2016 ) such as cognitive mechanisms mediated by cognitive load (Croizet et al., 2004 ; Kith et al., 2022 ) leading to a decrease in cognitive performance due to the effects of stereotype threat. The decrease in work memory due to stereotype-related distractions (Doncel-García et al., 2022 ; Johns et al., 2008 ; Schmader and Johns, 2003 ; Turner and Engle, 1989 ). These may also lead to mind-wandering, with studies reporting an increase in stereotype-related thoughts and concerns when those were triggered in priming tasks (Brown Morris, 2022 ; Rydell et al., 2014 ; VanLandingham et al., 2021 ). Additionally, motivational mechanisms mediated by achievement goals showed that high difficulty activities induced apprehension (Chalabaev et al., 2008 ; Elliot and Church, 1997 ; Seo and Lee, 2021 ). Moreover, dejection in groups in uneven scenarios was related to lower performance (Hoeve, 2022 ; Keller and Dauenheimer, 2003 ). Lastly, behavioral mechanisms mediated by anxiety may affect the use of gamified technologies with gender discrepancies (Albuquerque et al., 2017 ; Grier et al., 2022 ). Also, self-efficacy was reported to have a significant impact on performance and motivation when participants are presented with stereotyped cues (Maddux, 1993 ; Navarro et al., 2022 ; Schunk, 1989 ). Such issues are objects to studies in a strand of the literature called Stereotype Threat, which consists of an individual’s exacerbated concern of being evaluated based on a negative stereotype (Myers et al., 2014 ). This stereotype is characterized by the incidence of patterns prone to please a certain group (Lippmann, 1946 ). This preference may lead to better results among individuals of target groups when compared to those of impaired groups, as is evidenced by learning performance indicators (Hsu et al., 2022 ), which was reported to be due to effects brought by cognitive (Kith et al., 2022 ; Schmader et al., 2008 ), and behavioral mechanisms (Gerstenberg et al., 2012 ). Anxiety is a potential mediator in this process, promoting a significant impact on learning performance, and is frequently related to stereotype threat.

Several studies noticed adverse effects of stereotypes in educational technologies, whether these are included in the design through stereotyped colors, elements, and texts or during the execution of an activity. By using elements of stereotyped design, Chang et al. ( 2019 ) presented evidence that interactions in educational platforms with stereotyped Avatars cause a decrease in women’s learning performances when interacting with these Avatars with male-dominated design. Albuquerque et al. ( 2017 ) proposed an experiment to analyze colors in gender-stereotyped gamified environments in order to assess if gender-related colors influenced students’ anxiety levels. The study used blue for male-stereotyped environments, lilac for female-stereotyped, and gray for the control setting. Results concluded that changes in women’s anxiety levels were more significant than those of men while using male-stereotyped technology. Nonetheless, stereotype threat may be centered not only around attributes such as colors composing educational technologies but also the interactions with the elements themselves. Christy and Fox ( 2014 ) discussed the configuration of ranking tables and texts in scoreboards regarding stereotype threat. According to the authors, there was evidence that women, when in a setup with a female-dominant ranking table, presented lower performances in the mathematics test when compared to women in a setup with a male-dominant ranking table.

Three aspects of stereotype threat (text, interactions, and colors) are considered in educational technologies. The textual analysis depends on specific language nuances (AlBadani et al., 2022 ). This type of analysis would require universal linguistic models able to handle at least most world languages. Therefore, besides a large amount of data, it would also require high computational power for training and realignment for each language (Taghizadeh and Faili, 2022 ) including regional variations. On the other hand, to observe stereotype effects on users’ interactions would require data user logs in every single system, as well as users to follow a standardized data collection (Nguyen et al., 2022 ), which would exponentially increase the task’s complexity. However, using colors and their biases, we can focus on just a few aspects of the design of educational technologies (Albuquerque et al., 2017 ; Kuo et al., 2022 ). Therefore, the data collection and analysis complexity can be reduced by applying the tools to collect color data.

Motivated by the adverse effects of stereotype threat in educational technologies, this study aimed to verify the existence of prevalence in the level of color preferences (a.k.a. color bias) in educational technologies. Additionally, this study aimed to present how color design is used, considering specific aspects such as the type of technology, context, and target audience, regarding gender and age. Given the availability of information on the web, we chose to focus on four types of educational technologies: (i) CMS—content management systems; (ii) RLE—remote learning environments (AVA—Virtual Learning Environments); (iii) Gamified Environments; and lastly (iv) MOOCs—Massive open online courses, used as teaching technologies of seven teaching subjects: (1) Business, (2) Computer Science, (3) Languages, (4) Math, (5) Multidisciplinary, (6) Programming and (7) Sciences. In order to evaluate the color bias in educational technologies and the prevalence of color preferences, the following research questions were formulated: The gender category was divided into male and female only.

What is the color preference (color-bias) in educational technology design?

What is the color preference (color-bias) present in educational technologies design according to the teaching subjects (context)?

What is the color preference (color-bias) concerning the colors present in the design according to the types of educational technologies?

What is the color preference (color-bias) present in educational technologies design according to the age range of the target group?

This article is organized in the following manner: section two describes the theoretical framework and the related studies, presenting stereotype threats, the metrics used, and the gamified educational settings of this study. Section three presents the proposal and describes the tools used in this study. Section four presents and discusses the results. Lastly, in section five, the study conclusions are addressed.

Theoretical framework

The following section presents a brief literature review with the main concepts and theories adopted as a basis for the present study.

Stereotype threat

Stereotype, in its conceptualization, has a Greek origin which means (“stereo” —rigid; “typos”—impression). The concept was used to represent a form of impression manufactured in metallic parts for the production of books during the 18th century (Del Boca and Ashmore, 1980 ). In 1981, Walter Lippman aggregated a new conceptualization of the word, defining it as previously constituted mental representations, which somehow influenced the ability to conduct activities.

Stereotypes became known as beliefs, resulting in a prejudiced judgment regarding a specific target, and became an object of study for social psychology. Such studies observed the intellectual complexity linked to the development of activities when comparing performance (Yzerbyt et al., 1997 ). It was noted that when the stereotype unleashes a negative sense, the individual may suffer a series of issues, which may affect psychological mediators-namely, cognitive, behavioral, and motivational mechanisms. When the effect is perceived, the individual who is affected enters a state of threat (Pennington et al., 2016 ).

Stereotype threat consists of negative effects on an individual’s performance in a certain task (Shapiro and Neuberg, 2007 ). Several studies in the literature observe the effects of stereotype threats in social groups (identity groups and non-identity groups, Gonzales et al., 2002 ; Martiny et al., 2012 ). These studies often identified decreased performance when participants of minority groups faced stereotyped environments. Some studies investigated and discussed the stereotype threat effect (Flore and Wicherts, 2015 ; Lamont et al., 2015 ; Nguyen and Ryan, 2008 ; Shewach et al., 2019 ) and its correlation with performance (Lewis Jr and Michalak, 2019 ). Through the development of activities to evaluate the performance of minority groups while performing a task and developing stereotyped scenarios to simulate and verify stereotype threat effects. The attributes related to stereotype threat comprise elements such as colors in the design of educational technologies.

Effects caused by stereotypes and performance decreases are present in much of educational technology’s attributes. Based on that, studies discussed educational technologies that may favor a group. Nonetheless, when the technology presents gender stereotypes, this may greatly disfavor the learning process of the other group. Gender stereotyped educational technologies are currently an essential subject of study associating possible causes and effects. For instance, Albuquerque et al. ( 2017 ) presented a study on the impact of stereotype threat and anxiety on the performance of a logic test. Nonetheless, the subject still raises many questions due to curious results. Christy and Fox ( 2014 ) presented evidence that women when in a setup with a female-dominated ranking table presented lower performances in the mathematics test when compared to women in a setup with a male-dominated ranking table.

Educational Technologies and color-bias

Colors are understood as objects that have three components (Ibraheem et al., 2012 ): (i) hue—the combination that can be made by using shades of red, green, and blue (RGB); (ii) saturation—the attenuation degree of a specific color, i.e., its intensity; (iii) brightness - an attribute that defines the characteristic of light emission, that is, the state of giving out or reflecting light.

However, a color can be much more than an element of design: it may be related to different feelings, emotions, and desires (Rider, 2010 ) and related to how human brains can capture it. Understanding the whole process of assimilation, from its activation to how the perception can influence human behavior through colors, is the object of the study of color psychology (Singh and Srivastava, 2011 ; Whitfield and Whiltshire, 1990 ).

Based upon this relation, understanding the primary feelings and emotions aroused through the perception (Webster, 1996 ) of a specific color, it is possible to elaborate a correlation with the meaning of the information which a particular color may convey. The literature presents various studies relating feelings originating from colors, ranging from tranquility to the impression of something hazardous (Simmons, 2011 ).

In order to understand further the color relations with emotions and behavior, studies considered individual color preferences as a way to relate one’s emotion to his/hers current mental state. Through that, it was possible to observe the changes in color emotional response throughout the years, as well correlate color preferences with gender (Cunningham and Macrae, 2011 ) or according to age group (Pope et al., 2012 ). Some studies (Best et al., 1975 ; Clark and Clark, 1940 ; Duckitt et al., 1999 ) observed that colors are also associated with trend biases: positive-white and negative-black, which can be strongly linked to documents that represent cultural and racial groups.

Studies also reported that the relationships between colors and human beings could be further extended into characteristics that involve the perception of color based on gender. Hill ( 2002 ) analyzed the relationship between skin colors and the meaning attached to it. In this study, results suggested that men related the skin with female characteristics based on the color tone associated with the skin. Furthermore, Jakobsdóttir et al. ( 1994 ) presented significant differences between color preferences between men and women and discussed the guidelines for developing graphics (images) that should be used. This was also pointed out by Volman and van Eck ( 2001 ), who considered color as a possible leveling attribute for gender equity in educational technologies.

Although the literature does not directly address existing color bias in educational technologies, it has no shortage of studies that show that color bias can directly influence some elements or mediators, whether in the design (Albuquerque et al., 2017 ; Richard, 2017 ) or in the educational scope itself (Brandon et al., 2021 ). The literature presents evidence that although colors are strongly related to children’s future choices, stereotyped elements belonging to the same gender can influence them even more (Karniol, 2011 ). Furthermore, studies also reported that graphic elements are generally perceived differently by men and women, which allows questions about differences in learning in educational technologies to arise (Chanlin, 2001 ).

The issue of gender in educational technologies

Currently, many studies present factors that should be better explored in educational technologies. Although several factors such as age group, ethnic group, and culture influence inclusion parameters, gender remain one of the easiest to control and study due to its number of classes. Studies reported distinct styles in the learning process between men and women, as well as choices by disciplines more suited based on these profiles (Steffens and Jelenec, 2011 ). Comparisons can identify trends, such as mentioned by Steffens et al. ( 2010 ), Vuletich et al. ( 2020 ): women prefer disciplines directed towards the elaboration of content for personal growth, while men tend to logic and reasoning.

Among other gender-related aspects, the subject of stereotypes and educational technologies and how it has the potential to favor a group while disfavoring or hindering the learning of other has been approached by scholars in recent years. Albuquerque et al. ( 2017 ) presented a study on the negative impact of stereotype threat and increased anxiety in the performance in logic tests. Moreover, Lee and Nass ( 2012 ) showed that, in educational technologies, the females tend to be fewer concerns associated with stereotypes and presented overall better performances in math tests while cooperating instead of when competing.

Components included in the design exert influence over results as well as Chang et al. ( 2019 ) presented evidence that women who had their learning performance impaired while interacting with male instructors used non-verbal sexist behavior. Furthermore, Christy and Fox ( 2014 ) reported that women, when in a setup with a ranking table that is female-dominant, showed lower performance in the math tests when compared to women in a setup with a male-dominant ranking table. However, the moderator’s avatar did not significantly impact women’s performance in the same conditions.

Related works

Subjects like safety and moral standards have been associated with many arguments considering the World Wide Web since its early days. Using the large amount of data that has been produced on the internet in recent years Sagiroglu and Sinanc ( 2013 ), researches highlighted ethical aspects (Ogbuke et al., 2022 ), privacy (Saura et al., 2021 ) and security (Díaz et al., 2022 ) of the immense amount of data. Other studies pointed to data bias in applications with artificial intelligence and natural language processing (Caliskan et al., 2017 ; Hellman, 2020 ; Kleinberg et al., 2018 ; Mitchell et al., 2021 ; Pessach and Shmueli, 2020 ). Moreover, some authors observed flaws in algorithmic fairness in education (Kizilcec and Lee, 2020 ) and further discussed challenges to accessing this data for research, considering ethics and justice.

Silva et al. ( 2019 ) suggested a possible solution with a supervised learning approach to detect gender stereotypes in online educational technologies. Similarly, Silva et al. ( 2019 ) proposed the implementation of a data collection technology on websites available on the WEB to extract gender bias from the contents present on its pages. In order to construct these datasets, the authors proposed a search that included website contexts not restricted to educational, although in this study, they only analyzed educational sites. Furthermore, the authors proposed a computational solution based on image and text processors and a bias management system (Fig. 1 ).

The figure represents the data collection process carried out by Silva et al. (2019) in images and texts on websites.

The limitations found in Silva et al. ( 2019 ) proposal can be seen in two dimensions: Technical and Ethical, the Ethical dimension being the most critical. In the Technical dimension, it is observed that the collected data are only from the main page of the corresponding educational technology. Therefore, explicit stereotypes might be present on other pages of the same technology, generating inaccuracies in calculating color bias in the sample. Additionally, no smoothing in the pixel calculation was observed in this study. The principle behind this smoothing process is to allow calculations of page similarity based on RGB standards, considering averages only. In turn, the ethical dimension is of utmost importance due to morality issues and from a legal point of view: the authors referred to the data collection process without considering permission criteria and which pages are accessible for collection or not. Thus, works that discuss, for example, areas correlated with ethical principles also need to conduct studies that follow these same ethical standards, and studies should present summarized comparisons with the main research topics of each proposal (Table 1 ).

Methodology

The current study investigates the presence of color bias existing in educational technologies. Furthermore, based on the assumption of its existence, observe the impact of this bias on diverse target audiences and their respective age groups. Thus, observe if there are color differences in technologies by respective types and context.

The character of the present study is observational and intends to detect and measure the color preference level in educational technologies, considering male and female gender . In order to answer our research questions, a computer solution was created to estimate the color preference level among genders through a process developed to identify colors in educational technologies (Fig. 2 ). The developed algorithm receives the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of a given educational technology and identifies the colors contained on the main page. This tool also access colors on secondary pages of the respective educational technology. The representation of similarities between colors is not adequate colors are composed of three shades. Therefore, to calculate similarities between them, it was necessary to perform two treatments: (i) standardization—which consists of applying a standard between collected colors, varying tonality between 0 and 255—this assures the averages of the RGB components of the processed colors. Moreover, the standardization allows calculating a resulting color, simplifying interpretation. Furthermore, this process was necessary to normalize all the pixels on a page, highlight the most present colors for analysis, and discard rare colors that could have affected the results. In other words, only the most frequent colors were considered for the analysis, thus resulting in color equalization (Yongan et al., 2012 ; Zhong et al., 2008 ); (ii) LUV softening—consists of applying a vector decomposition, consisting of the more accurate vector representation (Kakooei and Baleghi, 2022 ) between two colors. In other words, with LUV softening, it is possible to calculate how close two colors are in terms of similarity, creating a more semantic representation of the colors in a vector space. The LUV softening effect produces more pragmatic colors, which place them closer to human visual perception and facilitate identification (Zhang et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, LUV softening was the base calculation of smoothing for constructing the male and female scales in each educational technologies page and classifying them according to how they are perceived by the human eye, considering color segmentation in its hue, saturation, and brightness. After these two processes (standardization and softening), the predisposition of existing colors was calculated in male and female scales based on gender-related color perception. The construction of these gender-based scales considered the color range that best fits current preference profiles. According to Fulcher and Hayes ( 2018 ), Yeung and Wong ( 2018 ), the color range of pink and purple was a preference for females, while blue and green for males. Kodžoman et al. ( 2022 ), Kuo et al. ( 2022 ) also presented color ranges of pink and blue as colors with preference highest levels among women and men, respectively. Based on these classic scales and color ranges, the male scale taken as a basis was proposed by Silver and Ferrante ( 1995 ), presenting color preferences for masculine colors in shades of green and blue. For the female scale, it was taken as a basis, the scale proposed by Hallock ( 2003 ), where women’s color preference for shades of red, pink, and purple is displayed. Lastly, with the colors and scales arranged, the calculation of the male and female preference levels for each page composing the educational technology is carried out through the cosine.

The figure presents the execution flow of the computational application to calculate the final color bias level of the educational technologies considered in this work.

The computational solution in this study is composed of processing modules described in further detail below. Moreover, the source code collected data and statistical analysis are available in an available online repository Footnote 1 for access and evaluation. Overall, a total of six processing modules were used, as follows:

Encase and anonymity of technology links : The algorithm receives as input a file called ’urls.txt’ containing links to educational technologies. Afterward, it applies a hashing function to encrypt the access link. Given this, the algorithm creates a new spreadsheet (dictionary.csv) with a list of URLs with encrypted data to organize the samples that will be collected in the next step;

Collection of pages links : The algorithm accesses the spreadsheet file, accessing links of educational technologies homepages, retrieving all the pages contained in that technology and that have access permission (more details in section “Ethics on data collection procedure”), then, a new spreadsheet file (pages.csv) is created containing the pages associated with the educational technology being processed;

Pages screenshot : the algorithm access the “pages.csv” spreadsheet file scanning page by page, taking a screenshot, and saving it;

Pixels collection and normalization : The algorithm randomly scans each of the screenshot images, collecting a total of 3000 colored pixels above the white color tone. White-colored pages were discarded by the tool for further analysis. Nonetheless, these pages were recorded in a file (’whitepageslist.txt’). In order to guarantee the average of the colors in the Red-Green-Blue (RGB) pattern, the algorithm applied pixel normalization to colored/non-white pages. The RGB model was chosen as a standard broadly used, and due to its compatibility with all color systems adopted for educational technologies’ development (Olsson, 2014 );

LUV smoothing : This step transformed the RGB pattern into a LUV decomposition to assure the representation of colors with greater accuracy, especially considering the variety of color shades to serve as input to the next step;

Similarity calculation : The distance between the colors of the scales was calculated with the colors extracted from sampled pages to calculate the degree of similarity between the male and female scales. The cosine was the metric chosen for representing more accurately, following the metrics established by Tao et al. ( 2017 ) and Techapanurak et al. ( 2019 , 2020 ). Cosine calculation further allows the measurement of the distance between two values and considers directionality, as blue and red would present opposite directions in the scale. It is worth remembering that both color scales are standardized with LUV smoothing leveling similarities calculation. As the final step, similarity values were aggregated by page and, thus, the values of respective levels of female and male preference.

Ethics on data collection procedure

The present study used data mining concepts on the Web, taking into account authorization of which files can be accessed and collected through permissions files (like robots.txt and meta-tags, Van Wel and Royakkers, 2004 ), such as Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP). These establish standards for whether to access data and which part of this data is permitted by query robots available on the Web, comprising ethical norms and principles and the use of information that does not require approved access.

Therefore, the robots.txt file was checked to verify access permissions for each site’s web page (i.e., educational technologies). The file follows a structure of which agents and which pages can get accessed. Generally, an asterisk indicates that any computer agent (robot) will not be able to consult or access the respective page, which was listed in the body of the file. Some specifications allow robots to access certain content, such as Facebook or Twitter agents that can have access to profile content.

Pages like users, profiles, products, buy, and about/personal have access restrictions for any agent. However, pages such as “index” or “about” may have granted access to robots.txt example files. Figure 3 shows a file example with the specific pages without permissions to access.

The figure presents a mapping structure with access permissions and its pages. The mapping is responsible for locating all technology pages, following its permission or restriction of access with the pages.

The literature concerned with such ethical concepts follows this convention (robots.txt or meta-tags) from web data mining for open linked data (Oren et al., 2008 ), web content mining (Költringer and Dickinger, 2015 ), mining learners participating data in learning environments (Kop et al., 2011 ). All of these ethical concepts were taken into account for the construction of the data of this study.

The process of link extraction and sampling for building the dataset (“pages.csv”) used in this study was developed in three stages: (i) web mining; (ii) ethical mining; and (iii) data collection (Fig. 4 )

Web mining module: The first stage consisted in accessing main sites, also called Indexes or Homepages. This step checked the presence and access granted by Robots.txt files. All links referenced on this page were verified according to such restrictions and access permissions in the second stage;

Ethical mining module: The second step applied access filters to what may or may not be consulted on pages that could be accessed later. All inclusions and deletions were performed by consulting the Robots.txt file, following the standards of each site. Links with access restrictions were deleted, and links with access permission passed to the next step to build the dataset;

Data collection: Links with access permissions were stored in a file called pages.csv, with privacy and anonymity of information. Once stored, the links were encapsulated and encoded in string hash, which hid any category of the relation of the data collected with the respective site.

The figure presents the data extraction process, following ethical concepts for access and availability. All the dataset construction and access to the pages of educational technologies were analyzed with access release.

Data and descriptive analysis

This study conducted a manual search for educational technologies between August and September 2021. A total of 88 technologies were considered, indexed each by its respective access link (Tables 2 and 3 ). However, as 15 of these presented access restrictions and specific permissions, thus, 73 educational technologies were considered, and data from 3136 pages were collected.

Besides the access links for these educational technologies, other information was also extracted manually, such as type of technology, teaching subject, users’ numbers, and age. This data was available either on “about us” links or in available reports by the educational technology itself. Therefore, it was possible to map four types of technologies manually: (i) CMS—content management systems; (ii) RLE—remote learning environments (AVA—Virtual Learning Environments); (iii) Gamified Environments; and lastly, (iv) Massive open online courses (MOOCs), divided in seven themes (Business, Computer Science, Languages, Math, Multidisciplinary, Programming, and Sciences). Moreover, the ages according to the target audience that was informed by the technologies. This primary data analysis revealed a total “impact” of 2,494,082,054 users (registered students) in these educational technologies.

In order to understand the data in general terms and describe general statistical analysis, the data was divided into two strands (Table 4 ). The first strand is related to understanding the data and organizing it for further analyses (Table 5 ). It was observed from this data analysis a high outlier interference, mainly for Skewness and Kurtosis values. The second strand presented data considering measures of trend and locality with Winsorized variants. In this manner, the values would be less impacted by the presence of outliers. The means provided evidence of high values belonging to the male scale, indicating a mild male preference. Furthermore, the standard error and M-estimator presented values that indicate the ability to generalize the data to reality and its surroundings, respectively.

Therefore, by observing data description and characteristics, this study opted for robust statistical methods to analyze the results. This is due to the large number of issues reported by the literature (Mair and Wilcox, 2020 ), especially when there are violations of data normality. Evaluating the color preference level, or rather, bias, was used in the one-way comparison of multiple trimmed groups means statistic test as an alternative to the simple Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Regarding male and female color preference scales belonging to the same subject evaluation, these two scales were estimated in each technology and considered related groups. Therefore, we used Yuen’s trimmed mean t-test in this analysis due to its robustness for two dependent groups. The Winsorized Correlation test calculated current correlation levels between the male and female scales. Since its use is familiar to the Person correlation, it adds robust effects to the tests (Mair and Wilcox, 2020 ).

In the present study, the impact is the number of users who, in some form, are impacted by using the educational technologies considered in this evaluation (Table 4 ). The information related to such metrics was extracted from the educational technologies pages or was contained in documents and records available on the WEB. It is relevant to highlight that some researchers considered at least one year of data showing the amount of educational technologies users. However, values remained extremely high despite this outdated information. Nonetheless, the total amount of users under impact is more than 2 Billion people. In some manner, individuals made use of these platforms for acquiring knowledge, whether for training or learning new content.

The context class was elaborated, considering the activities and courses the technology in question offers. It is relevant to point out that a technology belonging to multidisciplinary contexts must contain more than one specific teaching subject. However, it is noted that technology of the multidisciplinary context could contain the minority contexts classified with a single sampling only ( n  = 1). It is also vital to note that in this analysis, the computer science and business contexts had only one technology integrating the group. In contrast, most technologies tend to diverse contexts, mainly towards independent learning of a discipline or course. Regarding the languages context, technologies that focused on teaching languages speech or writing as mechanisms for literacy were considered. When referring to STEM Footnote 2 fields, there was a total of 19 technologies. Despite comprising only one technology of the sample, computer science showed a high male bias level. Moreover, this differed from the programming context because the specialty of the technology is turned towards disciplines composing computer science, whereas programming is only centered around the art of programming.

While observing the impact , as expected, technologies of multiple subjects technologies presented the highest number of users. Nevertheless, an intriguing fact is that even when adding educational technologies of STEM focus, despite constituting a representative majority when compared to languages , the impact provided by STEM was inferior, summing 6.372%, with a difference of almost 20% between these contexts. Such an effect can suggest a considerably low demand for courses in this category.

The technologies belonging to the gamified environment type possessed the highest representativeness, with a total of 49 (63%) out of the 73 educational technologies. Furthermore, it was the group of technologies that presented the higher impact. One possible explanation may be that gamified technologies have become more prominent in recent years due to game elements and characteristics, which aggregate engagement and playfulness in the learning process.

The descriptive data helps to understand the gender-based differences related to preference level by context and reveals differences and variations among male and female color scales (Fig. 5 ). It is important to emphasize the expected low variations due to single sampling in computer science and business contexts. However, an opposite correlation is noted in behavior between female and male preference scales. In most cases, the mean values of the female and male scales tend to be presented in the opposite direction. In the sciences context, it is observed a mean of higher values for the female scale, whereas, for the male scale, there is mild evidence that it is the contextual modality with the lowest mean.

The figure presents the technologies with their respective contexts. The figure on the left side presents the layout of colors belonging to the feminine scale, while the figure on the right side presents the disposition of colors for the masculine scale. It is possible to observe that they all have a high male bias regardless of the context.

Figure 6 presents the variation between the preference levels with target group variation. For all age groups, the male scale level is observed as higher. However, in the female scale boxplots, the medians evidence differences between them, while the male scales pattern is practically unchanged, with little variability in the median. An intriguing fact is the 6–17 boxplot, which despite having a minimum value and first quartile lower than the remaining values, the correlated boxplot in the female scale does not present an opposite effect, differing from the behavior observed in the variation of scale levels by context.

The figure presents the technologies with their respective age groups. The figure on the left side presents the layout of colors belonging to the feminine scale, while the figure on the right side presents the disposition of colors for the masculine scale. It is possible to observe that they all have a high male bias regardless of the age groups.

The preference levels of female and male scales under the technology type show that male scales presented a low variation between medians (Fig. 7 ). In contrast, the cms type possesses a higher variability for the levels in the female scale. However, boxplots’ behavior still presents a total predominance for the male gender in these technologies, as aforementioned.

The figure presents the technologies with their respective technology types. The figure on the left side presents the layout of colors belonging to the feminine scale, while the figure on the right side presents the disposition of colors for the masculine scale. It is possible to observe that they all have a high male bias regardless of the technology types.

The analysis was segmented into two parts to facilitate results interpretation. The first part is related to evaluating the impact of color bias data only through the main pages belonging to educational technologies. The second part evaluated the combination of pages of each technology to understand the relationship between bias levels and their respective pages, adjusted to context, target audience, and age group, providing a deeper analysis.

Research Question 1 (Color-bias)

Concerning the color bias in a descriptive analysis, the collected data presented different standards. Significant p -value for data belonging to a non-standard distribution confirm this (Table 6 ). The p -values are significant for the B measures, even with W close to 1, and Male L ., with W a little further from 1. Therefore, for a more compressed analysis, tests adopted were used for the robust analysis, and transformations in the final scales could be applied for softening and standard testing. However, the development of machine learning models was used to avoid losing power and size of the effect and ensure a reliable scale for future analyses.

Results of the comparison between the calculated male and female preference levels in each technology were organized with trimming levels and reliability levels, considering preference bias and effect size (Table 7 ). The comparison was made through three adjustments of trimming level of adjusted mean values: (i) 10%; (ii) 20% and, lastly, (iii) 30%. The results showed that the male bias level is always higher than the female in the technologies evaluated in this experiment. Beyond a high effect size, degrees of freedom (df) indicate the number of ways or dimensions in which the preference levels can move without violating the restrictions, therefore, continuing to have a significant result.

In order to understand comparisons between the quantiles Footnote 3 , observe the reliability interval, and the behavior of the relationship between the two preference levels (male and female), confidence intervals were listed (Table 8 ). Each interval was organized for each quantile, with their respective significance values. Based on the obtained values, it was possible to observe a reduction of a significant effect between quantiles.

The variation among male and female preference levels was plotted alongside its preference intervals (Fig. 8 ). The plots further confirmed the polarity of preference when low values were obtained in the female scale, while the highest values were found in the male scale. Consequently, when the female preference level tends to zero, the male preference levels would reach the highest values, and vice-versa.

The figure shows the variation of the correlation between colors with feminine biases of colors with masculine biases. When there is much male bias, the colors with female bias are almost nil. On the other hand, the higher the female colors, the lower the male color values.

Results of the robust correlation level among preference levels, as well as their statistical significance, were calculated considering the critical reliability value of 95% (Table 9 ). It is noticed that an inverse correlation reinforces the polarity or contrariwise proportion effect previously mentioned. Furthermore, the variation of levels in their respective reliability intervals indicated a weak-moderate effect of −0.4947 taking into account the strength of correlation on standard scales. The p-value for this comparison was of 0.00002 , indicating a significant correlation in this analysis.

Research Question 2: Color-bias in educational technologies by type

The color bias was also investigated to evaluate variations of preference level bias by educational technology type. As aforementioned in the descriptive statistic subsection, the technology types considered for this research were: (i) CMS—content management systems; (ii) RLE—remote learning environments (AVA—Ambientes Virtuais de Aprendizagem); (iii) Gamified Environments; and lastly (iv) MOOCs—Massive open online courses.

Results for technology types color bias were calculated separately for gender. For males, p -values (<0.001) presented statistically significant differences, indicating noteworthy differences among color bias in their technologies. A paired analysis using adjustment of denominated p post hoc tests on the trimmed means was conducted to highlight divergent technologies or those which possess high levels of preference bias (Table 10 ). Results indicated that CMS technologies displayed the highest male-oriented bias levels for colors inherent to the design, while RLE was the technology type with the lowest male color bias. Despite significant p -value for MOOC and gamified environments, the latter took second place among environments with the highest male color bias. The results also presented a 0.38 correlation value, indicating a weak to moderate relationship between technology types. However, while considering existing differences between color levels belonging to the male colors scale, it is necessary to verify the existence of female levels of difference. Still, as mentioned by distinct authors, the scales are not dichotomous and are not complementary. The results demonstrated that technology types with the highest female bias are RLE and CMS, followed by MOOC and, lastly, gamified environments (Table 11 ). Moreover, CMS and MOOC presented similar preference levels, representing non-significant p values (0.14434). The existing correlation between educational technologies’ colors that consider color preference for the female gender is also weak to moderate, with a value of 0.26.

Research Question 3: color-bias in educational technologies by teaching subjects

The preference bias among educational technology contexts presented statistically significant differences for some of the contexts. The color preference belonging to the male scale indicated the highest male color bias is that of Computer Science, followed by Programming. On the opposite side, Business and Sciences presented the lowest male bias compared to the other contexts, with relatively the same male bias level. Technologies of Languages, Math, and Multidisciplinary contexts presented intermediary levels of male bias. Moreover, the two latter also presented similar levels, with non-significant p values ( p  = 0.38063) (Table 12 ).

Statistically significant differences were also found in educational technologies by teaching subjects on the female scale (Table 13 ). Test results identified a correlation among levels to be considered from moderate to strong, with a 0.69 value. Technologies belonging to Business contexts presented the highest female preference levels, followed by the Sciences, which also presented the highest color variability on the female scale. On the other hand, technologies associated with the Computer Science context presented the lowest levels of female preference. Nevertheless, Programming was the third-largest context compared to other technologies within the female color scale level. Math, Languages, and Multidisciplinary contexts presented closely related color levels for the female gender.

Research Question 4: color-bias in educational technologies by age group

The age-group analysis did not indicate significant differences between males (Table 14 ) considering technologies divided by their respective target groups or referring to their appropriate age groups. Therefore it is possible to infer that the technologies presented equivalent bias loads. In other terms, regardless of age group, educational technologies presented similar high values among target groups. Therefore, paired analyses were not conducted, given that the technologies were divided by their respective age groups and did not present statistically significant differences in male color bias.

In this analysis, females presented statistically significant differences between the age groups of these educational technologies concerning color level, with a p -value of <0.001 (Table 15 ), despite the weak effect size (0.11) in the scale. The paired comparisons were conducted with adjusted p -values to detect significant differences between female age groups. Results indicate differences among educational technologies for the 01–18 years old group, which presented the lowest female preference levels. The remaining technologies presented preference levels without significance, with equivalent color scales for age groups.

The discussion is centered around answering, discussing, and pointing out the effects and results produced and presented in the previous section to facilitate the comprehension of the results, aligned with the hypotheses of this research.

Therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected, resuming the first research question, which investigated the existence or not of a color bias in educational technologies. Results indicated H 1.1 “statistically significant differences between color levels in educational technologies”. The results show an overall male-oriented bias toward colors in the design of educational technologies. One point that raises attention is that currently, women are still a minority in technology courses. Some studies further discuss this gender imbalance (Cheryan et al., 2017 ; Shein, 2018 ; Stevenson, 2020 ), and these report males as the majority in these areas. This imbalance could consist a significant influence factor in the development of educational technologies, which are often strongly biased towards the male gender. Another reason may be the groups responsible for developing these technologies, which could be imbalanced and composed mainly of males. According to the American Computer Science Association Footnote 4 , women represent 18% of the students who graduate in computer science. Furthermore, women sum up to 37% of the students in undergraduate programs belonging to the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; Cheryan et al., 2017 ).

When observing the results for research question 2 (color bias in educational technologies by type), the null hypothesis was rejected, indicating the presence of H 2.1 “statistically significant differences between the color levels in educational technologies by type”. Thus, the presence and dilution of attributes related to each technology’s color bias and design elements are identified. Correlating results for the male scale, gamified environments presented the lowest bias levels for the female scale and a high male bias. Therefore, it is logical to raise assumptions that advantages for the male gender in diverse aspects referring to their colors are present in these environments. In turn, content management systems (CMSs)—systems built exclusively for content management, presented colors tied to the solution archetype and its respective educational resources. The student’s follow-up is even higher since it is a presentation and content exhibition of educational technology. According to De la Varre et al. ( 2014 ), about evasion, these system modality flaws are related to the lack of mediation from tutors and teachers. These flaws can be classified as a potential problem for opposite-gender students in this type of technology due to the heavily influential role of color bias.

Concerning the third research question, which aimed to observe the color bias in the context of educational technologies, the results showed that H 3.1 “statistically significant differences between the color levels in educational technologies by context”. Hence, rejecting the null hypothesis. Nonetheless, the technology context with the highest level of male color bias and the lowest level of female bias was Computer Science. Once again, since women in this field of study can be considered a minority (as in STEM fields generally), can this bias be a fundamental factor for women’s disinterest and evasion rates in this course modality? Some studies discuss representativeness and mediators such as anxiety of women in these courses (Camp, 2002 ; Nicolai, 2001 ) or overall personal interests?. Authors further discussed anxiety through stereotype threat in educational technologies in the performance in logic activities (Albuquerque et al., 2017 ). Thus, relating the aspect mediated by color interference to the emergence of possible stereotype threats in educational technologies could generate anxiety and further reinforce this issue for female students.

Finally, the results of the fourth research question, color bias in educational technologies by age group ( H 4 ), showed two strands for each age group. The first strand did not reject the null hypothesis for male color bias, and the second rejected the null hypothesis for female bias. The literature on color psychology and their preferences identifies that each age and gender presents a certain level of preferred colors. While divergence of colors can be based on gender, obtained through the scales used in this study, different age groups might present it as well (Hallock, 2003 ). It is possible to raise some assumptions about the current study results. The first is that technologies present the same level of color bias for males, implying that males do not shift in color preference as much. The second is the lack of standardization in the elaboration of technologies for colors belonging to the female gender, with age not being a factor taken into consideration.

The presented and discussed results in this study align with the current literature. Despite both scales being independent, the results present evidence of the strong predominance of colors belonging to the male scale in these evaluated technologies. In other terms, educational technologies are elaborated with a strong bias toward the male gender. This bias can be related to the more significant number of male students who graduate in the listed fields of the study compared to the number of female students who seek universities or further education in these areas.

Nevertheless, the development of technologies that consider the possibility of color customization is still limited. Different technologies, regardless of the type and applied context, present low variance in color use when compared to each other. Furthermore, based on our results, gender should be a factor of utmost importance to make educational technologies more inclusive and egalitarian. This limitation is perhaps an associated cause of the evasion of female students in the STEM fields.

Despite independent preferences in the scales, it was possible to observe a dichotomy between colors, reinforcing the opposite effect of gender-related preferences. The existing correlation between male and female colors showed a moderate negative effect, indicating an opposite effect to the effect observed.

Limitations, threats to validity and future works

This study comprised only 73 educational technologies collected randomly, with 3136 pages from the WEB. With their respective ages, the target group could be better defined if more precise information was available on the educational technology’s websites. Moreover, the number of users was estimated based on the report for some technologies, which can indicate an inaccuracy of the number of students, indicating only the number of registered students. We acknowledge that while there can be cases of more than one student using the same profile, there is also the possibility of students having more than one profile, thus causing variation in the actual number of users.

In the future, we plan to expand this study aims and collect data to observe the effect of textual elements also extracted from the educational technologies to analyze negative stereotypes contained in the textual content. Furthermore, future work is intended to improve analysis towards age group, considering the preference scale in this study. Additionally, we intend to increase the dataset generated in this study to build models to use artificial intelligence capable of predicting male and female color bias.

Data availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available in the Dataverse repository: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NA0US1 .

shorturl.at/ghvyI

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.

Quantiles are points belonging to regular intervals from the accumulated distribution function of a random variable. The quantiles divide the sorted data into q data subsets of essentially equal dimensions.

https://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-science/

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Santos, J., Bittencourt, I., Reis, M. et al. Two billion registered students affected by stereotyped educational environments: an analysis of gender-based color bias. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9 , 249 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01220-6

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Stereotype threat in learning situations? An investigation among language minority students

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• Sabrina König   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8360-7080 1 ,
• Justine Stang-Rabrig   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7177-0016 1 ,
• Bettina Hannover   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1916-8455 2 ,
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• Nele McElvany   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8649-5523 1  

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Stereotype threat (ST) is a potential explanation for inequalities in language competencies observed between students from different language backgrounds. Language competencies are an important prerequisite for educational success, wherefore the significance for investigation arises. While ST effects on achievement are empirically well documented, little is known about whether ST also impairs learning. Thus, we investigated vocabulary learning in language minority elementary school students, also searching for potential moderators. In a pre-post design, 240 fourth-grade students in Germany who were on average 10 years old ( M Age  = 9.92, SD  = 0.64; 49.8% female) were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: implicit ST, explicit ST without threat removal before posttest, explicit ST with threat removal before posttest, and a control group. Results showed that learning difficult vocabulary from reading two narrative texts was unaffected by ST. Neither students’ identification with their culture of residence and culture of origin nor stereotyped domain of reading were moderators. The findings are discussed with regard to content and methodological aspects such that a motivation effect might have undermined a possible ST effect. Implications for future research include examining the question at what age children become susceptible to ST and whether students have internalized negative stereotypes about their own group, which could increase the likelihood of ST effects occurring.

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Introduction

In recent years, cultural and linguistic diversity of students and thus of school classes has increased worldwide (OECD, 2019 ). Large-scale assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for high schools and the Progress in International Reading Literacy (PIRLS) for elementary schools have repeatedly shown that there are on average differences in achievement in various domains between language minority and language majority children (Mullis et al., 2017 ; OECD, 2019 ). Several reasons for these disparities are discussed and investigated. In addition to differences in socioeconomic status, psychological processes concerning stereotypes and stereotype threat (ST) have proven to partly explain achievement differences between immigrant and non-immigrant students (e.g., Appel et al., 2015 ; Steele & Aronson, 1995 ). ST describes the situation in which knowledge of a negative stereotype about a group to which one belongs triggers the threat to confirm this stereotype oneself (Steele & Aronson, 1995 ). ST impairs achievement, thus contributing to a confirmation of the negative stereotype (Baysu & Phalet, 2019 ; Steele & Aronson, 1995 ). In achievement situations, ST is empirically well-researched (Appel & Kronberger, 2012 ; Flore & Wicherts, 2015 ), but less is known about whether ST also impairs learning, such as the acquisition of new vocabulary (Rydell & Boucher, 2017 ). First empirical findings suggest that vocabulary growth can be negatively influenced by ST as early as in elementary school (Sander et al., 2018 ). This is particularly worrisome, as elementary school years are of crucial importance for further educational pathways, and a strong command of the language of instruction is a prerequisite for future educational success (e.g., Biemiller, 2005 ).

Numerous studies have shown that various variables, for example, the identification with the culture of residence and culture of origin as well as identification with a particular academic domain, can mitigate or enhance ST effects in achievement situations (e.g., Baysu & Phalet, 2019 ; Pansu et al., 2016 ). However, it is unclear whether these variables moderate ST effects in learning situations. Thus, we examine potential effects and possible moderators of ST in a vocabulary learning situation among language minority elementary school students.

Theoretical framework

Importance of vocabulary.

Vocabulary, as the entirety of words in the mental lexicon, is a prerequisite for reading, listening, and understanding spoken and written language and is therefore highly relevant for both academic success and later professional success (e.g., Graves, 2016 ). Elementary school years are of particular importance for vocabulary acquisition and promotion, as children learn an average of 1,000 new words per year during this period (e.g., Biemiller, 2005 ). Strategies promoting vocabulary can be distinguished according to the kind of instruction, either implicit (e.g., reading texts; McElvany & Artelt, 2007 ; Vidal, 2011 ; Webb, 2008 ) or explicit (e.g., vocabulary learning; Elgort, 2011 ; Nation, 2013 ). Implicit instruction focuses on the meaning aspect of language, whereas explicit instruction aims to systematic teach grammar and vocabulary (DeKeyser, 2003 ; Ellis et al., 2009 ). There is evidence that combining both is effective for vocabulary acquisition (Karami & Bowles, 2019 ; Marulis & Neuman, 2010 ; Stanat et al., 2012 ). McElvany et al. ( 2017 ) revealed with regard to vocabulary acquisition among language minority children that learning from context (reading a German-language text with target words that can be deduced from the context of the text) was effective compared to a control group (reading a German-language text without target words).

Alongside differences in achievement in general, differences in vocabulary in particular also exist to the detriment of language minority children compared to native children despite similar cognitive abilities (Europe: Bosman & Janssen, 2017 ; Novita et al., ( 2021 ); America/Australia/UK: Bialystok et al., 2010 ; Calvo & Bialystok, 2014 ; Hoff, 2018 ; Washbrook et al., 2012 ). These differences can be attributed in some part to ST (e.g., Sander et al., 2018 ; Froehlich et al., 2018 ; Steele & Aronson, 1995 ). Referring to language minority children, achievement-related stereotypes do exist (Froehlich et al., 2016 ).

The phenomenon of stereotype threat

Stereotypes generally refer to beliefs about the characteristics and attributes of a group and its members (Dovidio et al., 2010 ). Between the ages of two and five, children begin to evolve stereotypes, for example, related to gender (Martin & Ruble, 2010 ). Cognitive abilities and conceptual understanding continue to develop with age such that categorization processes leading to stereotypes are no longer based solely on perceptual differences but also on internal, abstract attributes (Baron & Banaji, 2006 ; Bar-Tal, 1996 ; Kite & Whitley, 2016 ). Stereotypes can be activated automatically and unconsciously and thus can influence the perception of groups and their members as well as the behavior displayed towards them (Dovidio et al., 2010 ). Research on ST originated in the USA with the seminal investigations by Steele & Aronson ( 1995 ), who focused on lower achievement outcomes under ST among ethnic minorities on standardized tests. In their fourth experiment, the authors showed that when Black American undergraduates were asked about their ethnicity before solving difficult verbal ability items, they performed worse on those items compared to White American undergraduates (Steele & Aronson, 1995 ). Their studies led to extensive research on this phenomenon (e.g., Appel et al., 2015 ; Nadler & Clark, 2011 ; Nguyen & Ryan, 2008 ). With respect to students of Turkish origin, Martiny et al. ( 2014 ) found for ninth-graders that students of Turkish origin who were threatened scored lower than natives and also scored lower compared to students of Turkish origin in the control condition.

Activation of stereotype threat

A more differentiated picture of ST emerges when a distinction is made regarding the explicitness of the threat activation. An implicit threat is given, for example, by having research participants indicate their ethnicity via their country of birth and family language, without giving a direct cue about their group’s disadvantaged position (Sander et al., 2018 ; Shewach et al., 2019 ). Ambady et al. ( 2001 ) administered ST implicitly by presenting a short questionnaire to children in grades 3 to 8, including questions about the language spoken at home, before they took a math test. The results indicated that the subtle activation of negative stereotypes impaired Asian American girls’ achievement but not Asian American boys’ achievement.

Explicit threat is administered by directly referring to achievement differences between groups (e.g., Keller & Dauenheimer, 2003 ). Also, Sander et al. ( 2018 ) explicitly activated ST by pointing out to their participants that those who (even sometimes) speak a language other than German at home face problems learning new unknown vocabulary. Nguyen & Ryan ( 2008 ) distinguished in their meta-analysis implicit and explicit activation, with the latter additionally differentiated into moderately explicit (direct evidence of group differences) and blatantly explicit (direct evidence that one group outperformed the other group). For minorities, they found that a moderately explicit threat led to larger ST effects compared to blatant activation, and this in turn led to larger effects than implicit activation ( d  = 0.64 vs. d  = 0.41 vs. d  = 0.22). Similarly, Appel et al. ( 2015 ) revealed that while all three forms of activation led to achievement deficits, moderately explicit activation yielded the largest effect for people with immigrant background.

Numerous studies examined ST in achievement situations, which is empirically well-established (e.g., Appel et al., 2015 ; Spencer et al., 2016 ). Here, an implicitly or explicitly activated ST impairs access to or application of knowledge or skills the person has previously acquired (Appel et al., 2015 ; Nguyen & Ryan, 2008 ; Steele & Aronson, 1995 ). Little is known about whether ST also affects the ability to gain knowledge in a learning context (Rydell & Boucher, 2017 ; Taylor & Walton, 2011 ). In our research, we had children work on a language vocabulary learning task while being exposed to different forms of ST. Whereas most studies have investigated ST effects on achievement in mathematics or sciences (e.g., Flore & Wicherts, 2015 ; Neuville & Croizet, 2007 ), we focused on the less researched domain of language competency, which is of particular importance to a group especially vulnerable to ST: language minority children.

Stereotype threat and learning

In a learning situation, individuals acquire new knowledge and skills by processing new information and building a coherent representation in long-term memory (McDaniel et al., 2014 ). In achievement situations, ST can impair the efficiency of working memory (Schmader et al., 2008 ), while Boucher et al. ( 2012 ) assumed that ST in learning situations interferes with encoding the content from the learning phase. The authors suggested that ST can be examined in a learning situation by comparing a condition in which the threat is removed before the achievement situation to a condition in which the threat is not removed (Boucher et al., 2012 ).

One study separating learning and achievement situations was by Boucher et al. ( 2012 ). The authors found that female undergraduates in mathematics revealed lower learning outcomes in a ST condition and in a condition with ST removal after the learning phase compared, respectively, to a control group and a condition where the threat was removed before the learning phase. Furthermore, a study by McLaughlin Lyons et al. ( 2018 ) showed for a sample of fifth-grade students from different ethnic minority groups that in a videotaped challenging mathematics lesson, students in the ST condition had lower learning growth compared to the control group. Taylor & Walton ( 2011 ) also investigated ST in a learning situation and focused on vocabulary learning of difficult and seldom words among African American university students. Students who had to learn under ST remembered fewer words after a time interval of 1 to 2 weeks than students who had not learned under threat. Sander et al. ( 2018 ) examined ST in a vocabulary learning situation among 118 language minority elementary school children in Germany. In a pre-post design, the children were assigned to one of three experimental ST conditions (implicit, explicit, and control). The threat was administered before the learning situation, in which the children had to learn difficult words from narrative texts. Afterwards, they completed a vocabulary posttest. The results indicated that vocabulary growth was lower in both ST conditions compared to the control condition, indicating that a ST effect occurred in learning situations. However, due to the design, with no removal of the threat before the posttest, the findings cannot solely be attributed to the threat affecting the learning situation. Thus, it remains unclear whether ST had an effect on the learning or achievement situation, as it is also possible that children were less able to retrieve their knowledge in the posttest due to the threat. To sum up, first, studies indicate that in addition to achievement, learning can also be influenced by ST.

Person-related moderators of stereotype threat

Various variables may decrease or increase ST vulnerability (e.g., Appel et al., 2015 ; Steele, 1997 ). ST research provides broad findings on facilitators that can mitigate or enhance ST impacts (Pennington et al., 2016 ; Spencer et al., 2016 ). Additionally to situational factors, personal factors are of high importance which include, for example, group and domain identification (Steele et al., 2002 ). Therefore, we focused on identification with the culture of residence and culture of origin as well as identification with the domain of reading.

Ethnic identity begins to develop during middle childhood. Individuals with an immigrant background can develop both an identity as a member of their culture of origin and one as a member of their culture of residence (Zander & Hannover, 2013 ; Berry et al., 2006 ; Ruble et al., 2004 ). Identification with the culture of residence and origin can be important personal factors related to ST (Baysu & Phalet, 2019 ; Weber et al., 2015 ). According to social identity theory (SIT) (Tajfel & Turner, 1986 ), individuals strive for a positive social identity based on comparison processes with social groups. Therefore, it can be assumed that individuals may be affected by ST when they identify highly with a stereotyped group. For example, Weber et al. ( 2015 ) examined both identification with the culture of origin and the culture of residence in a sample of eighth-graders with an immigrant background in Austria. Students under explicit threat exhibited better cognitive achievement when they identified highly with Austria (culture of residence), independently of their identification with their culture of origin. In contrast, students’ achievement in the control condition and in the implicit threat condition was unrelated to identification with Austria. Furthermore, two studies by Baysu & Phalet ( 2019 ) with Turkish origin and Moroccan origin minority students in Belgian secondary schools revealed that a dual identity can either promote or hinder minority achievement depending on stereotype threat experienced during a verbal test. In low threat situations, dual-identity students showed higher achievement and higher self-esteem than otherwise-identified students in the control condition. In high threat situations, dual-identity students performed worse and reported more anxiety compared to the control condition. In their meta-analysis, Nguyen & Benet-Martínez ( 2013 ) found, when focusing on people between 10 and 70 years, a strong and positive association between individuals having dual identities and their psychological and sociocultural adjustment compared to individuals who identified with only one of the two cultures. In a study by Armenta ( 2010 ), however, the relevance of identification with the culture of origin in a sample of undergraduate students was shown. High ethnic identification led to weaker achievement in the presence of negative achievement stereotypes ( Latinos ) and to stronger achievement in the presence of positive achievement stereotypes ( Asian Americans ). In contrast, lower ethnic identification did not have an effect regardless of the achievement stereotype activated. Similarly, Cole et al. ( 2007 ) reported that ethnic minority students who identified highly with their culture of origin were more vulnerable to ST. Concerning vocabulary learning situations, Sander et al. ( 2018 ) examined fourth-graders’ ethnic identification using a single undifferentiated, nominally scaled item and found no moderation of the ST effect. Overall, empirical findings concerning identification with the culture of residence and origin are heterogeneous.

Another important personal factor is identification with the stereotyped domain . According to Steele’s ( 1997 ) conceptualization, it is composed of the value and importance a person attributes to that domain and of the abilities one believes one has in that domain. It is assumed that high identification with the stereotyped domain will increase the pressure not to confirm the stereotype in that domain (Wasserberg, 2017 ). The results of the second experiment by Aronson et al. ( 1999 ) revealed that high identifiers ( Asian students from university) performed less well in the threat than in the non-threat condition. Keller ( 2007 ) investigated identification with the domain of mathematics among tenth-grade students in Germany. Girls who identified highly with the domain of math had a loss of achievement in an ST condition compared to girls who identified less with that domain. With regard to the domain of reading, Pansu et al. ( 2016 ) showed in a sample of 80 French third-graders highly identified with the domain of reading that boys scored lower than girls on a reading test in a threat condition. The opposite was found in the reduced threat condition: Here, boys scored higher than girls.

In summary, we assumed that regarding the identification with the culture of residence, a high identification might lead to a weaker ST effect, because the threat might affect those students less given that identity could serve as a buffer. With respect to the identification with the culture of origin and the identification with the domain of reading, we expected those to enhance the ST effect because high identification with the culture of origin may increase sensitivity to negative stereotypes towards this group and high domain identification should generally increase the effect of threat (Steele et al., 2002 ) due to personal concernedness or importance. Both should correspondingly result in lower vocabulary growth.

Research questions

ST is a possible explanation for achievement differences based on ethnicity (e.g., Froehlich et al., 2018 ). Less is known with regard to ST effects in learning situations (Rydell & Boucher, 2017 ). Due to the fact that disparities also exist in language competencies such as vocabulary and that vocabulary is of high importance for school and professional success, we focused on the effects of ST in vocabulary learning situations. Sander et al. ( 2018 ) revealed that ST impaired vocabulary learning, although it remained unclear whether the ST effect occurred in an achievement or a learning situation. Thus, we wanted to replicate and broaden these findings by Sander et al. ( 2018 ) with a larger sample size and an extended study design. Furthermore, we operationalized identification with the culture of origin in a more differentiated manner and included two other potential moderators in order to obtain a more fine-grained picture. We addressed the following research questions:

Do language minority children exhibit lower growth in vocabulary in the presence of (a) implicit and/or (b) explicit ST without removal of the threat before posttest (hereinafter known as explicit without removal) relative to a condition without ST?

For both ST conditions we expected that language minority students will learn on average fewer words than students in the control condition (1a). Also, the extent of the ST effect should be larger in the explicit condition compared to the implicit condition (1b).

Do language minority students differ in their vocabulary learning in the explicit ST condition with removal of the threat before posttest (hereinafter known as explicit with removal) and without removal?

As this was testing if ST is indeed effecting the learning rather than the achievement situation, we assumed that vocabulary growth would be similar in both conditions (2).

To what extent is the expected ST effect on vocabulary growth moderated by (a) identification with the culture of residence and (b) origin and/or (c) identification with the stereotyped domain of reading?

We expected that the ST effect would be lower for language minority children who highly identified with the culture of residence, indicated by greater vocabulary growth compared to children who identified more weakly with the culture of residence (3a). For language minority students who highly identified with the culture of origin, we assumed that the ST effect would be larger, resulting in lower vocabulary growth (3b). Furthermore, we expected a larger ST effect for language minority children who highly identified with the reading domain and thus lower vocabulary growth compared to children who identified more weakly with the domain of reading (3c).

Participants

Data for this study was collected in spring 2019 in the context of the project Effects and moderators of stereotype threat in vocabulary learning situations among students with immigrant background in elementary and secondary schools (ST 2 ) . A total of 822 elementary school students from 46 fourth-grade classes in 30 schools in North Rhine-Westphalia participated. Language majority students, children with special educational needs, and one child with implausibly high gains (maximum + 3 SD ) between pre- and posttest were excluded from the sample. Therefore, the analyses were based on  n  = 240 language minority students (49.8% female) drawn from all 46 classes, who were just under 10 years old on average ( M  = 9.92, SD  = 0.64). As the study focused on ST in the context of vocabulary acquisition, language minority status was operationalized based on family language (“I sometimes speak German at home and most of the time another language: ___________”/ “I never speak German at home, but I speak _________.”). There were no statistically significant differences between the four experimental conditions in sex, age, cognitive abilities, and amount of books at home as indicator of socioeconomic status (see Table A , Supplement 1 ).

Experimental design and procedure

In order to test the impact of different ST conditions, a pre-post design was used (see Fig.  1 ). Prior to data collection, students were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (a) implicit, (b) explicit without removal, (c) explicit with removal, and (d) control group. Each child got a tablet on which the experimental procedure was implemented and on which they entered their answers. We used the open source software OpenSesame (Mathôt et al., 2012 ) to program the experiment. The study was carried out by trained research assistants who used a standardized test manual. Participation was voluntary. Declaration of consent was given by parents before data collection.

Study design and procedure

Data collection lasted for two consecutive 45-min lessons. In the first lesson, children were asked how strongly they identified with the domain of reading and worked on a vocabulary pretest to assess their vocabulary with regard to the texts they would have to read in the subsequent learning units (see section “ I nstruments”). After pretest, the experimental manipulation was administered. Students in the implicit threat condition answered questions about their language spoken at home and both their and their parents’ country of birth. Students in the explicit threat condition read a short text and were informed that children who speak a language other than German at home have difficulties learning new words. The explicit condition with removal was configured following Boucher et al. ( 2012 ). Here, the threat was the same as in the explicit condition without removal, but students were informed before the last posttest that irrespective of which languages they speak at home, all children can learn equally well. Children in the control group did not receive any kind of threat. They answered questions concerning their favorite drink and meal. Following Nguyen and Ryan ( 2008 ), the implicit induction of threat can be classified as subtle and the explicit induction as blatant obvious. Each experimental condition was followed by two learning units with a corresponding vocabulary posttest (see Fig.  1 ). In each learning unit, students read a narrative text containing target words (see section “ I nstruments”). The meaning of the target words could be deduced from the text context. After reading these texts, children answered two multiple-choice questions to ensure that they had read the texts carefully. Additionally to the implicit learning task, an explicit learning element was added: students worked on a synonym game in which they had to assign synonyms from a list (not the same synonyms as in the vocabulary test) to the target words from the text. Subsequently, the correct solution to the synonym game was presented to every student. The posttest followed the synonym game, except for the explicit condition with removal. Here, the threat was removed before the children completed the last posttest. After a short break, students completed a second lesson. They worked on a cognitive ability test and answered questions regarding social demographics as well as their identification with the culture of residence and origin. Lastly, students in the implicit, explicit without removal, and control condition were also informed that all children can learn difficult words equally well, regardless of whether they speak a language other than German at home.

Instruments

Vocabulary test.

The vocabulary pre- and posttest consisted of 18 target words and three icebreaker items to provide a positive beginning to the vocabulary test (McElvany et al., 2017 ). For each target word (e.g., “trivial”), a corresponding synonym had to be selected, which was presented together with four distractors (e.g., “triple/dry/sad/simple/wet”). Answers in the pre- and posttest were dichotomously coded (0 = incorrect or not completed; 1 = correct). Thus, children could achieve between 0 and 18 points. The pre- and posttest’s reliability was satisfactory.

Learning material

Each text in the learning unit was age-appropriate and encompassed about 300 words with nine target words (three nouns, three verbs, and three adjectives). Both learning texts were selected from the intervention study Potential of the native language to reduce educational inequality—Vocabulary acquisition before central transitions of the education system (InterMut) and have proven to produce good learning growth rates (cf. McElvany et al.,  2017 ). The texts were about a detective story about a missing elephant in a zoo and about a child who suffers a mishap at home.

Sociodemographic data

In addition to age and gender (0 = boy; 1 = girl), family language as well as child and his/her parents’ country of birth (0 = Germany; 1 = other) were assessed. Students also indicated the number of books at home (Wendt et al., 2016 ). Five answers could be selected: from 1 =  none or very few (0–10 books) to 5 =  enough to fill three or more shelves (200 books) .

Moderators of stereotype threat

Students’ identification with the culture of residence (Germany) was measured with items from the affective dimension of the scale for identification with Germany (Zander & Hannover, 2013 ). The six items were adapted to make them easier to understand for fourth-graders (e.g., “I have a good feeling when I think about Germany”). The scale provided information about the extent to which students identify with Germany. Furthermore, the children answered six items regarding identification with their culture of origin . The scale covered how strongly they feel connected to their own or their parents’ country of origin (e.g., “I feel strongly connected with this country and this culture”). These items were also adapted from the original items by Zander & Hannover ( 2013 ). In order to capture identification with the reading domain , items by Keller ( 2007 ) and Arens et al. ( 2011 ) were modified. The scale consisted of four items and indicated how much learners identify with this particular academic domain (e.g., “It is important to me that I am good at reading”). All items were measured on a 4-point Likert scale (1 =  strongly disagree to 4 =  strongly agree ). Table 1 contains scale characteristics. For subsequent analyses, we dichotomized all three variables using a median split (0 = low identification, 1 = high identification).

Cognitive abilities

The figural subtest of the standardized German cognitive ability test for grades 4 to 12 (Kognitiver Fähigkeitstest [KFT] 4–12 R; Heller & Perleth, 2000 ) was used to measure cognitive abilities. Following ST theory, cognitive abilities were included as an important control variable because the theory postulates that effects of ST are found despite similar cognitive abilities. In addition, given the background of a language-based ST, a figural, language-free subtest was explicitly chosen to examine cognitive abilities independent of linguistic abilities. The test consists of 25 items, which were dichotomously coded (0 = incorrect or incomplete; 1 = correct). Between 0 and 25 points could be achieved. The children were shown two objects that have a certain relation to each other (e.g., little black circle to large white circle). They were then shown other objects (e.g., little black triangle) and had to select the appropriate analogue object (e.g., large white triangle) from five objects.

Statistical analyses

SPSS 27 was used for descriptive statistics and statistical analyses. An a priori sensitivity analysis with G*Power revealed that n  = 44 participants were required for each of the four conditions ( N  = 176) (Faul et al., 2007 ). Results were considered statistically significant if the p -value was ≤ 0.05. As effect size measures, partial eta square and Cohen’s d were reported (Cohen, 1988 ). Statistical power was calculated a posteriori using G*Power (Faul et al., 2007 ). The posttest consisted of 18 words and was composed of the nine words from both posttests 1 and 2. In order to investigate ST’s impairment of vocabulary growth in research question 1, we calculated a repeated measures ANOVA with planned contrasts. The within-subject variable was the vocabulary pre- and posttest, and the between-subject variable was the ST condition (three levels; implicit, explicit without removal, control group). For the second research question, we also conducted a repeated measures ANOVA with condition as the between-subjects variable (two levels; explicit with/without removal). In addition to classical inference testing using confidence intervals and p values, we conducted Bayesian parameter estimation for the first and second research questions with the open source program JASP (JASP Team, 2020 ; Wagenmakers, Love, et al., 2018 ). Bayesian estimation was used to provide additional assurance regarding possible ST effects in learning situations because the Bayes factor can quantify evidence for the null hypothesis (for more advantages, see Wagenmakers, Marsman, et al., 2018 ). To investigate research question 3, we carried out six moderation analyses in order to obtain a differentiated picture of the ST conditions. In repeated measures ANOVA, we entered the dichotomized moderators (identification with culture of residence, identification with culture of origin, identification with the domain of reading) and the conditions (implicit, explicit without removal, and control; explicit with and without removal). The vocabulary pre- and posttest was the within-subject variable. Listwise deletion was used to handle missing data. The number of missing values was less than 4.6%.

Descriptive findings

Descriptive analyses (see Table 1 and Table A in Supplement 1 ) revealed that children knew on average four of target words in the pretest ( M pretest  = 4.60, SD  = 2.81) and eight words in the posttest (M posttest  = 8.56, SD  = 3.80). Furthermore, a statistically significant and large correlation between vocabulary pre- and posttest was found, indicating a strong positive association (Cohen, 1988 ). Additionally, there were positive, moderately strong correlations between both pretest/posttest and cognitive abilities. These coefficients indicate that higher cognitive abilities were associated with higher scores on the vocabulary tests. Furthermore, learners identified highly with the culture of residence and culture of origin on average. Both mean values deviated statistically significantly and substantially from the theoretical mean of 2.5 in positive direction (i.e., above the mean), t (235) Identification culture of residence  = 10.33, p  < 0.001, d  = 0.67; t (228) Identification culture of origin  = 16.64, p  < 0.001, d  = 1.10. The theoretical mean of 2.5 would indicate a neutral response. The effects can be classified as medium and large (Cohen, 1988 ).

Vocabulary growth in the implicit and explicit without removal ST conditions

Regarding the question of whether language minority children show a lower growth in vocabulary in the (a) implicit and/or (b) explicit ST condition without removal, relative to a control condition, the repeated measures ANOVA revealed a statistically significant main effect of time (vocabulary pre- and posttest). It indicated that there was a statistically significant vocabulary growth of four words on average across all three experimental conditions, M pretest  = 4.51, SD  = 2.83; M posttest  = 8.31, SD  = 3.88; F (1,179) = 268.84, p  < 0.001, η p 2  = 0.60. This effect size represents a large effect (Cohen, 1988 ). Planned contrasts revealed no statistically significant difference in vocabulary growth between the implicit ( M  = 6.34, SD  = 0.40) and the control condition ( M  = 5.89, SD  = 0.40) of 0.48 ( SE  = 0.56), p  = 0.212, but provided a statistically significant difference between the explicit without removal ( M  = 6.93, SD  = 0.37) and the control condition ( M  = 5.89, SD  = 0.40) of 1.04 ( SE  = 0.51), p  = 0.028. Furthermore, there was neither a main effect of condition nor an interaction between time and condition. No ST effect on vocabulary growth was found; thus, the empirical data did not support hypotheses 1a and 1b. In the context of a Bayesian mixed-factor ANOVA, an examination of the Q–Q plots revealed that the assumption of normal distribution of the residuals was not violated. The Bayesian estimation (see Table B , Supplement 2 ) shows that the data were best represented by the model that included time as a factor over the other models, supporting the results of the ANOVA using classical inference testing.

As students of Turkish origin represent the largest subgroup of language minority people in Germany and are also negatively stereotyped as a group low in language ability (Froehlich et al., 2016 ; Statistisches Bundesamt, 2021 ), we were interested in whether we find ST effects in this subgroup. The subsample was based on 89 children of Turkish origin who were on average ten years old ( M  = 9.88, SD  = 0.47; 45.5% female; implicit ST n  = 24, explicit ST without removal n  = 26, explicit ST with removal n  = 19, and control condition n  = 20). Regarding research question 1, the analysis showed a similar pattern of findings, as no ST effect on vocabulary growth was found, F (2, 67 )  =  0.93 , p  = 0.400.

Moreover, we further conducted an analysis with children who were most likely to be threatened by language-related stereotypes. This subsample was also determined based on the language that participants’ reported to speak at home. Given that this subanalysis focused on children who were most likely to be threatened by language-related stereotypes, we excluded, for example, French- and English-speaking children ( n  = 25) from the sample of language minority students. Turkish-speaking children as well as, for example, Afghan-, Bosnian-, Moroccan-, and Romanian-speaking children remained in the sample. Thus, the sample size for this analysis consisted of 157 children. The analysis revealed also no ST effect on vocabulary growth, F (2, 154) = 0.16, p  = 0.854.

Vocabulary growth in the explicit ST condition with and without removal

The repeated measures ANOVA examining whether students’ vocabulary learning differed in the explicit condition with and without removal revealed a statistically significant main effect of time (vocabulary pretest and posttest), F (1,122) = 208.91, p  < 0.001, η p 2  = 0.63. This effect size was deemed large (Cohen, 1988 ). The main effect of condition and the interaction did not achieve statistical significance. Therefore, the results did not support hypothesis 2. Again, the Q–Q plots of the Bayesian mixed-factor ANOVA indicated that the assumption of normal distribution of the residuals was not violated. Table B in Supplement 2 shows that the model containing only time as a factor best represented the data compared to the other models, again confirming the findings of the ANOVA using classical inference testing.

Moderator analyses

In order to test whether ST effects on vocabulary growth were moderated by (a) identification with culture of residence, (b) identification with culture of origin, and/or (c) the domain identification, separate moderator analyses were conducted. The results revealed no moderation by identification with culture of residence, identification with culture of origin, or identification with the domain of reading (see Table 2 ). However, identification with the domain of reading was found to be related to vocabulary growth. The planned contrasts showed that for each moderator, the explicit without removal condition differed from the control condition (see Table C in Supplement 3 ). Hence, hypotheses 3a–c were not supported.

Several studies have reported that language minority students showed on average lower vocabulary in the language of instruction compared to native students, whereby vocabulary is an important prerequisite for educational success. Therefore, we examined ST effects as a possible explanation for educational inequalities. More precisely, in a pre-post design, we investigated whether implicitly and/or explicitly induced ST has an impact on vocabulary acquisition and whether students’ vocabulary learning differed for explicit ST with or without removal before posttest, meaning that ST was explicitly tested in a learning rather than an achievement situation (Boucher et al., 2012 ). Furthermore, we analyzed identification with the culture of residence, origin, and the domain of reading as potential moderators.

Summarized, the results revealed that students had a vocabulary growth of four words on average, regardless of the experimental condition. The amount of growth was consistent with other studies that also focused on vocabulary growth from reading short texts (e.g., El-Khechen et al., 2012 ; Sander et al., 2018 ). Concerning the results of the first research question, no ST effect was found in the learning situation regardless of whether the threat was implicitly or explicitly induced. In light of the non-significant main effect of condition and the lower vocabulary growth in the control condition compared to the other conditions, the difference in planned contrasts between the explicit without removal and the control condition can be interpreted as a tendency towards stereotype reactance. Nevertheless, the no ST effect is contrary to our expectations and not in line with previous findings (e.g., Hermann & Vollmeyer, 2016 ; Sander et al., 2018 ). Furthermore, referring the second research question, there was no difference in vocabulary growth between the explicit ST condition with and without removal, indicating no ST effect in the learning situation. Therefore, these findings are inconsistent with previous research (Boucher et al., 2012 ; Rydell & Boucher, 2017 ).

One explanation for these non-significant findings might be that ST effects have been frequently examined and found in laboratory settings and less often in real world settings (Cullen et al., 2004 ; Stricker & Ward, 2004 ). A closer look at mean vocabulary growth among our four experimental groups revealed that children tended to learn more or even similar in all ST conditions than in the control condition, although the differences were not statistically significant. Perhaps the claim that children who also speak a language other than German at home have difficulties learning vocabulary actually motivated the children to make an extra effort. Hence, the results might be interpreted in terms of a tendency towards stereotype reactance (e.g., Kray et al., 2001 ). Stereotype reactance is based on the theory by Brehm ( 1966 ) and is defined as reacting to the threat in a way that defies expectations, meaning that participants tend to refute the induced stereotype and thus increase their performance (Kray et al., 2001 ). Speaking against such an interpretation is that we only slightly adapted the experimental treatment by Sander et al. ( 2018 ), who did find the expected ST effect. Another possible reason could be that the children were unaware of a negative stereotype about families communicating in a language other than German, which is a prerequisite for ST effects to occur. Stang et al. ( 2021 ) recently found that Turkish origin elementary school children in Germany hold no achievement-related negative stereotypes about people of Turkish origin. This could indicate that language minority children may be familiar with achievement-related stereotypes but have not internalized them due to their differentiated knowledge of their own group. Similarly, Shelvin et al. ( 2014 ) measured stereotype awareness in African American children aged 10 to 12 through a racial stereotype-generation task and found that not all children (44%) named the achievement-related stereotype Blacks are less intelligent than Whites . Children who mentioned this stereotype had a decrease in achievement on a vocabulary subtest compared to children who were unaware of the stereotype. Likewise, Wasserberg’s ( 2014 ) findings for African American elementary school children showed that when the test was diagnostic of verbal skills, children who were aware of racial stereotypes performed less well than children who were unaware of them. Smith & Hopkins ( 2004 ) also found no ST effect in a sample of African American college students on either arithmetic or spelling tests. The authors assumed that “these students have not incorporated this stereotype into their cognitive schemas because of their own sense of competence” (Smith & Hopkins, 2004 , p. 319). Furthermore, our results of no ST effect are consistent with the findings of Chaffee et al. ( 2020 ), who investigated the effect of explicit ST in four experiments involving men working on language-related tasks.

Moreover, our findings could be interpreted in light of the replication crisis and a possible publication bias (e.g., Ganley et al., 2013 ). Although the effects of ST have been empirically demonstrated by a several studies (e.g., Appel et al., 2015 ; Pennington et al., 2016 ; Spencer et al., 2016 ), a study by the Open Science Collaboration ( 2015 ) on replicability in psychological science showed that only 36% of 100 replicated studies exhibited statistically significant results. Against this background, many studies examining ST have also investigated the possibility of publication bias. Publication bias was demonstrated and defined by Begg ( 1994 , p. 402) as the fact “that there really are a number of small studies with effect sizes distributed around the null value, but most of these remain unpublished.” Ganley et al. ( 2013 ) analyzed a sample of 931 students from childhood to adolescence and could not detect any ST effect regarding gender differences in mathematics. Additionally, the authors found out that non-significant results were either not published or only published alongside significant results. Moreover, Shewach et al. ( 2019 ) examined the setting of the studies included in their meta-analysis for possible publication bias. Corresponding with Flore & Wicherts ( 2015 ), the authors found the presence of a publication bias, which they argue is inflated to a certain extent yet due to the suppression of null results and due to non-publication of non-significant findings (Shewach et al., 2019 ).

We also did not find that ST effects were moderated by children’s identification with their culture of residence, culture of origin, or with the domain of reading. These results are contrary to findings for ST in achievement situations (e.g., Baysu & Phalet, 2019 ; Weber et al., 2018 ), where, for example, high domain identification has been shown to decrease achievement (e.g., Appel et al., 2011 ; Pansu et al., 2016 ; Steele, 1997 ). Regarding learning situations, the results on identification with culture of origin are consistent with previous research findings, which also found no moderating effect of this variable (e.g., Sander et al., 2018 ).

Limitations and future directions

Despite this study’s important strengths, such as the pre-post design, certain aspects warrant attention. Due to the small size of language minority subgroups, analyses for these specific groups (e.g., Arabic-, Russian-, Polish-, and Romanian-speaking children) were not possible, who might be more or also differently affected by a language-related threat. Future research may systematically compare students from different language groups which would lead to a more fine-grained picture of threat effects for different groups. To better understand the obtained null effects, it would also be beneficial to assess children’s awareness of negative language-related stereotypes and include this as a potential confounding variable or moderator in the analyses. These information might also have helped to better understand null effects. Additionally, this should also be deliberated in further research examining whether ST is a phenomenon that potentially only occurs in (vocabulary) achievement situations but not in (vocabulary) learning situations in actual classrooms. Moreover, it is not clear whether a motivation effect undermined the possible ST effects, meaning that the explicit threat might have been motivating for language minority students. This conclusion (stereotype reactance) is supported by the results of the planned contrasts.

Moreover, it is important to research at what age children become susceptible to ST. Likewise, it is relevant to examine the development and effects of stereotypes in similar learning situations in secondary school. It should also be examined whether elementary school students, as well as older students, have internalized negative stereotypes about their own group, making ST effects more likely. Moreover, it would be also interesting to investigate ST effects longitudinally to test knowledge or retrieval after several weeks (e.g., Taylor & Walton, 2011 ). Further, it would be worthwhile to focus on another individual factor, namely, stress (e.g., Wolf, 2017 ), because stress seems to impair cognitive processes.

However, important strengths can also be mentioned. While previous research typically investigated ST in achievement situations, our study focused on ST in vocabulary learning situations. Going beyond Sander et al. ( 2018 ), we included an experimental condition in which ST was removed before posttest. Thus, we sought to determine whether ST in fact impaired children’s learning, rather than access to previously acquired vocabulary in the achievement situation (cf., Boucher et al., 2012 ).

Overall, the present findings are inconsistent with published ST studies. Therefore, further research in this area is necessary to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon given the heterogeneous findings. But given that the null results regarding vocabulary learning situations among language minority children can be supported by further research, practical and theoretical implications can be derived. Thus, it might still be worthwhile to sensitize teachers with regard to stereotypes and their effects in order to reduce inequalities in the educational system and strengthen educational participation. More specifically, teachers should be sensitized to be especially aware of activating stereotypes in achievement situations as prior studies revealed. In learning situations, activating negative stereotypes explicitly could be motivating. Theoretical implications could be the differentiation of stereotype threat theory. Thus, theory could differentiate of type and domain of activated stereotypes (e.g., language-related vs. gender-related stereotype; language vs. math domain) as well as the distinction between learning and achievement situations. Further, the group of interest could be considered as point of differentiation, e.g., migration background/language minority and/or gender. Thus, the implications of potentially threatening statements, including the emphasis of achievement differences or merely mentioning the results of large international student assessments, could be better understood by focusing different groups of interest and systematically varying their numeric representation in a given educational context and assessing the existence of a negative (or even positive) performance stereotype. This might help to better understand indifferent findings and the critique on stereotype threat theory (Chaffee et al., 2020 ; Ganley et al., 2013 ; Shewach et al., 2019 ).

Data availability

The data described in this article are openly available within the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/dh9er/?view_only=a9b47b491cef45098efc6e8091d2ee6c .

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Sabrina König, Justine Stang-Rabrig & Nele McElvany

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Sabrina Koenig . Center for Research on Education and School Development (IFS), TU Dortmund University.

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König, S., Stang-Rabrig, J., Hannover, B. et al. Stereotype threat in learning situations? An investigation among language minority students. Eur J Psychol Educ 38 , 841–864 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-022-00618-9

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Stereotype Threat and the Student-Athlete

Achievement gaps may reflect the cognitive impairment thought to occur in evaluative settings (e.g., classrooms) where a stereotyped identity is salient (i.e., stereotype threat). This study presents an economic model of stereotype threat that reconciles prior evidence on how student effort and performance are influenced by this social-identity phenomenon. This study also presents empirical evidence from a laboratory experiment in which students at a selective college were randomly assigned to a treatment that primed their awareness of a stereotyped identity (i.e., student-athlete). This treatment reduced the test-score performance of athletes relative to non-athletes by 14 percent (effect size = -1.0).

I would like to thank the Mellon Tri-College Forum for financial support through its seed grant program. I would also like to thank participants at the Fall 2008 NBER Higher Education Working Group meeting, the Tri-College Summer Seminar and the Mellon 23 Workshop "Evaluating Teaching and Learning at Liberal Arts Colleges" for useful comments. I would also like to thank Carolyn Abott, Andrew Fieldhouse, and Yimei Zhou for excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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REVIEW article

Addressing stereotype threat is critical to diversity and inclusion in organizational psychology.

• Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

Recently researchers have debated the relevance of stereotype threat to the workplace. Critics have argued that stereotype threat is not relevant in high stakes testing such as in personnel selection. We and others argue that stereotype threat is highly relevant in personnel selection, but our review focused on underexplored areas including effects of stereotype threat beyond test performance and the application of brief, low-cost interventions in the workplace. Relevant to the workplace, stereotype threat can reduce domain identification, job engagement, career aspirations, and receptivity to feedback. Stereotype threat has consequences in other relevant domains including leadership, entrepreneurship, negotiations, and competitiveness. Several institutional and individual level intervention strategies that have been field-tested and are easy to implement show promise for practitioners including: addressing environmental cues, valuing diversity, wise feedback, organizational mindsets, reattribution training, reframing the task, values-affirmation, utility-value, belonging, communal goal affordances, interdependent worldviews, and teaching about stereotype threat. This review integrates criticisms and evidence into one accessible source for practitioners and provides recommendations for implementing effective, low-cost interventions in the workplace.

“Is stereotype threat a useful construct for organizational psychology research and practice?” This is the title of a focal article in a recent volume of Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice ( Kalokerinos et al., 2014 ). The mere publication of such a paper suggests a debate in the field of industrial-organizational (I/O) psychology on the extent to which research on stereotype threat is applicable to the workplace. Stereotype threat is the fear or anxiety of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s social group (e.g., women are bad at math). Members of stereotyped groups (e.g., women, racial minorities) can experience stereotype threat in evaluative situations, which often leads to underperformance ( Steele and Aronson, 1995 ). The paper generated 16 commentaries from researchers and practitioners in I/O psychology and related fields, arguing both for and against the relevance of stereotype threat to I/O psychology.

Critics of stereotype threat research have four primary arguments: (1) mixed effects in operational high stakes testing environments ( Cullen et al., 2004 ; Stricker and Ward, 2004 ; Sackett and Ryan, 2012 ); (2) necessary boundary conditions ( Sackett, 2003 ; Sackett and Ryan, 2012 ; Ryan and Sackett, 2013 ); (3) lack of field studies ( Kray and Shirako, 2012 ; Kalokerinos et al., 2014 ; Kenny and Briner, 2014 ; Streets and Major, 2014 ); and (4) impracticality of implementing workplace interventions ( Streets and Major, 2014 ). Several publications have addressed the widely discussed arguments on high stakes testing ( Cullen et al., 2004 ; Aronson and Dee, 2012 ; Sackett and Ryan, 2012 ; Walton et al., 2015a ) and the boundary conditions of stereotype threat ( Sackett, 2003 ; Sackett and Ryan, 2012 ; Ryan and Sackett, 2013 ). Throughout our review we provide evidence to counter the third and fourth criticisms on the lack of field studies and impracticality of workplace interventions.

This review contributes to the growing attempt to apply research in the stereotype threat domain to the workplace ( Aronson and Dee, 2012 ; Kang and Inzlicht, 2014 ; Walton et al., 2015a ). We review the literature on the effects of stereotype threat beyond performance in an attempt to bring awareness to an area of stereotype threat research that may be underappreciated by practitioners due to its initial appearance as irrelevant ( Kang and Inzlicht, 2014 ; Spencer et al., 2015 ). Highly relevant to I/O researchers and practitioners, stereotype threat can affect domain identification, job engagement, career aspirations, and openness to feedback. Another area that needs greater dissemination is the effects of stereotype threat in domains other than selection and high stakes testing, such as leadership, entrepreneurship, negotiations, and competitiveness. The content and organization of our review on the antecedents and consequences of stereotype threat in the workplace is similar to previous work (see Kray and Shirako, 2012 ; Kalokerinos et al., 2014 ). We complete the review by describing several institutional and individual level interventions that are brief, easily implementable, have been field tested, and are low-cost (summarized in Table 1 ). We provide recommendations for practitioners to consider how to implement the interventions in the workplace.

TABLE 1. Summary of stereotype threat interventions adaptable to the workplace.

Effects of Stereotype Threat Beyond Performance

When research on stereotype threat was first published, the focus was on academic test performance for women and racial minorities ( Steele and Aronson, 1995 ). However, since this time research has expounded, cataloging numerous psychological, and behavioral outcomes that are affected by experiencing stereotype threat ( Schmader et al., 2008 ; Inzlicht et al., 2012 ). Research on stereotype threat spillover has documented pernicious effects of stereotype threat beyond performance ( Inzlicht and Kang, 2010 ; Inzlicht et al., 2011 ). Research on stereotype threat in an I/O context similarly has focused on performance as the key outcome (e.g., Sackett et al., 2001 ; Sackett and Ryan, 2012 ). It seems that because the effects of stereotype threat in high-stakes testing has been controversial ( Kalokerinos et al., 2014 ), the overemphasis on performance may have undermined I/O psychology’s research focused on other outcomes ( Kray and Shirako, 2012 ; Kang and Inzlicht, 2014 ). Indeed, research demonstrates that stereotype threat spillover effects are likely underestimated and may account for some of the null findings of stereotype threat on performance in field studies ( Inzlicht and Kang, 2010 ; Inzlicht et al., 2011 ; Kang and Inzlicht, 2014 ). In this section, we first describe the psychological processes responsible for stereotype threat spillover effects. We then review research showing that stereotype threat negatively impacts outcomes beyond performance (see Spencer et al., 2015 ). These negative outcomes are critical for I/O practitioners to consider when evaluating the usefulness of stereotype threat in the workplace. Although there are many outcomes affected by stereotype threat including intrapersonal, interpersonal, and employer–employee outcomes ( Kray and Shirako, 2012 ; Kalokerinos et al., 2014 ), we focus on four outcomes that are linked to other downstream effects relevant to the workplace: openness to feedback ( Roberson et al., 2003 ), domain identification ( Crocker et al., 1998 ), job engagement ( Harter et al., 2002 ), and reduced career aspirations ( Davies et al., 2005 ).

Stereotype Threat Processes

After many studies established the effects of stereotype threats on various outcomes for several minority groups, research turned to understanding the mechanisms driving these effects ( Schmader et al., 2008 ; Inzlicht et al., 2014 ). Experiencing stereotype threat can lead to a cascade of processes that include attentional, physiological, cognitive, affective, and motivational mechanisms (see Casad and Merritt, 2014 ). When a stigmatized person becomes aware that their stigmatized status may be relevant in a particular context, they may become vigilant and increase attention for environmental cues relevant to potential prejudice and discrimination.

In addition to increased vigilance or attention, stereotype threat causes heightened physiological arousal such as heighted blood pressure and vasoconstriction ( Blascovich et al., 2001 ; Croizet et al., 2004 ; Murphy et al., 2007 ; Vick et al., 2008 ). However, physiological arousal alone does not necessarily lead to negative outcomes, but rather the appraisal of a stimulus as threatening or challenging elicits a response ( Blascovich et al., 2004a , b ; Schmader et al., 2008 ; Inzlicht et al., 2012 ).

Research on stereotype threat processes has identified cognitive and affective factors, particularly cognitive, and affective appraisals, as determinants of outcomes ( Major et al., 2002 ; Major and O’Brien, 2005 ). Cognitive appraisals can heighten awareness of a relevant stereotype, thus reinforcing the arousal of threat ( Inzlicht et al., 2006a ). These cognitions include the extent to which a stressor is self-relevant, dangerous, and creates uncertainty. The negative cognitions initiate physiological arousal, such as elevated cortisol, increased adrenaline, increased blood pressure, and other cardiovascular responses such as increased vasoconstriction ( Chen and Matthews, 2003 ; Blascovich et al., 2004a ; Vick et al., 2008 ). Relatedly, affective appraisals can heighten awareness of a relevant stereotype, thus reinforcing the arousal of threat ( Inzlicht et al., 2006a ). These emotions include feeling overwhelmed, nervous, anxious, worried, and fearful, which initiate physiological arousal like cognitive appraisals ( Chen and Matthews, 2003 ; Blascovich et al., 2004a ).

A final mechanism that explains why stereotype threat can negatively affect performance and spill over into other domains is executive functions. Executive functions are required to self-regulate one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors under stress ( Muraven et al., 1998 ; Muraven and Baumeister, 2000 ). This self-regulation requires not only motivation, but also ego-strength, which comes in limited supplies ( Muraven et al., 1998 ; Muraven and Baumeister, 2000 ). When a task requires a controlled response, willful action can quickly deplete ego-strength, or it can divert motivation and attention to other actions ( Inzlicht et al., 2014 ). Research has shown that women under stereotype threat were quicker to fail at a self-regulation task (squeezing a hand grip—a task irrelevant to math-based stereotype threat) than women not under threat ( Inzlicht et al., 2006b ). Other research shows that participants under threat give up on complex tasks more quickly than participants not under threat (Inzlicht and Hickman, 2005, Unpublished Manuscript). In order to overcome stereotype threat, people have to exert self-control, often having to work harder to maintain performance in the face of threat ( Inzlicht and Kang, 2010 ). Exerting self-control may prevent negative performance at the moment, possibly accounting for null effects of stereotype threat on performance in workplace settings; however, exerting self-control comes at a cost. The stress of working against stereotype threat can spill over into other seemingly unrelated domains such as health (diet, exercise, and alcohol/drug abuse), decision-making, and aggression ( Inzlicht and Kang, 2010 ; Inzlicht et al., 2011 ). Next, we describe four negative consequences of stereotype threat beyond performance.

Reduced Openness to Feedback

Stereotype threat has been shown to hinder affected employees’ openness to and utilization of critical feedback ( Roberson et al., 2003 ). Feedback is vital for an organization’s workforce to adapt and grow, and when employees from stigmatized groups are not able to utilize feedback as effectively as non-stigmatized workers, their chances for advancement and success will be hindered ( Crocker et al., 1991 ).

Employees faced with stereotype threat often find it easy to assume that their coworkers or superiors are biased against them due to their group membership ( Walton et al., 2015a ). This can often occur when a non-minority manager presents negative, though constructive, feedback to a minority subordinate. If the employee is vulnerable to stereotype threat, such as being a numeric minority in the workgroup, they are more likely to interpret negative feedback as internally attributed, such that it speaks to their inherent ability ( Kiefer and Shih, 2006 ). This misattribution increases the vulnerability of self-esteem, so these employees may then be more likely to interpret that negative feedback as biased and discount it ( Roberson et al., 2003 ). Discounting valuable feedback robs the employee of a valuable learning experience and the opportunity to improve their standing or performance ( Roberson et al., 2003 ). A non-minority employee does not undergo this process when interpreting feedback, so they can more easily perceive the feedback as legitimate and utilize it effectively.

The tendency to discount critical feedback has been documented in several studies. Cohen et al. (1999) found that African American students were less likely to adjust written essays that following feedback given by white professors if they were led to believe that white students received less negative feedback. Cohen and Steele (2002) found a similar effect with female science students when giving presentations before and after negative feedback. It is likely that this pattern is due to minority members’ desire to protect their self-esteem from negative information regarding personal performance. Because subtle forms of prejudice are pervasive, it is highly likely for stereotyped individuals to assume that feedback in interracial or mixed gender context might be biased. Therefore, discounting negative feedback to protect one’s self-esteem may be adaptive, reasonable, and justified. Failing to discount biased feedback could potentially reinforce negative stereotypes about belonging and ability ( Crocker and Major, 1989 ; Cohen et al., 1999 ; Walton et al., 2015a ).

Apart from discounting feedback from supervisors, stereotype threat may influence how minority employees seek out feedback concerning their performance. Research has shown that direct feedback, or explicit and outright feedback, is much more effective in terms of improving performance. Conversely, indirect feedback, or monitoring one’s environment for cues about ones performance, is much more ambiguous and therefore less useful ( Ashford and Tsui, 1991 ). An important distinction, however, is that direct feedback can often be perceived as emotionally threatening as it reflects a more true representation of performance. Indirect feedback is much less threatening because the recipient is not confronted about their performance outright ( Ashford and Northcraft, 1992 ). In order to protect social standing and avoid public scrutiny, minority employees may actively avoid direct feedback ( Roberson et al., 2003 ).

Reduced Domain Identification

Chronic exposure to threat may lead stigmatized individuals to disidentify from the domain in which they are negatively stereotyped ( Steele and Aronson, 1995 ). Disidentification serves as a coping mechanism to chronic threat where individuals selectively disengage their self-esteem from intellectual tasks or domains ( Steele, 1992 , 1997 ; Crocker et al., 1998 ). That is, by redefining their self-concept to not include achievement in that domain as a basis for self-evaluation, individuals protect their self-esteem so that poor performance in that domain is no longer relevant to their self-evaluation. However, disidentification is a maladaptive response, and it is a contributing factor to reduced career and performance goals ( Major and Schmader, 1998 ) and workplace turnover ( Crocker et al., 1998 ; Harter et al., 2002 ).

Another area of concern is that stereotype threat interferes with minorities’ ability to integrate personal identities with professional identities. When employees view their personal identity (e.g., woman, African American) as incompatible with their professional identity (e.g., lawyer) because of stereotype threat in the workplace, negative mental health consequences are likely ( Settles et al., 2002 ; Settles, 2004 ). Female lawyers, accountants, and managers who experienced stereotype threat reported separating their identity as a woman from their professional identity ( von Hippel et al., 2010 , 2011a , 2015 ). Other research shows that women scientists report having to switch back and forth between their identity as a woman and identity as a scientist in order to fit into male-dominated environments ( Settles, 2004 ). Adverse consequences of this lack of identity integration include negative job attitudes ( von Hippel et al., 2011a ), more negative work-related mental health ( von Hippel et al., 2015 ) greater depression ( Settles, 2004 ), lower life satisfaction ( Settles, 2004 ), and reduced likelihood of recommending fellow women to the field (e.g., finance; von Hippel et al., 2015 ).

Reduced Engagement

Another non-performance consequence of stereotype threat is the tendency for stereotyped individuals to disengage from their work tasks and the feedback that follows. Employees under threat may disengage in order to distance their self-esteem from the potential consequences of their work performance ( Major and Schmader, 1998 ). If a particular stereotype indicates that the individual will perform poorly, that individual is more likely to reduce their attachment to their performance for fear of potentially proving that stereotype correct. This process leads to feelings of powerlessness ( Major et al., 1998 ). Stigmatized individuals therefore reduce the amount of care and concern they put toward a work outcome in order to avoid the negative consequences of their anticipated poor performance. Individuals who identify highly with their domain are most susceptible to disengagement, since success in that domain is more central to them, making negative feedback much more damaging.

Disengagement is closely related to disidentification in that repeated disengagements often contribute to the individual reducing their identification with a certain domain. Disengagement is typically a state-level phenomenon that occurs in response to specific situations, such as analyzing scientific data, whereas disidentification is typically a chronic state that affects the individual’s overall identity attachment to the domain, such as being a scientist. If the individual regularly disengages from relevant tasks in order to shield his or her self-esteem, a reduction of identification to the domain could result. This cycle is problematic, as it indicates disengagement can ultimately result in higher turnover due to a lack of domain identification ( Crocker et al., 1998 ; Harter et al., 2002 ).

Disengagement has been shown to negatively impact task performance and motivation, such that individuals will give up more easily on a stereotype-relevant task while under threat ( Crocker and Major, 1989 ; Steele, 1992 ; Major and Schmader, 1998 ). Research indicates it is not the task itself that is threatening, but rather the anticipated feedback that follows ( Ashford and Tsui, 1991 ). If employees under threat are highly engaged in their work, and they receive negative feedback that aligns with a relevant group stereotype, it could be much more damaging to their self-esteem than it would be for non-threatened employees ( Major and Schmader, 1998 ).

Disengagement results from discounting and devaluing. Discounting occurs when the employee dismisses feedback as an invalid representation of one’s potential due to external inadequacies, such as skepticism toward an intelligence test. Devaluing occurs when the employee dismisses the importance of the feedback, often taking the position that the feedback does not matter to them or their career path. When stereotyped individuals engage in discounting and devaluing, negative feedback is less likely to affect self-esteem because the feedback has been deemed irrelevant or flawed ( Major and Schmader, 1998 ).

Interestingly, there has been a small body of research investigating the potential adaptiveness of disengagement. For example, Nussbaum and Steele (2007) observed that temporarily disengaging from harmful feedback can actually foster persistence, as it deflects damage to the self-esteem which would otherwise create a sense of lack of belonging. While it is possible that situational disengagement could be beneficial in particular contexts, it cannot be harnessed and applied to particular contents of the individual’s choosing – it is evoked whenever the individual feels threatened. Additionally, disengagement, regardless of its capacity to protect self-esteem, results in the rejection of valuable feedback that could otherwise be used toward refining work-relevant skills. Finally, chronic disengagement has been shown to lead to disidentification, or no longer perceiving one’s workplace identity as central to self-identity ( Crocker et al., 1998 ), which in turn is associated with increased turnover ( Harter et al., 2002 ). It is therefore critical that disengagement is curtailed, and reducing stereotype threat is necessary to do so.

Reduced or Changed Career Aspirations

Another consequence of chronic experiences with stereotype threat is reduced or altered career aspirations. When people feel threat in a domain, they often feel they have fewer opportunities for success in the domain ( Steele, 1997 ). For example, Davies et al. (2005) found that women were less interested in taking on leadership roles after viewing gender stereotypic television commercials. Similarly, when leadership roles are described using masculine traits, women report less interest in entrepreneurship than men ( Gupta et al., 2008 ). Reduced career aspirations in response to threat, particularly for women in leadership, entrepreneurship, and science may exacerbate the gender gap in these fields ( Murphy et al., 2007 ; Koenig et al., 2011 ).

Consequences of Stereotype Threat for Organizations

As previously outlined, stereotype threat leads to a cascade of mechanisms that can lead to poor performance in a stereotyped domain, or spillover into unrelated domains such as health. In the previous section we described research documenting how stereotype threat can result in reduced openness to feedback from employers, reduced domain identification, reduced job engagement, and reduced or altered career aspirations. All four of these consequences are linked to changes in behaviors that have consequences for the workplace. Experiencing stereotype threat has shown to impair leadership performance and aspirations, negotiation skills, entrepreneurial interests, and skills, and desire to work in competitive environments and competiveness skills ( Kray and Shirako, 2012 ). The following section describes predominantly lab-based research that shows the negative effects of stereotype threat on these four important workplace behaviors.

Encountering stereotype threat has been shown to limit one’s willingness to embrace challenges and work through uncertainty because any resulting failure could be interpreted as evidence supporting the stereotype ( Steele, 1997 ). Experiencing stereotype threat leads individuals to avoid domains in which they are stereotyped as not belonging, such as women in leadership. Leaders are commonly assumed to be white males ( Koenig et al., 2011 ), therefore women and racial minorities seeking leadership positions must directly challenge that stereotype. Empirical evidence has supported the idea that when individuals face stereotype threat, they are less likely to pursue leadership roles, particularly when they are the only member of their group among their peers ( Hoyt et al., 2010 ). It is assumed that the threatening environment activates a heightened aversion to risk, which when coupled with greater uncertainty regarding their success, may cause them to forgo challenges such as striving for leadership roles.

Aligning with this theory, Davies et al. (2005) instructed women to choose to hold either a leadership or non-leadership position following the presentation of either a stereotype-activating commercial or a neutral commercial. Results indicated that women who viewed the stereotype-relevant commercial were more likely to elect to hold the non-leadership position, whereas those who viewed the neutral commercial were more evenly distributed between the two roles. This indicates that the knowledge and activation of stereotypes of women’s roles as subordinate or supportive in nature rather than leadership roles will diminish women’s desire to lead due to the fear of confirming the stereotype. This phenomenon is even more dangerous because it can activate a self-perpetuating cycle – stereotyped individuals avoid leadership roles due the stereotype that leaders should be white males, which then discourages those individuals to establish a prominent leadership presence. When no female or minority leaders are present, no information counter to the stereotype is available and the stereotype persists.

It is important to note that individual differences can diminish the effects of stereotype threat on leadership aspirations. For example, for women who are already high in leadership self-efficacy, the presence of stereotypes can actually motivate them to pursue leadership positions and increase their identity as a leader ( Hoyt, 2005 ). Research has shown that identity safety can mitigate the effects of stereotype threat ( Markus et al., 2000 ), meaning security with one’s identity can increase a feeling of belonging in that particular domain. Stereotyped individuals can therefore view the stereotype as a challenge rather than a threat and feel less uncertainty regarding future success. One issue, however, is that establishing leadership self-efficacy often requires past performances that were successful ( Bandura, 1977 ), which means that in order for leadership self-efficacy to be high enough for stereotyped individuals to challenge stereotypes, it may be necessary for them to have proven their capability as a leader at an earlier time.

Entrepreneurship

Paralleling the reduced aspiration to participate in leadership roles, the presence of stereotype threat can also inhibit individuals from pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors. Many traits that are important for leaders are also important for entrepreneurial success (e.g., assertiveness, risk-taking), thus similar hesitations can result. Although it appears that the number of female entrepreneurs is growing in industries such as retail and personal service ( Anna et al., 2000 ), this is presumably because those industries still center on female-oriented traits such as nurturance, sensitivity, and fashion-sense. Even with this increase, however, the number of male entrepreneurs still outnumbers that of female entrepreneurs 2 to 1 ( Acs et al., 2005 ).

When stereotype threat is due to contextual or situational cues, individuals can strive to eliminate the threat by distancing themselves from that situation or context. Because masculine stereotypes are important for entrepreneurial success, women may negatively evaluate their capability for success and therefore distance themselves from any entrepreneurial endeavor. Although some research has shown that proactive personalities can buffer the effect of stereotype threat on women’s entrepreneurial intentions ( Gupta and Bhawe, 2007 ), activating stereotypes of entrepreneurship and masculinity discourages women from taking such risks.

Negotiations

Many of the stereotypic masculine traits mentioned previously can impact aspects of the workplace other than career aspirations and risk-taking. Because strong negotiators are stereotyped to have masculine qualities, women may alter their negotiation strategies. Much of this research is similar to other areas, namely that activating gender stereotypes can cause women to underperform during negotiations compared to when stereotypes are not activated ( Kray et al., 2002 ). Stereotype threat also leads to less willingness to initiate a discussion that is negotiative in nature Small et al. (2007) .

The dynamic nature of negotiations makes it challenging for researchers to determine whether gender differences in negotiation performance are due to the suppressed performance of women under threat, or the situational control experienced by male opponents ( Kray and Shirako, 2012 ). Although research suggests the mere competitive nature of the negotiation process is what deters women from pursuing maximum benefits ( Gneezy et al., 2003 ; Niederle and Vesterlund, 2010 ), several studies show women’s negotiation performance improves when stereotypes are made explicit ( Kray et al., 2001 , 2004 ). This phenomenon is due to stereotype reactance, or the tendency to react counter to a stereotype when overt attention is drawn to its unfairness. However, if a stereotype is presented implicitly, women’s performance may still be negatively impacted ( Kray et al., 2001 ).

The negative effects of stereotype threat on negotiations does not necessarily stop at the bargaining table. Research has shown that women who behave in ways counter to gender stereotypes may be faced with social backlash ( von Hippel et al., 2011b ), especially if interactions with the negotiator are expected to recur. This suggests that even if women are able to overcome stereotype threat and negotiate effectively in a particular situation, the chronic experience of stereotype threat can potential impact women throughout their careers.

Competitiveness

As previously mentioned, one reason women may be less effective in leadership, entrepreneur intentions, and negotiations is a dislike of competitiveness. Competitive environments can be threatening to women due to the stereotype that women cannot fend for themselves when competing with men, and that they are better suited for supportive roles. Gneezy et al. (2003) conducted an experiment where participants were instructed to complete a computerized maze to earn compensation. Participants were either compensated for every maze completed regardless of performance or only if they solved the most puzzles in a set amount of time. Results indicated that men’s and women’s performances did not differ in the non-competitive condition, but women’s performance was significantly lower in the competitive condition. In the competitive condition, women elected not to dedicate effort to compete due to a preconceived expectation of losing. This parallels the idea that women may not feel capable of performing well in competitive environments, and therefore do not fully engage themselves, which can protect their self-esteem following expected loss ( Gneezy et al., 2003 ).

People who lack a competitive nature may experience difficulties in the competitive world of work. Stereotypes that give men a competitive edge (e.g., men play sports while women cheer them on) can carry over into a wide array of workplace contexts, potentially leaving women feeling unprepared, or incapable of competing. Although some research shows that women are capable of competitiveness on tasks in which women are more knowledgeable ( Günther et al., 2010 ), this stereotypical gender difference still gives a normative advantage to males across most situations. In a workplace, whether it be for a position, client, project, or ethical dilemma, having the ability and motivation to compete with others may determine success or failure. Understanding this phenomenon and equipping women with strategies to be competitive in the workplace is of vital importance.

Stereotype Threat Interventions in the Workplace

Broadly speaking, stereotype threat research is typically divided into three subdivisions – whether stereotype threat is present in a given domain, whether its presumable effects can be prevented or reduced, and the underlying mechanisms of the effects. All three types of research are necessary – there is no use preventing it if its effects are nonexistent, but no change will ever occur if we do not first understand why it is happening and then develop strategies to overcome it. Research has come a long way in developing intervention strategies, and there now exists a wide variety of interventions that organizations can implement in order to reduce stereotype threat and its effects on employees.

One issue concerning these interventions raised by researchers and organizational leaders is that many of the strategies, while sound in theory and laboratory testing, are not always applicable or practical in real-world practice, and therefore are not helpful to organizations ( Streets and Major, 2014 ). For example, one well-known intervention strategy within the stereotype threat literature is to increase minority representation within the organization ( Purdie-Vaughns et al., 2008 ; Spencer et al., 2015 ). Doing so has been shown to not only increase the value placed on diversity, but has also aided in the development of role models—a strong antecedent for the success of stereotyped individuals ( Marx and Roman, 2002 ). While this practice is undoubtedly effective, reorganizing personnel or modifying hiring practices requires major organizational change and expense. This intervention may not be attainable, particularly for smaller companies with fewer resources and opportunities to hire new personnel.

It seems the main argument against implementing stereotype threat interventions in the workplace is cost and potential disruption to the work environment. In the next section we describe intervention strategies that are no or low cost that can be integrated into existing training programs. Ultimately the organization has to weigh the costs and benefits of implementing workplace interventions. However, continuing to ignore diversity issues in the workplace and having employees who experience stereotype threat may negatively impact organizations’ bottom line in unanticipated ways (e.g., higher turnover, burnout, lawsuits).

Stereotype threat is triggered by subjective interpretation of situational contexts, which makes perceptions malleable through interventions. Interventions target institutional, structural level features of the organization and also individual level factors related to subjective construals of environments ( Cohen et al., 2012 ). Effective interventions range from brief, low-cost interventions such as changing physical workplace environments to long-term, high-cost changes such as diversifying the workforce. In this section we describe a range of stereotype threat reducing interventions that have been tested in laboratory and field settings, which are summarized in Table 1 .

Institutional and Structural Level Interventions

Addressing environmental cues.

Research has documented several environmental cues that can trigger stereotype threat, thus employers can be proactive in minimizing the presence of these cues in the workplace. Regarding the physical workplace environment, décor can signal to employees, and prospective recruits, whether they are welcomed in the organization. For example, halls decorated with photos of senior management and executives that represent Caucasian males may trigger doubt that women and minorities can advance in the organization. Other seemingly benign objects, such as the choice of magazines in a reception area, can affect the perception of the organization’s diversity values ( Cohen and Garcia, 2008 ). Do the magazines reflect a diversity of tastes and are they targeted to diverse audiences? Décor that communicates a masculine culture, such as references to geeky pop culture, may signal to women and those who do not identify with these cues that they do not belong ( Cheryan et al., 2009 ).

Research has shown that perceptions of environments are not limited to physical workspace. Websites, employment offer letters, and virtual environments have all been shown to evoke similar appraisals of belonging, potential threat, and person-organization fit to that of physical environmental cues ( Ng and Burke, 2005 ; Braddy et al., 2006 ; Cheryan et al., 2011 ). The design and content of websites, language used in various materials, and presence of stereotypes in virtual settings all have the potential to signal to diverse applicants and employees that they do not belong ( Walker et al., 2012 ). If organizations portray a particular culture through virtual or nontraditional avenues, and that culture could be considered threatening to women, such as one that values taking risks or that is highly competitive, the favorability of the organization from a woman’s perspective could be negatively affected. Conversely, if an organization is able to communicate an appreciation and acceptance of diversity, such as including a demographic variety in their testimonials, images, and recruiters, women’s and racial minorities’ perceptions of the organization could be bolstered ( Braddy et al., 2006 ).

Organizational research has also shown that a stereotype-affirming environment leads members of stereotyped groups to question their belonging to that workgroup ( Elsbach, 2003 ). Women in technology perceived greater threat when working in environments that they felt were masculine in nature. When in environments that are subtly (or not so subtly) favorable for men, it may induce women to feel that they are infiltrating a “boy’s club,” and that they must accept the existing social norms. Physical markers within an environment include things such as masculine wall colors, breakroom paraphernalia such as calendars or refrigerator magnets, or a norm of vulgar language. Making the physical environment, particularly common areas such as the breakroom and lobby, more gender neutral will help to dispel the feeling that the organization favors one gender group over the other.

In sum, employers should scrutinize physical and virtual workplace environments and messages to ensure that these cues are communicating the intended message that all employees are valued and belong.

Valuing Diversity Among Employees

A more pervasive environmental cue is lack of racial, ethnic, age, and gender diversity among employees. Being a numeric minority in an evaluative context such as the workplace is sufficient to trigger stereotype threat ( Inzlicht and Ben-Zeev, 2000 ; Murphy et al., 2007 ). For example, women college students viewed one of two videos depicting a science conference. Those viewing the video in which women were underrepresented 3:1 were less interested in attending the conference, anticipated feeling a lack of belonging at the conference, and showed a cardiovascular threat response to watching the video compared to women who watched a gender balanced video ( Murphy et al., 2007 ).

Research on solo status documents the negative effects of being the only or one of few members of a racial or gender group in the workplace ( Saenz and Lord, 1989 ; Sekaquaptewa and Thompson, 2003 ). Numeric minorities can feel pressure to positively represent their group and engage in counter-stereotypic behavior ( Saenz and Lord, 1989 ; Sekaquaptewa and Thompson, 2003 ); however, members of majority groups often attribute minority group members’ behaviors as confirming a negative group stereotype ( Sekaquaptewa and Thompson, 2003 ). A non-diverse workforce can elicit mistrust and less commitment from minority employees ( Roberson et al., 2003 ; Purdie-Vaughns et al., 2008 ).

Another reason a non-diverse workforce is problematic is there are fewer ingroup members to serve as role models for members of minority groups. Having a same-race or same-gender role model is beneficial for employees’ achievement and motivation in the domain ( Dasgupta and Asgari, 2004 ; McIntyre et al., 2011 ). If ingroup role models are not available, merely presenting members of underrepresented groups with stories of successful minority role models is effective in reducing stereotype threat ( von Hippel et al., 2010 ).

Although diversifying an organization’s workforce is the ideal solution, this may not be feasible in the short-term, particularly for smaller organizations. A possible remedy for lack of a diverse workforce is the organization’s diversity philosophy or mission. Although the organization may not have a very diverse body of employees, this does not prevent the organization from communicating its value of diversity to current and prospective employees. Research has investigated three types of diversity philosophies and their effects on minority and majority group’s perceptions of the organization, including color-blind, multicultural, and all-inclusive multicultural ( Plaut et al., 2009 ). Although a color-blind policy indicating race does not affect performance or evaluations and employees are valued for their work ethic seems positive, this widely endorsed policy is viewed as exclusionary by minorities ( Plaut et al., 2009 ). Often a color-blind approach results in valuing a majority perspective by ignoring important group differences and overemphasizing similarities ( Ryan et al., 2007 ), which can in turn trigger stereotype threat ( Plaut et al., 2009 ). In contrast, a multicultural philosophy values differences and recognizes that diversity has positive effects in organizations ( Ely and Thomas, 2001 ). Minority groups report feeling more welcome when organizations have multicultural policies ( Bonilla-Silva, 2006 ); however, majority groups have reported feeling excluded ( Thomas, 2008 ). More recent research suggests an all-inclusive multicultural approach is most effective. This approach recognizes and values contributions from all groups, majority and minority, and all employees report feeling included with this philosophy ( Plaut et al., 2011 ).

Organizational behaviors that communicate the adoption of a multicultural philosophy are often based on awareness and sensitivity. For example, the creation of a specific position responsible for managing diversity issues can better equip the organization to address diversity-related concerns. Diverse employees who are potential candidates for promotion could be identified and targeted in the promotion process. Turnover rates for diverse employees could be specifically analyzed and interpreted. Organizations can implement training with all employee ranks that stresses the value of a diverse workforce ( Blanchard, 1989 ; Konrad and Linnehan, 1995 ). There are numerous strategies that organizations can undertake. Research has shown that the adoption of multicultural practices such as these leads to attracting and retaining highly qualified diverse applicants ( Ng and Burke, 2005 ; Brenner et al., 2010 ), the subsequent hiring of more qualified diverse applicants ( Holzer and Neumark, 2000 ), and greater organizational commitment among diverse employees ( Hopkins et al., 2001 ). Conversely, if applicants perceive the organization is not welcoming of racial and ethnic diversity, they may be less likely to pursue employment with that organization ( Purdie-Vaughns et al., 2008 ).

Wise Feedback and Organizational Mindset

As discussed previously, a negative consequence of stereotype threat is discounting feedback ( Roberson et al., 2003 ), which hinders employee’s professional development and performance in the organization. Members of minority groups are particularly likely to mistrust feedback when it is in interracial or intergender contexts ( Cohen et al., 1999 ; Cohen and Steele, 2002 ). A negative consequence for those giving critical feedback is the feedback withholding bias ( Harber, 1998 ). Because giving and receiving critical feedback is important for individuals’ and organizations’ performance, employers should be trained in how to give “wise feedback” ( Yeager et al., 2013 ). Wise feedback has the goal of clarity, to remove ambiguity regarding the motive for the feedback so that members of minority groups do not attribute negative feedback to racial or gender bias. In this approach, the supervisor communicates to the employee that he or she has high standards for the employee’s performance but that he or she believes the employee can live up to those standards. When framed in this manner, the purpose of the feedback is to help the employee meet the high standards. Field studies show that minority students given wise feedback showed more motivation to improve ( Cohen et al., 1999 ) and were more likely to resubmit their graded work after receiving feedback ( Yeager et al., 2013 ).

The role of communicating high standards in wise feedback is also reflective of organization mindsets. Research on entity and incremental views of intelligence ( Dweck, 2006 ) has documented that how educators and employers, communicate their beliefs about intelligence and performance affects students’ and potential employees’ motivation and performance ( Murphy and Dweck, 2010 ). An entity or fixed mindset reflects beliefs that intelligence is something humans are born with and that the capacity to increase intelligence occurs within innate boundaries. This mindset promotes viewing mistakes and challenges as evidence of low intelligence. In contrast, an incremental or malleable view of intelligence suggests that intelligence is a result of learning and hard work and that anyone can increase their intelligence. In this mindset, mistakes are viewed as an important part of the learning process. Research with adolescents ( Paunesku et al., 2015 ), girls ( Good et al., 2003 ), and racial minorities ( Aronson et al., 2002 ) struggling with math shows that incremental mindsets predict learning and achievement. Recent work has documented that organizations perceived to have fixed mindsets elicited more stereotype threat among women ( Emerson and Murphy, 2015 ). Organizations perceived to have a growth (incremental) mindset did not elicit threat and women reported greater trust and commitment to the organization and had higher performance ( Emerson and Murphy, 2015 ).

In sum, supervisors should be trained in giving wise feedback. Organizations should communicate to current and prospective employees the value placed on motivation, hard work, and effort. New hires are selected in part for their competencies, thus emphasis on effort will keep employees motivated to perform well and may reduce or eliminate stereotype threat ( Murphy and Dweck, 2010 ; Emerson and Murphy, 2015 ).

Individual and Psychological Focused Interventions

Reattribution training.

One way that employers can empower employees to avoid experiencing stereotype threat is through reattribution training, or attribution retraining ( Walton and Cohen, 2007 ). When facing challenges common in the workplace, employees who attribute hardships to temporary, external factors are more likely to excel in the face of failure than employees who attribute setbacks to internal factors such as ability ( Weiner, 1985 ). Research has shown that providing alternative explanations for the perceived difficulty of a task can allow individuals the opportunity to attribute that difficultly to something other than their stereotyped group membership ( Wilson et al., 2002 ). Providing alternative explanations may help to alleviate some of the anxiety caused by stereotype threat because it buffers self-esteem from negative self-evaluation.

Research shows that reattribution training can be effective when inadequate instructions or guidelines are offered ( Menec et al., 1994 ), employees lack practice or experience on a given task ( Brown and Josephs, 1999 ), and the work needs to be carried out in an irregular context ( Stone et al., 1999 ). These alternative explanations for poorer performance reflect external and less controllable circumstances, thus group membership is no longer the only plausible explanation for shortcomings in performance. The individual can now partially attribute performance to factors not associated with self-esteem.

To illustrate this technique, consider the following scenario. During the onboarding process, employers can share stories with new employees about others’ experiences when first joining company. For example, highlighting cases where individuals first felt like an outsider, but then developed a sense of community after joining an organization-related club. When a new trainee experiences difficulty learning a new job skill, the trainer can emphasize that other new employees experienced initial trouble but mastered the skill after practice, which will diffuse the negativity of the setback. However, attribution retraining is only successful when the employee is provided with the opportunity to grow and learn from their mistakes ( Menec et al., 1994 ). Employers who wish to implement this intervention should consider the training opportunities available to new and current employees and expand resources as necessary to support development opportunities.

Attribution retraining must not be confused with simply providing plausible excuses for employees or lying to employees about why they may have failed. Additionally, attribution retraining should not give employees a guilt-free outlet for regular underperformance. Rather, the goal of attribution retraining should be to remind employees of any existing difficult circumstances which may be stalling performance, not create them ( Roberson and Kulik, 2007 ). Therefore, managers ought to utilize this strategy only when the following criteria are met: (1) when a stereotyped employee is presumably struggling due to stereotype threat; (2) when actual difficult circumstances may be preventing employees from succeeding; and (3) when underperformance is understandable and not crucial to typical job performance. Meeting these criteria will insure that attribution retraining is targeted at combating stereotype threat among truly capable employees. Although attribution retraining will not target the source of stereotype threat, it may provide additional resources to employees who are having trouble coping with it.

Reframing the Task

One way in which stereotype threat can be actively removed from an evaluative performance situation is by simply reframing the task—that is, by using a description that does not evoke negative stereotypes about a social group. Although diagnostic exams and workplace evaluations activate stereotype threat implicitly, explicitly describing an exam or evaluation as non-diagnostic (for example, of intelligence) is enough to eliminate the effects of stereotype threat ( Steele and Aronson, 1995 ). However, this method does not seem practical in diagnostic exams, such as standardized tests, that are meant to measure an individual’s academic performance. Research has also found that stereotype threat can be eliminated by explicitly stating that exams show no difference in performance based on stereotypes. For example, describing a math exam as gender-fair can be enough to dramatically increase women’s math performance ( Spencer et al., 1999 ; Quinn and Spencer, 2001 ). This method is quite practical because simply stating the gender and cultural fairness of an exam before it is administered can easily reduce stereotype threat effects. In a workplace setting, describing evaluations as objective or fair may alleviate stereotype threat ( Kray and Shirako, 2012 ). That is, if an evaluation is conducted by more than one supervisor and focuses on behaviors and quantitative metrics of performance, evaluations may be less biased and may not evoke threat ( Austin and Villanova, 1992 ; Bommer et al., 1995 ). Employers should evaluate testing or evaluation procedures to make sure the fairness of the metric is communicated to employees.

Values-Affirmation

An intervention that can reduce stereotype threat and improve performance is values-affirmation ( Sherman and Cohen, 2006 ; Sherman and Hartson, 2011 ). The intervention is based on self-affirmation theory, which states that affirming an aspect of the self that is valued and unrelated to a particular threat can buffer self-esteem and alleviate the threat ( Sherman and Cohen, 2006 ). Value-affirmation interventions have been implemented in school settings, typically having students write for 15–20 min about things that they value and why, often including this as a regular writing assignment throughout the academic term. This helps to put students’ troubles in the broader context of their values and sources of support. This brief, low-cost intervention has shown to improve minority students’ GPA even 3 years later ( Cohen et al., 2009 ; Sherman et al., 2013 ). It also has reduced stereotype threat and increased sense of belonging among minorities ( Cohen et al., 2009 ; Sherman et al., 2013 ) and women in the sciences ( Walton et al., 2015a ). Research suggests the key mechanism for values-affirmation interventions is to have participants write about social belonging ( Shnabel et al., 2013 ).

Recent research has applied values-affirmation interventions in the workplace and found improved performance and retention ( Cable et al., 2013 ). Cable et al. (2013) encouraged employees of a large international organization to express their “best selves,” in that they encouraged their employees not to censor or withhold their input or perspectives. This communicated to the employees that all inputs were valued and important, and resulted in decreased experiences of stereotype threat among employees. Wiesenfeld et al. (1999) simulated an organizational layoff, in which a confederate was unfairly excused from further participation in the experiment. Results indicated that witnessing the unfair treatment, which is theorized to threaten self-integrity, inhibited performance on a subsequent task. Conversely, when the layoff was perceived as fair, participants were less likely to report self-consciousness as opposed to the unfair condition. In other words, when affected employees perceive a threat to their self-esteem, they alter how they evaluate themselves and exhibit performance detriments.

Organizations can implement brief values-affirmation interventions by providing employees with opportunities to express their values and things important in their non-work life that may boost their sense of belonging to the organization. For example, opening a business meeting by asking for announcements about recent life events such as birthdays, births, weddings, graduations, and other such positive activities highlights that organizations care about the whole person and reminds employees of the broader spectrum of their values besides their contribution to the workplace (see Lepper and Woolverton, 2002 ). Sharing such personal stories will likely improve interpersonal relationships among employees and with supervisors, thus improving sense of belonging to the organization ( Kray and Shirako, 2012 ).

Utility-Value Interventions

Harackiewicz et al. (2015) find one reason for underachievement in academic environments is that students may not value their coursework or feel engaged in the learning process ( Harackiewicz et al., 2015 ). Utility-value interventions aim to increase value and engagement in coursework and can combat the tendency to discount and devalue academics among students who experience stereotype threat. To be effective, such interventions must help participants value the task and believe that they can succeed at the task. Finding utility-value in the task means that individuals see the importance and usefulness of the task to accomplish their goals, both in the immediate situations and in their lives.

Harackiewicz et al. (2015) conducted an academic intervention to increase utility-value in science students by having them complete a short writing assignment in which they explained how the material they were learning (math or science) was relevant to their lives and career goals. The intervention increased perceptions of utility-value and interest, especially for students who were low in expected or actual classroom performance. Views of utility-value mediated the relationship between interests in the domain and academic performance in the domain. This intervention has been effectively implemented with first generation college students, women in biology, and racial minority students, resulting in higher end-of-semester grades. Other research finds that perception of utility-values in coursework is positively correlated with hard work, interest, and performance ( Harackiewicz et al., 2008 ; Hulleman et al., 2008 ).

To our knowledge, utility-value interventions have not been implemented in the workplace. However, like values-affirmation interventions, many field studies are first conducted in education settings and later applied to organizational settings. A utility-value intervention would be useful for organizations when employees show lower motivation or interest in their work, particularly if they are performing poorly in a challenging domain like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). For example, when learning a difficult task employees can be asked to think about how the new learning will help them accomplish their work goals, but also how it is relevant to life outside of work. However, it is important that utility-value interventions are employee-generated. That is, having supervisors tell employees that a new task is valuable is not effective and may backfire, leading to lower employee performance on the task and less interest (see Canning and Harackiewicz, 2015 ). A combination of direct communication about the task utility and allowing employees to self-generate the value and utility of the task is most effective. For employees lower in confidence in the task, it is more effective to apply the utility and value of the task to everyday life situations rather than to the work domain ( Canning and Harackiewicz, 2015 ).

Belonging Interventions

When women and racial minorities are underrepresented in the workplace, they may experience belonging uncertainty ( Walton and Cohen, 2007 ). When facing challenges and setbacks, members of underrepresented groups can interpret struggles as a sign that “people like me don’t belong here” ( Walton and Cohen, 2007 ) and may feel that they alone are experiencing struggles. Belonging interventions share stories with underrepresented groups to dispel the belief that they alone feel isolated or that their difficulties are unique to their gender or racial group ( Walton et al., 2015b ). In academic field settings, college freshmen were given information that most college freshmen struggle with their sense of belonging in the beginning of college but that this uncertainly subsides and they develop a sense of belonging. Further, students were told that feeling a lack of belonging is experienced by all college students’ regardless of their race or gender. Compared to a control group, students who received the belonging intervention had higher GPAs throughout the entire duration of their college years ( Walton and Cohen, 2011 ). Like reattribution training, the belonging intervention shaped the way college students interpreted their college experiences.

A naturalistic study conducted with science faculty members at a large university found evidence for belonging uncertainty ( Holleran et al., 2011 ). Interactions among male and female faculty members were monitored for content and participants were asked to rate the competencies of those with whom they interacted. Results indicated that men were much less likely to engage in conversation regarding research with women compared to men, and when such conversations were carried out, women were generally regarded as less competent. No such competence contrasts were present for men. This imbalanced treatment appeared to evoke disengagement among women, such that inequity in socialization prompted a feeling of not belonging to the rest of the workgroup. This mirrors much of the belongingness literature regarding stereotype threat, in that performance and engagement tend to suffer for individuals who are not viewed as belonging to the group ( Holleran et al., 2011 ).

Communal Goal Affordances and Interdependence

Two additional areas related to stereotype threat are closely tied to sense of belonging in university or the workplace and personal values. Research on communal goal affordances finds that women may be underrepresented in many male-dominated fields (e.g., STEM) because they do not believe these careers can meet their goals of nurturing and helping others ( Diekman et al., 2010 ). A distinct but related concept is valuing interdependence, that underrepresented students, and by extension employees, may not see Western organizational values of independence as congruent with their values of cultural interdependence ( Stephens et al., 2012b ). This section reviews research and interventions on communal goal affordances, and then interdependence and cultural mismatch.

Current research suggests that women and racial minorities may experience stereotype threat in male- and majority race-dominated domains and avoid STEM disciplines because they do not see their personal life goals and cultural values as congruent with the expected quality of life of a STEM student, scientist, or engineer ( Diekman et al., 2010 ; Smith et al., 2014 , 2015 ; Thoman et al., 2015 ). Many women and racial minorities have communal goals, or an orientation to nurture others, and are more likely to endorse communal goals then men and Caucasians ( Diekman et al., 2010 ; Smith et al., 2014 ; Thoman et al., 2015 ). Societal stereotypes of STEM disciplines suggest that scientists, mathematicians, and engineers are typically male, work in isolation in a laboratory, value competitiveness, and have little time for family ( Barbercheck, 2001 ). Stereotypes of scientists make STEM unappealing fields of study or work for many women ( Cheryan et al., 2009 ; Cheryan, 2012 ) and racial minorities, particularly those with communal goals ( Diekman et al., 2010 ; Smith et al., 2014 ; Thoman et al., 2015 ).

One line of research examined stereotype threat through the lens of communal goals and utility-values (discussed in the previous section). Smith et al. (2015) found experiences of stereotype threat were negatively related to college women’s science identity, but this relationship was mediated by (lower) perceptions of the communal utility-value of science. Particularly among women in male-dominated majors (e.g., physics) compared to female-dominated STEM majors (e.g., biology), perceiving a career in science as less useful in reaching one’s goals to help others was related to greater experiences of stereotype threat and lower science identity ( Smith et al., 2015 ).

An intervention with science students combined a utility-value intervention with a communal goal intervention ( Brown et al., 2015 ). The culture of science emphasizes agentic values, which can deter women and minorities from pursuing STEM education and careers. Brown et al. (2015) found an intervention emphasizing the communal utility-value of science education, particularly addressing the desire to help others, increased students’ motivation to succeed in science.

The communal goals literature has implications for organizations in STEM fields that want to recruit a diverse workforce and support them in the workplace. It is important for organizations to communicate valuing communal goals and providing employees with opportunities to conduct work that will help the community. As with diversity policies, this can be accomplish through websites, brochures, and job descriptions. Many companies already have such opportunities in place, and contribute to local communities as part of public relations efforts. Employers should know that women, particularity in male-dominated occupations, may perceive greater fit with the organization, and therefore greater job satisfaction and performance ( Spanjol et al., 2014 ; Svyantek et al., 2015 ), if they having the opportunities to reach their communal goals.

A related value that can be undermined in academic and workplace settings, and decrease sense of belonging in organizations is interdependence. Research finds that low-income, first generation college students, and racial minorities are more likely to take an interdependent worldview, compared to an independent worldview, than middle class majorities ( Stephens et al., 2012a ). Consistent with US culture’s emphasis on independence and agency ( Markus and Kitayama, 2003 ), institutions of higher education promote an independent worldview ( Stephens et al., 2012a ). Underrepresented students may perceive a cultural mismatch and lack of fit with US universities, which predicts lower sense of belonging and academic performance ( Stephens et al., 2012a ).

To address this cultural mismatch in higher education, Stephens et al. (2012a) implemented a brief intervention to reframe universities’ values as fostering interdependence and tested the effects on first generation college students’ performance. During orientation, new students were randomly assigned a welcome letter from the University president that described the university’s promotion of independent or interdependent learning norms. First generation college students who received the interdependent letter had higher performance on an academic task. Further, the type of letter received affected first generation college students’ perceptions of task difficulty, linking a cultural mismatch to greater perceived difficulty and a cultural match to less difficulty. For first generation college students, those who received an interdependent letter and perceived the academic task as less difficult had better performance compared to first generation students receiving an independence letter ( Stephens et al., 2012a ).

The possible cultural mismatch for low-income and racial minority employees should be a concern for organizations. Organizations that promote an individualistic worldview may similarly undermine employees’ interdependence values and inadvertently alienate a segment of the workforce. The Stephens et al. (2012a) intervention could be adapted to the workplace by communicating the organizations’ value of interdependence through websites and new hire letters.

In sum, organizations can decrease underrepresented employees’ experiences of stereotype threat and increase sense of belonging by being aware of employees’ communal and interdependence goals and values. As previously stated, an all-inclusive multicultural approach is most effective for employees from all backgrounds ( Plaut et al., 2011 ). When adopting diversity missions, philosophies, and policies, organizations can express their value of contributions from all groups, majority and minority, by including statements on how working in the organization can meet communal goals and the value placed on interdependent work.

Discussing Stereotype Threat

A final intervention to reduce stereotype threat in the workplace is to simply talk about it. Johns et al. (2005) explicitly told students about stereotype threat and feelings of anxiety. The researchers stated, “It’s important to keep in mind that if you are feeling anxious while taking this test, this anxiety could be the result of these negative stereotypes that are widely known in society and have nothing to do with your actual ability to do well on the tes” ( Johns et al., 2005 , p. 176). As a result of these instructions, women did not underperform on a math test in the stereotype threat condition. Another study found that instructing participants under stereotype threat that their anxiety may actually enhance their test performance eliminated the effect of threat ( Johns et al., 2008 ). These studies suggest that providing people with external attributions for experiencing anxiety during evaluative performance situations may help them regulate the anxiety and reduce or eliminate stereotype threat.

Directly confronting stereotype threat can create stereotype reactance in which individuals are motivated to disprove the stereotype ( Kray et al., 2001 ; Kray and Shirako, 2012 ). Kray et al. (2001 , 2004 ) demonstrated that discussing stereotype threat created stereotype reactance and women performed better in negotiations ( Kray et al., 2001 , 2004 ) and in entrepreneurship domains ( Gupta et al., 2008 ). Kray and Shirako (2012) suggest that organizational leaders can help reduce stereotype threat by actively managing the messages employees hear regarding what traits are necessary to perform well on tasks and ensuring that stereotypes are not activated or endorsed in the workplace.

A Note of Caution

Researchers note that for interventions to be effective, an indirect approach should be taken ( Robinson, 2010 ; Cohen et al., 2012 ). The interventions should not be advertised as a means to improve performance or well-being, as this may dampen their effects or backfire ( Sherman et al., 2009 ). For example, employees should not be labeled as “in need” of a stereotype threat intervention, which is associated with negative consequences ( Schneider et al., 1996 ). In the workplace, minorities who are perceived to have been hired or promoted because of affirmative action are stigmatized ( Leslie et al., 2014 ), likewise minorities who believe they were beneficiaries of affirmative action are less satisfied and may have lower job performance ( Leslie et al., 2014 ). Instead, interventions should be subtle, include all employees, not just minorities, and be embedded in existing workplace activities (e.g., onboarding, training, department meetings; Cohen et al., 2012 ).

Interventions should be focused on addressing the psychological needs and motivational processes on which they are based ( Cohen et al., 2012 ). Interventions developed based on anecdotal evidence or intuition may backfire and create more threat (e.g., Dweck, 1999 ; Schneider et al., 1996 ). Timing of the interventions is also a factor to consider. Research is still underway to address how timing affects intervention effectiveness ( Cohen et al., 2012 ). Interventions that focus on early stages (e.g., onboarding) serve a prevention function to intervene before the onset of stereotype threat, for example when employees are still developing their initial perceptions of the workplace. Interventions may be implemented after a problem has already been identified and can disrupt the downward spiral, for example after a merger or during a mid-quarter progress meeting ( Cohen et al., 2012 ). It is important to note that stereotype threat interventions alone may not boost employee performance, but instead may prevent decrements in performance. Effective interventions must be coupled with opportunities for growth and resources to provide proper training for employees. That is, the interventions will not provide employees with the necessary abilities to perform well, they merely help employees reconstrue the workplace environment in ways that allow their highest potential to surface.

Finally, not all well-developed diversity policies will have the intended positive effects on diversifying the workforce and helping minority employees feel welcome. Lab based research finds that organizations with diversity policies may be seen as fair when there is objective evidence of bias ( Brady et al., 2015 ). That is, the mere presence of a diversity policy may lead people to believe that an organization’s actual practices are fair and undermine employee’s claims of discrimination ( Dover et al., 2014 ). Further, organizations that have received diversity award may be perceived as fair despite evidence of unfair practices ( Kaiser et al., 2013 ). Organizations that are serious about implementing effective diversity policies and practices should appoint a diversity and inclusion officer with expertise in diversity science ( Plaut, 2010 ). We, and others, argue that knowledge of employment and discrimination law is not sufficient. An expert in diversity science, and the psychology behind diversity policies and practices, is needed to fully utilize effective policies and practices to achieve diversity and inclusion in organizations ( Plaut, 2010 ).

Summary, Limitations, and Future Directions

In this review we have argued the recent question of scholarly debate ( Kalokerinos et al., 2014 ), “Is stereotype threat a useful construct for organizational psychology research and practice?” reflects a research-practice gap in I/O psychology. We and others ( Kray and Shirako, 2012 ; Kalokerinos et al., 2014 ) argue that stereotype threat research is highly relevant to the field of I/O psychology and should be at the forefront of research on diversity and inclusion. Throughout the review we described several field studies both within education and workplace environments. However, we recognize a dearth of studies in workplaces and this gap needs to be addressed in future research ( Kray and Shirako, 2012 ; Kalokerinos et al., 2014 ).

This review provided evidence that stereotype threat affects women and racial minorities in important ways besides performance including affecting domain identification, job engagement, career aspiration, and openness to feedback. Stereotype threat is also relevant in domains beyond personnel selection including leadership, entrepreneurship, negotiations, and competitiveness. It is important to note that our review focused primarily on cognitive stereotypes and workplace behaviors beyond performance ( Spencer et al., 2015 ). Recent research suggests that non-cognitive stereotypes have been largely ignored in the organizational stereotype threat literature ( Dhanani and Wolcott, 2014 ). For example, the stereotype of African Americans as aggressive may affect African Americans’ workplace behaviors (e.g., withholding information or being less assertive) because of stereotype threat. This reflects a cognitive bias in the stereotype threat literature and future research should explore the role of non-cognitive stereotypes in stereotype threat in the workplace.

In this review we focused primarily on workplace behaviors other than performance, which resulted in excluding research on age-based stereotype threat and job performance ( von Hippel et al., 2013 ; Cox, 2014 ; Kulik, 2014 ). von Hippel et al. (2013) found that older employees who experienced age-based stereotype threat reported more negative job attitudes and poorer work mental health. Negative job attitudes predicted greater intentions to resign or retire. The most common stereotypes associated with older adults are primarily cognitive or physical such as having poor memory, slower processing, reduced executive functions, and less physical speed and strength ( Cuddy et al., 2005 ). To our knowledge, research has not examined the effects of age-based stereotype threat on non-performance outcomes such as leadership, entrepreneurship, negotiations, and competitiveness, thus literature on age-based stereotype threat was omitted. As Cox (2014) and Kulik (2014) argue, age-based stereotype threat is an understudied area and is critical for the future of organizational psychology as the workforce ages and generations intermix in the workplace. Finally, there are other types of stigmas relevant to workplace stereotype threat that were not discussed include obese employees ( Carlson and Seacat, 2014 ) and employees with non-traditional work histories ( Melloy and Liu, 2014 )

We concluded the review with examples from field-tested interventions that implementing brief, low-cost workplace interventions to reduce stereotype threat is feasible. Many of the psychological processes underlying threat can be addressed in onboarding and training programs. For example, onboarding programs can implement reattribution training and belongingness interventions and a few examples were provided. Good practices in new hire training and onboarding often already reflect some of these principles ( Klein and Polin, 2012 ).

Where Do We Go From Here?

Although the evidence suggests that stereotype threat is highly likely to occur in workplace settings, more evidence is needed to document its occurrence (see Hall et al., 2015 ; von Hippel et al., 2015 ). In addition, some research questions remain unanswered regarding whether boundary conditions found in the lab apply in the field. As previously stated, stereotype threat does not affect all minority groups equally ( Schmader et al., 2008 ; Logel et al., 2012 ) as there are many moderating variables reflecting aspects of the situation and the person. Some of the features of the situation, such as task difficulty and task diagnosticity, or the person such as high domain identification, may not be present in non-lab settings such as the workplace ( Sackett and Ryan, 2012 ). Thus it is not clear that group identity must be high in evaluative situations with important consequences. Research needs to determine what impact the presence of absence of these variables has on stereotype threat effects in the workplace. In addition, the overemphasis on performance needs to be remedied by focusing on other outcomes important in the workplace ( Kray and Shirako, 2012 ; Kang and Inzlicht, 2014 ; Spencer et al., 2015 ).

Two additional areas for future research that seem to be understudied concern clarifying the construct of stereotype threat ( Shapiro and Neuberg, 2007 ; Voyles et al., 2014 ; Finkelstein et al., 2015 ) and conceptualizing measurement ( Xavier et al., 2014 ). First, Voyles et al. (2014) argue that a similar body of literature on metastereotypes has been ignored in the stereotype literature and the stereotype threat literature includes some construct overlap with metastereotypes. Metastereotypes are people’s beliefs about what stereotypes others hold about them ( Voyles et al., 2014 ). Therefore, metastereotypes must precede stereotype threat because stereotyped groups must believe that the perceiver holds a negative stereotype about their social group. Conceptualized this way, metastereotypes are relevant at the stereotype activation phase and stereotype threat is the reaction to the metastereotype. Future research should continue to clarify these concepts and examine the specific processes through which they operate.

Related to metastereotypes is a concern regarding how we measure self-reported experiences of stereotype threat ( Xavier et al., 2014 ). Some of the most widely used measures seem to be measuring metastereotypes (“Some of my colleagues feel I’m not as committed because of my gender”; von Hippel et al., 2013 ) rather than fear about being judged with a stereotype (“I worry that if I perform poorly on this test, others will attribute my poor performance to my race”; Marx and Goff, 2005 ; Xavier et al., 2014 ). Further, Shapiro and Neuberg (2007) , Shapiro (2012) , Shapiro et al. (2013) have noted both construct confusion and measurement concerns in their multi-threat framework. Shapiro’s work demonstrates there are multiple forms of stereotype threat, for example threats to the self and threats to one’s group. The form of stereotype threat affects how it is measured ( Shapiro, 2012 ) and what interventions are most appropriate ( Shapiro et al., 2013 ).

In conclusion, research on stereotype threat is highly relevant to I/O psychology and ripe for future discoveries. What we have learned from lab and field studies is valuable for improving diversity and inclusion in organizations. Future research should continue examining the basic mechanisms and boundary conditions of stereotype threat and testing the effectiveness of interventions for the workplace.

Author Contributions

BC conceptualized the argument and organization of the review. Each author equally contributed to the content of the review.

The work contributing to this manuscript was supported by grants to the first author from the National Science Foundation (0734124) and the National Institutes of Health (R01GM094536). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

An earlier and abbreviated version of this work was presented at the 30th annual convention of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Philadelphia, PA, USA. The authors would like to thank Abdiel J. Flores, Breanna R. Wexler, Zachary W. Petzel, and Mindy Siebert for their feedback on an earlier draft, and the reviewers for their valuable insights.

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Keywords : stereotype threat, interventions, diversity, inclusion, workplace

Citation: Casad BJ and Bryant WJ (2016) Addressing Stereotype Threat is Critical to Diversity and Inclusion in Organizational Psychology. Front. Psychol. 7:8. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00008

Received: 02 October 2015; Accepted: 05 January 2016; Published: 20 January 2016.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2016 Casad and Bryant. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Bettina J. Casad, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Research Article

Twenty Years of Stereotype Threat Research: A Review of Psychological Mediators

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Psychology, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom

• Charlotte R. Pennington, 
• Derek Heim, 
• Andrew R. Levy, 
• Derek T. Larkin

• Published: January 11, 2016
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487
• Reader Comments

This systematic literature review appraises critically the mediating variables of stereotype threat. A bibliographic search was conducted across electronic databases between 1995 and 2015. The search identified 45 experiments from 38 articles and 17 unique proposed mediators that were categorized into affective/subjective ( n = 6), cognitive ( n = 7) and motivational mechanisms ( n = 4). Empirical support was accrued for mediators such as anxiety, negative thinking, and mind-wandering, which are suggested to co-opt working memory resources under stereotype threat. Other research points to the assertion that stereotype threatened individuals may be motivated to disconfirm negative stereotypes, which can have a paradoxical effect of hampering performance. However, stereotype threat appears to affect diverse social groups in different ways, with no one mediator providing unequivocal empirical support. Underpinned by the multi-threat framework, the discussion postulates that different forms of stereotype threat may be mediated by distinct mechanisms.

Citation: Pennington CR, Heim D, Levy AR, Larkin DT (2016) Twenty Years of Stereotype Threat Research: A Review of Psychological Mediators. PLoS ONE 11(1): e0146487. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487

Editor: Marina A. Pavlova, University of Tuebingen Medical School, GERMANY

Received: June 23, 2015; Accepted: December 17, 2015; Published: January 11, 2016

Copyright: © 2016 Pennington et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: The authors acknowledge support toward open access publishing by the Graduate School and the Department of Psychology at Edge Hill University. The funders had no role in the systematic review, data collection or analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The present review examines the mediators of stereotype threat that have been proposed over the past two decades. It appraises critically the underlying mechanisms of stereotype threat as a function of the type of threat primed, the population studied, and the measures utilized to examine mediation and performance outcomes. Here, we propose that one reason that has precluded studies from finding firm evidence of mediation is the appreciation of distinct forms of stereotype threat.

Stereotype Threat: An Overview

Over the past two decades, stereotype threat has become one of the most widely researched topics in social psychology [ 1 , 2 ]. Reaching its 20 th anniversary, Steele and Aronson’s [ 3 ] original article has gathered approximately 5,000 citations and has been referred to as a 'modern classic' [ 4 , 5 , 6 ]. In stark contrast to theories of genetic intelligence [ 7 , 8 ] (and see [ 9 ] for debate), the theory of stereotype threat posits that stigmatized group members may underperform on diagnostic tests of ability through concerns about confirming a negative societal stereotype as self-characteristic [ 3 ]. Steele and Aronson [ 3 ] demonstrated that African American participants underperformed on a verbal reasoning test when it was presented as a diagnostic indicator of intellectual ability. Conversely, when the same test was presented as non-diagnostic of ability, they performed equivalently to their Caucasian peers. This seminal research indicates that the mere salience of negative societal stereotypes, which may magnify over time, can impede performance. The theory of stereotype threat therefore offers a situational explanation for the ongoing and intractable debate regarding the source of group differences in academic aptitude [ 1 ].

Stereotype threat has been used primarily to explain gaps in intellectual and quantitative test scores between African and European Americans [ 3 , 10 ] and women and men respectively [ 11 ]. However, it is important to acknowledge that many factors shape academic performance, and stereotype threat is unlikely to be the sole explanation for academic achievement gaps [ 12 ]. This is supported by research which has shown “pure” stereotype threat effects on a task in which a gender-achievement gap has not been previously documented [ 13 ], thus suggesting that performance decrements can be elicited simply by reference to a negative stereotype. Furthermore, stereotype threat effects may not be limited to social groups who routinely face stigmatizing attitudes. Rather, it can befall anyone who is a member of a group to which a negative stereotype applies [ 3 ]. For example, research indicates that Caucasian men, a group that have a relatively positive social status, underperform when they believe that their mathematical performance will be compared to that of Asian men [ 14 ]. White men also appear to perform worse than black men when motor tasks are related to 'natural athletic ability' [ 15 , 16 ]. From a theoretical standpoint, stereotype threat exposes how group stereotypes may shape the behavior of individuals in a way that endangers their performance and further reinforces the stereotype [ 10 ].

Over 300 experiments have illustrated the deleterious and extensive effects that stereotype threat can inflict on many different populations [ 17 ]. The possibility of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group is found to contribute to underperformance on a range of diverse tasks including intelligence [ 3 , 13 ], memory [ 18 , 19 ], mental rotation [ 20 – 23 ], and math tests [ 11 , 24 , 25 ], golf putting [ 26 ], driving [ 27 , 28 ] and childcare skills [ 29 ]. Given the generality of these findings, researchers have turned their efforts to elucidating the underlying mechanisms of this situational phenomenon.

Susceptibility to Stereotype Threat

Research has identified numerous moderators that make tasks more likely to elicit stereotype threat, and individuals more prone to experience it [ 30 , 31 ]. From a methodological perspective, stereotype threat effects tend to emerge on tasks of high difficulty and demand [ 32 , 33 ], however, the extent to which a task is perceived as demanding may be moderated by individual differences in working memory [ 34 ]. Additionally, stereotype threat may be more likely to occur when individuals are conscious of the stigma ascribed to their social group [ 32 , 35 ], believe the stereotypes about their group to be true [ 36 , 37 ], for those with low self-esteem [ 38 ], and an internal locus of control [ 39 ]. Research also indicates that individuals are more susceptible to stereotype threat when they identify strongly with their social group [ 40 , 41 , 42 ] and value the domain [ 10 , 13 , 15 , 33 , 43 ]. However, other research suggests that domain identification is not a prerequisite of stereotype threat effects [ 44 ] and may act as a strategy to overcome harmful academic consequences [ 45 , 46 ].

Mediators of Stereotype Threat

There has also been an exPLOSion of research into the psychological mediators of stereotype threat (c.f. [ 2 , 47 ] for reviews). In their comprehensive review, Schmader et al. [ 2 ] proposed an integrated process model, suggesting that stereotype threat heightens physiological stress responses and influences monitoring and suppression processes to deplete working memory efficiency. This provides an important contribution to the literature, signaling that multiple affective, cognitive and motivational processes may underpin the effects of stereotype threat on performance. However, the extent to which each of these variables has garnered empirical support remains unclear. Furthermore, prior research has overlooked the existence of distinct stereotype threats in the elucidation of mediating variables. Through the lens of the multi-threat framework [ 31 ], the current review distinguishes between different stereotype threat primes, which target either the self or the social group to assess the evidence base with regards to the existence of multiple stereotype threats that may be accounted for by distinct mechanisms.

A Multi-threat Approach to Mediation

Stereotype threat is typically viewed as a form of social identity threat: A situational predicament occurring when individuals perceive their social group to be devalued by others [ 48 , 49 , 50 ]. However, this notion overlooks how individuals may self-stigmatize and evaluate themselves [ 51 , 52 , 53 ] and the conflict people may experience between their personal and social identities [ 54 ]. More recently, researchers have distinguished between the role of the self and the social group in performance-evaluative situations [ 31 ]. The multi-threat framework [ 31 ] identifies six qualitatively distinct stereotype threats that manifest through the intersection of two dimensions: The target of the threat (i.e., is the stereotype applicable to one’s personal or social identity?) and the source of threat (i.e., who will judge performance; the in-group or the out-group?). Focusing on the target of the stereotype, individuals who experience a group-as-target threat may perceive that underperformance will confirm a negative societal stereotype regarding the abilities of their social group. Conversely, individuals who experience a self-as-target threat may perceive that stereotype-consistent performance will be viewed as self-characteristic [ 31 , 55 ]. Individuals may therefore experience either a self or group-based threat dependent on situational cues in the environment that heighten the contingency of a stereotyped identity [ 2 ].

Researchers also theorize that members of diverse stigmatized groups may experience different forms of stereotype threat [ 31 , 56 ], and that these distinct experiences may be mediated by somewhat different processes [ 31 , 57 ]. Indeed, there is some indirect empirical evidence to suggest that this may be the case. For example, Pavlova and colleagues [ 13 ] found that an implicit stereotype threat prime hampered women’s performance on a social cognition task. Conversely, men’s performance suffered when they were primed with an explicit gender-related stereotype. Moreover, Stone and McWhinnie [ 58 ] suggest that subtle stereotype threat cues (i.e., the gender of the experimenter) may evoke a tendency to actively monitor performance and avoid mistakes, whereas blatant stereotype threat cues (i.e., stereotype prime) create distractions that deplete working memory resources. Whilst different stereotype threat cues may simultaneously exert negative effects on performance, it is plausible that they are induced by independent mechanisms [ 58 ]. Nonetheless, insufficient evidence has prevented the multi-threat framework [ 31 ] to be evaluated empirically to date. It therefore remains to be assessed whether the same mechanisms are responsible for the effects of distinct stereotype threats on different populations and performance measures.

The current article offers the first systematic literature review aiming to: 1), identify and examine critically the proposed mediators of stereotype threat; 2), explore whether the effects of self-as-target or group-as-target stereotype threat on performance are the result of qualitatively distinct mediating mechanisms; and 3), evaluate whether different mediators govern different stereotyped populations.

Literature Search

A bibliographic search of electronic databases, such as PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, Web of Knowledge, PubMed, Science Direct and Google Scholar was conducted between the cut-off dates of 1995 (the publication year of Steele & Aronson’s seminal article) and December 2015. A search string was developed by specifying the main terms of the phenomenon under investigation. Here, the combined key words of stereotype and threat were utilized as overarching search parameters and directly paired with either one of the following terms; mediator , mediating , mediate(s) , predictor , predicts , relationship or mechanism(s) . Additional references were retrieved by reviewing the reference lists of relevant journal articles. To control for potential publication bias [ 59 , 60 , 61 ], the lead author also enquired about any ‘in press’ articles by sending out a call for papers through the European Association for Social Psychology. The second author conducted a comparable search using the same criteria to ensure that no studies were overlooked in the original search. Identification of relevant articles and data extraction were conducted in line with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Statement (PRISMA; See S1 Table ) [ 62 ]. A literature search was conducted separately in each database and the records were exported to citation software, after which duplicates were removed. Relevant articles were screened by examining the title and abstract in line with the eligibility criteria. The remaining articles were assessed for eligibility by performing a full text review [ 63 , 64 ].

Eligibility Criteria.

Studies were selected based on the following criteria: 1), researchers utilized a stereotype threat manipulation; 2), a direct mediation analysis was conducted between stereotype threat and performance; 3), researchers found evidence of moderated-mediation, and 4), the full text was available in English. Articles were excluded on the following basis: 1), performance was not the dependent variable, 2), investigations of “stereotype lift”; 3), doctorate, dissertation and review articles (to avoid duplication of included articles); and 4), moderating variables. Articles that did not find any significant results in relation to stereotype threat effects were also excluded in order to capture reliable evidence of mediation [ 65 ]. See Table 1 for details of excluded articles.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.t001

Distinguishing Different Stereotype Threats.

The current review distinguished between different experiences of stereotype threat by examining each stereotype threat manipulation. Self-as-target threats were categorized on the basis that participants focused on the test as a measure of personal ability whereas group-as-target threats were classified on the basis that participants perceived performance to be diagnostic of their group’s ability [ 31 ].

A total of 45 studies in 38 articles were qualitatively synthesized, uncovering a total of 17 distinct proposed mediators. See Fig 1 for process of article inclusion (full details of article exclusion can be viewed in S1 Supporting Information ). These mediators were categorized into affective/subjective ( n = 6), cognitive ( n = 7) or motivational mechanisms ( n = 4). Effect sizes for mediational findings are described typically through informal descriptors, such as complete , perfect , or partial [ 66 ]. With this in mind, the current findings are reported in terms of complete or partial mediation. Complete mediation indicates that the relationship between stereotype threat ( X ) and performance ( Y ) completely disappears when a mediator ( M ) is added as a predictor variable [ 66 ]. Partial mediation refers to instances in which a significant direct effect remains between stereotype threat and performance when controlling for the mediator, suggesting that additional variables may further explain this relationship [ 67 ]. Instances of moderated mediation are also reported, which occurs when the strength of mediation is contingent on the level of a moderating variable [ 68 ]. The majority of included research utilized a group-as-target prime ( n = 36, 80%) compared to a self-as-target prime ( n = 6; 13.33%). Three studies (6.66%) were uncategorized as they employed subtle stereotype threat primes, for example, manipulating the group composition of the testing environment.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.g001

Affective/Subjective Mechanisms

Researchers have conceptualized stereotype threat frequently as a fear, apprehension or anxiety of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group [ 3 , 69 , 70 ]. Accordingly, many affective and subjective variables such as anxiety, individuation tendencies, evaluation apprehension, performance expectations, explicit stereotype endorsement and self-efficacy have been proposed to account for the stereotype threat-performance relationship.

Steele and Aronson’s [ 3 ] original study did not find self-reported anxiety to be a significant mediator of the effects of a self-relevant stereotype on African American’s intellectual performance. Extending this work, Spencer et al. (Experiment 3, [ 11 ]) found that anxiety was not predictive of the effects that a negative group stereotype had on women’s mathematical achievement, with further research confirming this [ 14 , 44 , 71 ]. Additional studies have indicated that self-reported anxiety does not influence the impact of self-as-target stereotype elicitation on African American’s cognitive ability [ 72 ], white students’ athletic skills [ 15 ], and group-as-target stereotype threat on older adults’ memory recall [ 18 , 32 ].

Research also suggests that anxiety may account for one of multiple mediators in the stereotype threat-performance relationship. In a field study, Chung and colleagues [ 73 ] found that self-reported state anxiety and specific self-efficacy sequentially mediated the influence of stereotype threat on African American’s promotional exam performance. This finding is supported by Mrazek et al. [ 74 ] who found that anxiety and mind-wandering sequentially mediated the effects of stereotype threat on women’s mathematical ability. Laurin [ 75 ] also found that self-reported somatic anxiety partially mediated the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s motor performance. Nevertheless, it is viable to question whether this finding is comparable to other studies as stereotype threat had a facilitating effect on performance.

The mixed results regarding anxiety as a potential mediator of performance outcomes may be indicative of various boundary conditions that enhance stereotype threat susceptibility. Consistent with this claim, Gerstenberg, Imhoff and Schmitt (Experiment 3 [ 76 ]) found that women who reported a fragile math self-concept solved fewer math problems under group-as-target stereotype threat and this susceptibility was mediated by increased anxiety. This moderated-mediation suggests that women with a low academic self-concept may be more vulnerable to stereotype threat, with anxiety underpinning its effect on mathematical performance.

Given that anxiety may be relatively difficult to detect via self-report measures [ 3 , 29 ], researchers have utilized indirect measures. For instance, Bosson et al. [ 29 ] found that physiological anxiety mediated the effects of stereotype threat on homosexual males’ performance on an interpersonal task. Nevertheless, this effect has not been replicated for the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on older adults’ memory recall [ 32 ] and self-as-target threat on children’s writing ability [ 77 ].

Individuation tendencies.

Steele and Aronson [ 3 ] proposed that stereotype threat might occur when individuals perceive a negative societal stereotype to be a true representation of personal ability. Based on this, Keller and Sekaquaptewa [ 78 ] examined whether gender-related threats (i.e., group-as-target threat) influenced women to individuate their personal identity (the self) from their social identity (female). Results revealed that participants underperformed on a spatial ability test when they perceived that they were a single in-group representative (female) in a group of males. Moreover, stereotype threat was partially mediated by ‘individuation tendencies’ in that gender-based threats influenced women to disassociate their self from the group to lessen the applicability of the stereotype. The authors suggest that this increased level of self-focused attention under solo status conditions is likely related to increased levels of anxiety.

Evaluation apprehension.

Steele and Aronson [ 3 ] also suggested that individuals might apprehend that they will confirm a negative stereotype in the eyes of out-group members. Despite this, Mayer and Hanges [ 72 ] found that evaluation apprehension did not mediate the effects of a self-as-target stereotype threat on African American’s cognitive ability. Additional studies also indicate that evaluation apprehension does not mediate the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance [ 11 , 79 ].

Performance expectations.

Under stereotype threat, individuals may evaluate the subjective likelihood of success depending on their personal resources. As these personal resources are typically anchored to group-level expectations, in-group threatening information (i.e., women are poor at math) may reduce personal expectancies to achieve and diminish performance [ 80 ]. Testing this prediction, Cadinu et al. (Experiment 1 [ 80 ]) found that women solved fewer math problems when they were primed with a negative group-based stereotype relative to those who received a positive or no stereotype. Furthermore, performance expectancies partially mediated the effect of group-as-target threat on math performance, revealing that negative information was associated with lower expectancies. A second experiment indicated further that performance expectancies partially mediated the effects of group-as-target threat on Black participants’ verbal ability. Research by Rosenthal, Crisp and Mein-Woei (Experiment 2 [ 81 ]) also found that performance expectancies partially mediated the effects of self-based stereotypes on women’s mathematical performance. However, rather than decreasing performance expectancies, women under stereotype threat reported higher predictions for performance relative to a control condition.

Research has extended this work to examine the role of performance expectancies in diverse stigmatized populations. For example, Hess et al. [ 32 ] found evidence of moderated-mediation for the effects of a group-as-target stereotype threat on older adults’ memory recall. Here, the degree to which performance expectancies mediated stereotype threat effects was moderated by participants’ education. That is, elderly individuals with higher levels of education showed greater susceptibility to stereotype threat. These findings add weight to the assertion that lowered performance expectations may account for the effects of stereotype threat on performance, especially among individuals who identify strongly with the ability domain. Conversely, Appel et al. [ 43 ] found that performance expectancies do not mediate the effects of group-based stereotype threat among highly identified women in the domains of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Further research suggests that stereotype threat can be activated through subtle cues in the environment rather than explicit stereotype activation [ 58 , 82 ]. It is therefore plausible that expectancies regarding performance may be further undermined when stigmatized in-group members are required to perform a stereotype-relevant task in front of out-group members. Advancing this suggestion, Sekaquaptewa and Thompson [ 82 ] examined the interactive effects of solo status and stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance. Results revealed that women underperformed when they completed a quantitative examination in the presence of men (solo status) and under stereotype threat. However, whilst performance expectancies partially mediated the relationship between group composition and mathematical ability, they did not mediate the effects of stereotype threat on performance.

Explicit stereotype endorsement.

Research has examined whether targeted individuals’ personal endorsement of negative stereotypes is associated with underperformance. For example, Leyens and colleagues [ 83 ] found that men underperformed on an affective task when they were told that they were not as apt as women in processing affective information. Against predictions, however, stereotype endorsement was not found to be a significant intermediary between stereotype threat and performance. Other studies also indicate that stereotype endorsement is not an underlying mechanism of the effects of self-as-target [ 3 ] and group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical aptitude [ 11 , 84 ].

Self-efficacy.

Research suggests that self-efficacy can have a significant impact on an individual’s motivation and performance [ 85 , 86 , 87 ], and may be influenced by environmental cues [ 88 ]. Accordingly, it has been proposed that the situational salience of a negative stereotype may reduce an individual’s self-efficacy. As mentioned, Chung et al. [ 73 ] found that state anxiety and specific self-efficacy accounted for deficits in African American’s performance on a job promotion exam. However, additional studies indicate that self-efficacy does not mediate the effects of self-as-target threat on African American’s cognitive ability [ 72 ] and group-as-target threat on women’s mathematical performance [ 11 ].

Cognitive Mechanisms

Much research has proposed that affective and subjective variables underpin the harmful effects that stereotype threat exerts on performance [ 89 ]. However, other research posits that stereotype threat may influence performance detriments through its demands on cognitive processes [ 2 , 89 , 90 ]. Specifically, researchers have examined whether stereotype threat is mediated by; working memory, cognitive load, thought suppression, mind-wandering, negative thinking, cognitive appraisals and implicit stereotype endorsement.

Working memory.

Schmader and Johns [ 89 ] proposed that performance-evaluative situations might reduce working memory capacity as stereotype-related thoughts consume cognitive resources. In three studies, they examined whether working memory accounted for the influence of a group-as-target threat on women’s and Latino American’s mathematical ability. Findings indicated that both female and Latino American participants solved fewer mathematical problems compared to participants in a non-threat control condition. Furthermore, reduced working memory capacity, measured via an operation span task [ 91 ], mediated the deleterious effects of stereotype threat on math performance. Supporting this, Rydell et al. (Experiment 3 [ 92 ]) found that working memory mediated the effects of a group-relevant stereotype on women’s mathematical performance when they perceived their performance to be evaluated in line with their gender identity. Here results also showed that these performance decrements were eliminated when women were concurrently primed with a positive and negative social identity (Experiment 2).

Further research has also examined how stereotype threat may simultaneously operate through cognitive and emotional processes. Across four experiments, Johns et al. [ 90 ] found that stereotype threat was accountable for deficits in women’s verbal, intellectual and mathematical ability. Moreover, emotion regulation − characterized as response-focused coping − mediated the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on performance by depleting executive resources.

Nonetheless, executive functioning is made up of more cognitive processes than the construct of working memory [ 93 ]. Acknowledging this, Rydell et al. [ 93 ] predicted that updating (i.e., the ability to maintain and update information in the face of interference) would mediate stereotype threat effects. They further hypothesized that inhibition (i.e., the ability to inhibit a dominant response) and shifting (i.e., people’s ability to switch between tasks) should not underpin this effect. Results indicated that women who experienced an explicit group-as-target threat displayed reduced mathematical performance compared to a control condition. Consistent with predictions, only updating mediated the stereotype threat-performance relationship. These results suggest that the verbal ruminations associated with a negative stereotype may interfere with women’s ability to maintain and update the calculations needed to solve difficult math problems.

The extent to which updating accounts for stereotype threat effects in diverse populations, however, is less straightforward. For example, Hess et al. [ 32 ] found that working memory, measured by a computational span task, did not predict the relationship between group-based stereotype threat and older participants’ memory performance.

Cognitive load.

There is ample evidence to suggest that stereotype threat depletes performance by placing higher demands on mental resources [ 89 , 93 ]. These demands may exert additional peripheral activity (i.e., emotional regulation) that can further interfere with task performance [ 90 ]. In order to provide additional support for this notion, Croizet et al. [ 94 ] examined whether increased mental load, measured by participants’ heart rate, mediated the effects of stereotype threat on Psychology majors’ cognitive ability. Here, Psychology majors were primed that they had lower intelligence compared to Science majors. Results indicated that this group-as-target stereotype threat undermined Psychology majors’ cognitive ability by triggering a psychophysiological mental load. Moreover, this increased mental load mediated the effects of stereotype threat on cognitive performance.

Thought suppression.

Research suggests that individuals who experience stereotype threat may be aware that their performance will be evaluated in terms of a negative stereotype and, resultantly, engage in efforts to disprove it [ 3 , 94 , 95 ]. This combination of awareness and avoidance may lead to attempts to suppress negative thoughts that consequently tax the cognitive resources needed to perform effectively. In four experiments, Logel et al. (Experiment 2 [ 95 ]) examined whether stereotype threat influences stereotypical thought suppression by counterbalancing whether participants completed a stereotype-relevant lexical decision task before or after a mathematical test. Results indicated that women underperformed on the test in comparison to men. Interestingly, women tended to suppress stereotypical words when the lexical decision task was administered before the math test, but showed post-suppression rebound of stereotype-relevant words when this task was completed afterwards. Mediational analyses revealed that only pre-test thought suppression partially mediated the effects of stereotype threat on performance.

Mind-wandering.

Previous research suggests that the anticipation of a stereotype-laden test may produce a greater proportion of task-related thoughts and worries [ 93 , 95 ]. Less research has examined the role of thoughts unrelated to the task in hand as a potential mediator of stereotype threat effects. Directly testing this notion, Mrazek et al. (Experiment 2 [ 74 ]) found that a group-as-target stereotype threat hampered women’s mathematical performance in comparison to a control condition. Furthermore, although self-report measures of mind-wandering resulted in null findings, indirect measures revealed that women under stereotype threat showed a marked decrease in attention. Mediation analyses indicated further that stereotype threat heightened anxiety which, in turn, increased mind-wandering and contributed to the observed impairments in math performance. Despite these findings, other studies have found no indication that task irrelevant thoughts mediate the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance [ 24 ] and African American participants’ cognitive ability [ 72 ].

Negative thinking.

Schmader and Johns’ [ 89 ] research suggests that the performance deficits observed under stereotype threat may be influenced by intrusive thoughts. Further research [ 74 ] has included post-experimental measures of cognitive interference to assess the activation of distracting thoughts under stereotype threat. However, the content of these measures are predetermined by the experimenter and do not allow participants to report spontaneously on their experiences under stereotype threat. Overcoming these issues, Cadinu and colleagues [ 96 ] asked women to list their current thoughts whilst taking a difficult math test under conditions of stereotype threat. Results revealed that female participants underperformed when they perceived a mathematical test to be diagnostic of gender differences. Moreover, participants in the stereotype threat condition listed more negative thoughts relative to those in the control condition, with intrusive thoughts mediating the relationship between stereotype threat and poor math performance. It seems therefore that negative performance-related thoughts may consume working memory resources to impede performance.

Cognitive appraisal.

Other research suggests that individuals may engage in coping strategies to offset the performance implications of a negative stereotype. One indicator of coping is cognitive appraisal, whereby individuals evaluate the significance of a situation as well as their ability to control it [ 97 ]. Here, individuals may exert more effort on a task when the situational presents as a challenge, but may disengage from the task if they evaluate the situation as a threat [ 98 , 99 ]. Taking this into consideration, Berjot, Roland-Levy and Girault-Lidvan [ 100 ] proposed that targeted members might be more likely to perceive a negative stereotype as a threat to their group identity rather than as a challenge to disprove it. They found that North African secondary school students underperformed on a visuospatial task when they perceived French students to possess superior perceptual-motor skills. Contrary to predictions, threat appraisal did not mediate the relation between stereotype threat and performance. Rather, perceiving the situation as a challenge significantly mediated the stereotype threat-performance relationship. Specifically, participants who appraised stereotype threat as a challenge performed better than those who did not. These results therefore suggest that individuals may strive to confront, rather than avoid, intellectual challenges and modify the stereotype held by members of a relevant out-group in a favorable direction [ 101 ].

Implicit stereotype endorsement.

Situational cues that present as a threat may increase the activation of automatic associations between a stereotyped concept (i.e., female), negative attributes (i.e., bad), and the performance domain (i.e., math; [ 102 ]). Implicit measures may be able to detect recently formed automatic associations between concepts and stereotypical attributes that are not yet available to explicitly self-report [ 103 ]. In a study of 240 six-year old children, Galdi et al. [ 103 ] examined whether implicit stereotype threat endorsement accounted for the effects of stereotype threat on girls’ mathematical performance. Consistent with the notion that automatic associations can precede conscious beliefs, results indicated that girls acquire implicit math-gender stereotypes before they emerge at an explicit level. Specifically, girls showed stereotype-consistent automatic associations between the terms ‘boy-mathematics’ and ‘girl-language’, which mediated stereotype threat effects.

Motivational Mechanisms

Most of the initial work on the underlying mechanisms of stereotype threat has focused on affective and cognitive processes. More recently, research has begun to examine whether individuals may be motivated to disconfirm a negative stereotype, with this having a paradoxical effect of harming performance [ 104 , 105 , 106 ]. To this end, research has elucidated the potential role of effort, self-handicapping, dejection, vigilance, and achievement goals.

Effort/motivation.

Underpinned by the “mere effort model” [ 104 ], Jamieson and Harkins [ 105 ] examined whether motivation plays a proximal role in the effect of stereotype threat on women’s math performance. Here they predicted that stereotype threat would lead participants to use a conventional problem solving approach (i.e., use known equations to compute an answer), which would facilitate performance on ‘solve’ problems, but hamper performance on ‘comparison’ problems. Results supported this hypothesis, indicating that stereotype threat debilitated performance on comparison problems as participants employed the dominant, but incorrect, solution approach. Furthermore, this incorrect solving approach mediated the effect of stereotype threat on comparison problem performance. This suggests that stereotype threat motivates participants to perform well, which increases activation of a dominant response to the task. However, as this dominant approach does not always guarantee success, the work indicates that different problem solving strategies may determine whether a person underperforms on a given task [ 105 , 107 ].

Stereotype threat may have differential effects on effort dependent on the prime utilized [ 27 ]. For example, Skorich et al. [ 27 ] examined whether effort mediated the effects of implicit and explicit stereotypes on provisional drivers’ performance on a hazard perception test. Participants in the implicit prime condition ticked their driving status (provisional, licensed) on a questionnaire, whereas participants in the explicit prime condition were provided with stereotypes relating to the driving ability of provisional licensees. Results revealed that participants detected more hazards when they were primed with an explicit stereotype relative to an implicit stereotype. Mediational analyses showed that whilst increased effort mediated the effects of an implicit stereotype on performance, decreased effort mediated the effects of an explicit stereotype prime. Research also indicates that reduced effort mediates the effects of an explicit stereotype on older adults’ memory recall [ 18 ]. Taken together, these results suggest that implicit stereotype primes may lead to increased effort as participants aim to disprove the stereotype, whereas explicit stereotype threat primes may lead to decreased effort as participants self-handicap [ 27 ]. Nevertheless, other studies utilizing self-reported measures of effort have resulted in non-significant findings (Experiment 1 & 2 [ 14 ]; Experiment 4 [ 44 ]; Experiment 2 [ 77 ]; Experiment 2, 4 & 5, [ 108 ]).

Self-handicapping.

Individuals may engage in self-handicapping strategies to proactively reduce the applicability of a negative stereotype to their performance. Here, people attempt to influence attributions for performance by erecting barriers to their success. Investigating this notion, Stone [ 15 ] examined whether self-handicapping mediated the effects of stereotype threat on white athletes’ sporting performance. Self-handicapping was measured by the total amount of stereotype-relevant words completed on a word-fragment task. Results indicated that white athletes practiced less when they perceived their ability on a golf-putting task to be diagnostic of personal ability, thereby confirming a negative stereotype relating to ‘poor white athleticism’. Moreover, these athletes were more likely to complete the term ‘awkward’ on a word fragment completion test compared to the control condition. Mediation analyses revealed that the greater accessibility of the term ‘awkward’ partially mediated the effects of stereotype threat on psychological disengagement and performance. The authors suggest that stereotype threat increased the accessibility of thoughts related to poor athleticism to inhibit athletes' practice efforts. However, a limitation of this research is that analyses were based on single-item measures (i.e., the completion of the word ‘awkward’) rather than total of completed words on the word-fragment test.

Keller [ 109 ] also tested the hypothesis that the salience of a negative stereotype is related to self-handicapping tendencies. Results showed that women who were primed with a group-as-target stereotype underperformed on a mathematical test relative to their control group counterparts. Furthermore, they expressed stronger tendencies to search for external explanations for their weak performance with this mediating the effects of stereotype threat on performance. Despite these preliminary findings, Keller and Dauenheimer [ 44 ] were unable to provide support for the notion that self-reported self-handicapping is a significant intermediary between stereotype threat and women’s mathematical underperformance.

Research on performance expectations suggests that stereotype threat effects may be mediated by goals set by the participants. Extending this work, Keller and Dauenheimer [ 44 ] hypothesized that female participants may make more errors on a mathematical test due to an overly motivated approach strategy. Results indicated that women underperformed when a math test was framed as diagnostic of gender differences (a group-as-target threat). Furthermore, their experiences of dejection were found to mediate the relation between stereotype threat and performance. The authors suggest that individuals may be motivated to disconfirm the negative stereotype and thus engage in a promotion focus of self-regulation. However, feelings of failure may elicit an emotional response that resultantly determines underperformance.

In contrast to Keller and Dauenheimer [ 44 ], Seibt and Förster (Experiment 5; [ 108 ]) proposed that under stereotype threat, targeted individuals engage in avoidance and vigilance strategies. They predicted that positive stereotypes should induce a promotion focus, leading to explorative and creative processing, whereas negative stereotypes should induce a prevention focus state of vigilance, with participants avoiding errors. Across five experiments, male and female participants were primed with a group-as-target stereotype suggesting that women have better verbal abilities than men. However, rather than showing a stereotype threat effect, results indicated a speed-accuracy trade off with male participants completing an analytical task slower but more accurately than their counterparts in a non-threat control condition. Furthermore, this prevention focus of vigilance was found to partially mediate the effects of stereotype threat on men’s analytical abilities (Experiment 5). The authors conclude that the salience of a negative group stereotype elicits a vigilant, risk-averse processing style that diminishes creativity and speed while bolstering analytic thinking and accuracy.

Achievement goals.

Achievement goals theory [ 110 ] posits that participants will evaluate their role in a particular achievement context and endorse either performance-focused or performance-avoidance goals. In situations where the chances of success are low, individuals engage in performance-avoidance goals, corresponding to a desire to avoid confirming a negative stereotype. Accordingly, Chalabaev et al. [ 111 ] examined whether performance avoidance goals mediated the effects of stereotype threat on women’s sporting performance. Here, the impact of two self-as-target stereotypes (i.e., poor athletic and soccer ability) on performance were assessed relative to a control condition. Results indicated that women in the athletic ability condition performed more poorly on a dribbling task, but not in the soccer ability condition. Furthermore, although these participants endorsed a performance-avoidance goal, this did not mediate the relationship between stereotype threat and soccer performance.

Highlighting the possible interplay between affective, cognitive and motivation mechanisms, Brodish and Devine [ 112 ] proffered a multi-mediator model, proposing that anxiety and performance-avoidance goals may mediate the effects of group-as-target stereotype threat on women’s mathematical performance. Achievement goals were measured by whether participants endorsed performance-avoidant (the desire to avoid performing poorly) or approach goals (trying to outperform others). Results indicated that women under stereotype threat solved fewer mathematical problems relative to those in a control condition. Mediation analyses revealed that performance avoidance goals and anxiety sequentially mediated women’s mathematical performance. That is, stereotype threatened women were motivated to avoid failure, which in turn heightened anxiety and influenced underperformance. Table 2 summarizes the articles reviewed and details their key findings and respective methodologies. See S2 Table for overview of significant mediational findings.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.t002

The current review evaluated empirical support for the mediators of stereotype threat. Capitalizing on the multi-threat framework [ 31 ], we distinguished between self-relevant and group-relevant stereotype threats to examine the extent to which these are mediated by qualitatively distinct mechanisms and imperil diverse stigmatized populations. On the whole, the results of the current review indicate that experiences of stereotype threat may increase individuals’ feelings of anxiety, negative thinking and mind-wandering which deplete the working memory resources required for successful task execution. Research documents further that individuals may be motivated to disconfirm the negative stereotype and engage in efforts to suppress stereotypical thoughts that are inconsistent with task goals. However, many of the mediators tested have resulted in varying degrees of empirical support. Below we suggest that stereotype threat may operate in distinct ways dependent on the population under study, the primes utilized, and the instruments used to measure mediation and performance.

Previous research has largely conceptualized stereotype threat as a singular construct, experienced similarly by individuals and groups across situations [ 31 , 55 ]. Consequently, research has overlooked the possibility of multiple forms of stereotype threats that may be implicated through concerns to an individual’s personal or social identity [ 31 ]. This is highlighted in the present review, as the majority of stereotype threat studies employed a group-as-target prime. Here stereotype threat is typically instantiated to highlight that stereotype-consistent performance may confirm, or reinforce, a negative societal stereotype as being a true representation of one’s social group [ 48 ]. This has led to a relative neglect of situations in which individuals may anticipate that their performance may be indicative of personal ability [ 31 , 55 ].

Similar processes such as arousal, deficits in working memory, and motivation may be triggered by self-as-target and group-as-target stereotype threats. However, it is important to note that the experiences of these stereotype threats may be fundamentally distinct [ 31 ]. That is, deficits in working memory under self-as-target stereotype threat may be evoked by negative thoughts relating to the self (i.e., ruining one’s opportunities, letting oneself down). Conversely, group-based intrusive thoughts may mediate the effects of group-as-target threat on performance as individuals view their performance in line with their social group (i.e., confirming a societal stereotype, letting the group down) [ 31 ]. Moreover, research suggests that when a group-based stereotype threat is primed, individuals dissociate their sense of self from the negatively stereotyped domain [ 78 ]. Yet, this may be more unlikely when an individual experiences self-as-target stereotype threat as their personal ability is explicitly tied to a negative stereotype that governs their ingroup. As such, the activation of a group-based stereotype may set in motion mechanisms that reflect a protective orientation of self-regulation, whereas self-relevant knowledge may heighten self-consciousness. To date, however, research has not explicitly distinguished between self-as-target and group-as-target stereotype threat in the elucidation of mediating variables. Future research would therefore benefit from a systematic investigation of how different stereotype threats may hamper performance in qualitatively distinguishable ways. One way to investigate the hypotheses set out here would be to allow participants to spontaneously report their experiences under self-as-target and group-as-target stereotype threat, and to examine differences in the content of participants’ thoughts as a function of these different primes.

In a similar vein, different mechanisms may mediate the effects of blatant and subtle stereotype threat effects on performance [ 27 , 58 , 111 ]. Blatant threat manipulations explicitly inform participants of a negative stereotype related to performance (e.g., [ 3 , 11 ]), whereas placing stigmatized group members in a situation in which they have minority status may evoke more subtle stereotype threat [ 78 , 82 ]. Providing evidence consistent with this notion, Sekaquaptewa and Thompson [ 82 ] found that performance expectancies partially mediated the effects of solo status, but not stereotype threat on performance. These results suggest that women may make comparative judgments about their expected performance when they are required to undertake an exam in the presence of out-group members, yet may not consciously recognize how a negative stereotype can directly impair performance. Further research suggests that working memory may mediate the effects of subtle stereotype threat cues on performance as individuals attend to situational cues that heighten the salience of a discredited identity [ 88 , 94 ]. Alternatively, motivation may mediate the effects of blatant stereotype threat as individuals strive to disprove the negative stereotype [ 27 , 44 , 58 , 108 ]. Although stereotype threat effects appear to be robust [ 30 ], it is plausible that these distinct manipulations diverge in the nature, the focus, and the intensity of threat they produce and may therefore be mediated by different mechanisms [ 31 ].

It is also conceivable that different groups are more susceptible to certain types of stereotype threat [ 13 , 31 , 56 ]. For example, research indicates that women’s performance on a social cognition task was influenced to a greater extent by implicit gender-related stereotypes, whereas men were more vulnerable to explicit stereotype threat [ 13 ]. Further research suggests that populations who tend to have low group identification (e.g., those with a mental illness or obesity) are more susceptible to self-as-target threats. Conversely, populations with high group identification, such as individuals of a certain ethnicity, gender or religion are more likely to experience group-as-target threats [ 56 ]. Whilst this highlights the role of moderating variables that heighten individuals’ susceptibility to stereotype threat, it also suggests that individuals may experience stereotype threat in different ways, dependent on their stigmatized identity. This may explain why some variables (e.g., anxiety, self-handicapping) that have been found to mediate the effects of stereotype threat on some groups have not emerged in other populations.

Finally, it is conceivable that diverse mediators account for the effects of stereotype threat on different performance outcomes. For example, although working memory is implicated in tasks that typically require controlled processing, it is not required for tasks that rely more on automatic processes [ 24 , 58 , 93 ]. In line with this notion, Beilock et al. [ 24 ] found that experts’ golf putting skills were harmed under stereotype threat when attention was allocated to automatic processes that operate usually outside of working memory. This suggests that well-learned skills may be hampered by attempts to bring performance back under step-by-step control. Conversely, skills such as difficult math problem solving appear to involve heavy processing demands and may be harmed when working memory is consumed by a negative stereotype. As such, distinct mechanisms may underpin different threat-related performance outcomes.

Limitations of Stereotype Threat Research

We now outline methodological issues in current stereotype threat literature with a view to inform the design of future research. First, researchers have predominantly utilized self-report measures in their efforts to uncover the mediating variables of stereotype threat. However, it has long been argued that individuals have limited access to higher order mental processes [ 113 , 114 ], such as those involved in the evaluation and initiation of behavior [ 115 , 116 ]. Resultantly, participants under stereotype threat may be unable to observe and explicitly report the operations of their own mind [ 29 , 114 , 117 , 118 , 119 ]. Consistent with this assertion, Bosson et al. [ 29 ] found that although stereotype threat heightened individuals’ physiological anxiety, the same individuals did not report an awareness of increased anxiety on self-report measures. Participants may thus be mindful of the impression they make on others and engage in self-presentational behaviors in an effort to appear invulnerable to negative stereotypes [ 29 ]. This is supported by research suggesting that stereotype threatened participants tend not to explicitly endorse stereotypes [ 29 , 37 , 83 , 84 ] and are more likely to claim impediments to justify poor performance [ 3 , 14 , 109 ]. Moreover, it is possible that stereotype threat processes are non-conscious [ 119 ] with research indicating that implicit–but not explicit–stereotype endorsement mediates stereotype threat effects [ 103 ]. This suggests that non-conscious processing of stereotype-relevant information may influence the decrements observed in individuals’ performance under stereotype threat. Furthermore, this research underscores the greater sensitivity of indirect measures for examining the mediators of stereotype threat. From this perspective, future research may benefit from the use of physiological measures, such as heart rate, cortisol and skin conductance to examine anxiety (c.f., [ 94 , 120 , 121 ]), the IAT to measure implicit stereotype endorsement [ 103 ] and the sustained response to attention task to measure mind-wandering [ 74 ].

In the investigation of stereotype threat, self-report measures may be particularly susceptible to order effects. For example, Brodish and Devine [ 112 ] found that women reported higher levels of anxiety when they completed a questionnaire before a mathematical test compared to afterwards. This suggests that pre-test anxiety ratings may have reflected participants’ uneasiness towards the upcoming evaluative test, with this apprehension diminishing once the test was completed. Research by Logel and colleagues [ 95 ] provides support for this notion, indicating that women who completed a lexical decision task after a math test were quicker to respond to stereotype-relevant words compared to women who subsequently completed the task. These results exhibit the variability in individuals’ emotions under stereotype threat and suggest that they may be unable to retrospectively report on their feelings once the threat has passed. This emphasizes the importance of counterbalancing test instruments in the investigation of stereotype threat, purporting that the order in which test materials are administered may influence mediational findings.

This review highlights that, in some studies, individuals assigned to a control condition may have also experienced stereotype threat, thus potentially preventing reliable evidence of mediation. For instance, Chalabaev et al. [ 111 ] primed stereotype threat by presenting a soccer ability test as a diagnostic indicator of personal factors related to athletic ability. Nevertheless, participants in the control condition received information that the aim of the test was to examine psychological factors in athletic ability. Consequently, these participants may have also been apprehensive about their performance being evaluated, and this may have precluded evidence that achievement goals mediate the stereotype threat-performance relationship. Furthermore, research has manipulated the salience of stereotype threat by stating that gender differences in math performance are equal [ 82 ]. However, other research has utilized this prime within control conditions (e.g., [ 94 , 105 , 119 ]), underpinned by the rationale that describing a test as ‘fair’ or non-diagnostic of ability eliminates stereotype threat [ 122 ]. It is therefore possible that, in some instances, researchers have inadvertently induced stereotype threat. This outlines the importance of employing a control condition in which individuals are not made aware of any negative stereotypes, and are told that the test is non-diagnostic of ability, in order to detect possible mediators.

Two decades of research have demonstrated the harmful effects that stereotype threat can exert on a wide range of populations in a broad array of performance domains. However, findings with regards to the mediators that underpin these effects are equivocal. This may be a consequence of the heterogeneity of primes used to instantiate stereotype threat and the methods used to measure mediation and performance. To this end, future work is likely to benefit from the following directions: First, account for the existence of multiple stereotype threats; Second, recognize that the experiences of stereotype threat may differ between stigmatized groups, and that no one mediator may provide generalized empirical support across diverse populations; Third, utilize indirect measures, in addition to self-report measures, to examine reliably mediating variables and to examine further the convergence of these two methods; Fourth, counterbalance test instruments to control for order effects; and finally, ensure that participants in a control condition do not inadvertently encounter stereotype threat by stating explicitly that the task is non-diagnostic of ability.

Supporting Information

S1 supporting information. list of excluded studies and rationale for exclusion..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.s001

S1 Table. PRISMA Checklist.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.s002

S2 Table. Summary of affective, cognitive and motivational mechanisms that have been found to mediate stereotype threat effects.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146487.s003

Author Contributions

Analyzed the data: CRP DH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CRP DH ARL DTL. Wrote the paper: CRP. Developed the review design and protocol: CRP DH AL DL. Reviewed the manuscript: DH AL DL. Cross-checked articles in systematic review: CRP DH.

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Teaching Resources

Reducing Stereotype Threat

Resource overview.

Strategies for instructors.

Stereotype threat is a phenomenon in which a person’s concern about confirming a negative stereotype can lead that person to underperform on a challenging assessment or test. This phenomenon has been demonstrated in laboratory research and in classroom settings, as well as in non-academic contexts (for the most recent review of this research, see Spencer et al., 2016). Stereotype threat can affect anyone, depending on the context, but students who identify with groups that are underrepresented in a field or at an institution may be especially vulnerable to its effects.

What can we, as instructors, do to reduce the potential impact of this “threat” and to create a fair learning environment for all of our students? The following suggestions are drawn from research on some of the interventions that have been shown to reduce or “defuse” the impact of stereotype threat on student performance. (For additional ideas and research, see for example, Killpack and Melon, 2016; Spencer et al., 2016; Walton, Cohen, and Steele, 2012.)

Promote a Growth Mindset about Intelligence

Foster a “growth mindset” by conveying the idea that intelligence is not fixed, but can change and grow incrementally, with practice and “exercise.” (Dweck, 2008; Blumenstyk, 2016).

• Describe for students situations in which mistakes, missteps, and wrong turns have led to discovery and innovation in your field and—if you are comfortable doing so—in your own work. Hong and Lin-Seigler (2012) have found that learning about struggles faced by famous physicists increased students’ interest in science and problem solving.
• Prompt students to reflect on their work by asking questions such as “Who made an interesting mistake today?” or “Did you find any stumbling blocks or places where you struggled when you were writing this paper? How did you work through those difficulties?” (Dweck 2008)
• If a student contributes an answer that is incorrect, follow-up with questions that will help the student explain their rationale and identify any “wrong turns” or missteps. Communicate often with your students about the usefulness of wrong answers—they help us to illuminate incomplete understanding and spur us on to learn more. Sometimes, moreover, what appears to be a wrong answer turns out to be an alternative way of correctly solving a problem or answering a question.
• If you make a mistake in the classroom, or in an assignment you distributed to the class, correct the mistake as soon as you can. If a student’s question pointed out that mistake, thank the student.
• When designing assessments in your class, include “low-stakes” quizzes, homework, and shorter papers and other assignments as well as higher-stakes tests, papers, and projects. Provide students with an opportunity to receive feedback on their performance and to build knowledge and skills over time.
• Be careful to avoid assuming that a students’ performance on an exam or assignment is evidence of “natural” ability (or lack of ability). When speaking with students who are not performing well in the course, avoid statements such as “some people have trouble with math [or writing] [or critical thinking]”; these statements can communicate the idea that intelligence is fixed and may also remind students of identity-based stereotypes. Instead, work with the student to identify areas where the student is struggling and 1-2 new strategies the student can use to improve in those areas (Rattan, Good, Dweck, 2012).

Provide Feedback that Motivates Students to Improve

• When commenting on student work, provide “wise feedback,” which combines 1) assurance that you are providing critical feedback because you have high standards, 2) specific commentary indicating where the students’ work does and does not meet the standards, and 3) confidence that students can meet those standards. This type of feedback has been shown to improve students’ motivation and reduce students’ perceptions of instructor bias (Cohen et al., 1999; (Yeager et al., 2014).
• Articulate and share with all students the criteria you will use to evaluate their work. When appropriate, grade with rubrics or answer keys that promote fairness and transparency. Explain to students the rationale behind these criteria. For example, is the course designed to help students learn more advanced modes of thinking, problem-solving, or writing that are crucial to success in future courses, graduate-school entrance exams, or professional careers?
• Combine these high standards with opportunities for support that can help students when they are transitioning into more challenging curricula. Keep in mind that all students will not be equally aware of—or comfortable in seeking out—campus resources. Therefore, set aside time in class to talk about these resources during the first week of class, describe them on the course syllabus, and—when needed—in individual conversations with students. In addition, describe these resources on your syllabus or course webpage.
• Provide students with challenging feedback that identifies areas for improvement and expresses your confidence that they can learn new strategies for studying, writing, or solving problems. Trying to comfort students by, for example, telling them that you will give them easier problems, or call on them less often, has been shown to de-motivate students, while “strategy feedback” has been shown to increase students’ motivation. Moreover, students perceive “comfort feedback” to be associated with a fixed mindset, while perceiving “strategy feedback” to be associated with a growth mindset (Rattan, Good, Dweck, 2012).

Foster a Sense of Belonging

When students learn that it is common to experience academic struggle and to be concerned that these experience suggest that one does “belong” at the institution, they have improved academic and health outcomes compared with students who do not receive these messages (Walton and Cohen, 2011).

• You can improve your students’ sense of “social belonging” by providing narratives written by students who initially struggled and questioned whether or not they belonged in the course or at the institution, but ultimately learned new study strategies and succeeded. Include narratives from diverse students, for example in terms or race, religion, gender, or nationality.
• As a second step, ask your current students to write their own narratives about a time when they have experienced academic challenges and ask them if you can share this narrative with future students in the course. This act of writing their own stories of struggles and perseverance can help them internalize the message that academic struggle is common and, often, transient (Aguilar, et al, 2014).

Aguilar, L., Walton, G., & Wieman, C. (2014). Psychological insights for improved physics teaching.  Physics Today ,  67 (5), 43-49.

Aronson, J., Lustina, M. J., Good, C., Keough, K., Steele, C. M., & Brown, J. (1999). When white men can’t do math: Necessary and sufficient factors in stereotype threat.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35,  29-46.

Blumenstyk, G. (May 11, 2016). Carol Dweck says theory of educational mindset often understood.  Chronicle of Higher   Education .  http://www.chronicle.com/article/Carol-Dweck-Says-Theory-of/236453

Cohen, G. L., Steele, C.M., and Ross, L. D. (2008). The mentor’s dilemma: Providing critical feedback across the racial divide.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 25, 1302–18.

Dweck, C. (2008).  Mindsets and math/science achievement . Carnegie Foundation.

Good, C., Aronson, J., & Inzlicht, M. (2003). Improving adolescents’ standardized test performance: An intervention to reduce the effects of stereotype threat.  Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology ,  24 (6), 645-662.

Good, C., Rattan, A., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). Why do women opt out? Sense of belonging and women’s representation in mathematics.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 102(4), 700-717.

Hong, H. Y., & Lin-Siegler, X. (2012). How learning about scientists’ struggles influences students’ interest and learning in physics.  Journal of Educational Psychology , 104(2), 469.

Killpack, T. L., & Melón, L. C. (2016). Toward inclusive STEM classrooms: What personal role do faculty play?  CBE-Life Sciences Education ,  15 (3), es3.

Rattan, A., Good, C., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). “It’s ok—not everyone can be good at math”: Instructors with an entity theory comfort (and demotivate) students.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology ,  48 (3), 731-737.

Rodríguez, B.A.(2014). The Threat of Living Up to Expectations: Analyzing the performance of Hispanic students on standardized exams.  Journal of Hispanic Higher Education,  13, 191-205.

Shih, M., Pittinsky, T. L., & Ambady, N. (1999). Stereotype susceptibility: Identity salience and shifts in quantitative performance.  Psychological Science, 10,  80-83.

Shih, M., Pittinsky, T. L., & Trahan, A. (2006). Domain-specific effects of stereotypes on performance.  Self and Identity, 5,  1-14.

Spencer, S. J., Logel, C., & Davies, P. G. (2016). Stereotype threat.  Annual Review of Psychology , 67, 415-437.

Spencer, S. J., Steele, C. M., & Quinn, D. M. (1999). Stereotype threat and women’s math performance.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35 , 4-28.

Schmader, T., & Johns, M. (2003). Converging evidence that stereotype threat reduces working memory capacity.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85,  440-452.

Steele, C. M. (2002).  Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we can do . New York: Norton.

Walton, G., Cohen, G. and Steele, C.M. (2012) Empirically validated strategies to reduce stereotype threat.  https:// ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/interventionshandout.pdf

Yeager, D. S., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., Brzustoski, P., Master, A., … & Cohen, G. L. (2014). Breaking the cycle of mistrust: Wise interventions to provide critical feedback across the racial divide.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143 (2), 804.

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University of Wisconsin-La Crosse | uwlax.edu

•   Home
• CATL Instructor's Guide to Inclusive Excellence

Understanding Stereotype Threat

A page within catl instructor's guide to inclusive excellence, introduction.

Stereotype threat is the experience of anxiety or stress in a situation where a person has the potential to confirm a negative stereotype about his or her social group. Studies show that stereotype threat undermines intellectual (and other forms of) performance, causing stereotyped students to perform below their capabilities.

Research has documented many examples of stereotype threat, including these:

• Asked to indicate their gender at the beginning of a math test, female college students do more poorly than females who are not asked to indicate their gender.
• High-achieving white male college students do more poorly on a math test if they are told the test is used to determine why Asian students are superior in mathematics.
• Told that a test measures natural athletic ability, African-American males outperformed white males.  Told that the test measures sports strategic intelligence, white males outperformed African-American males.
• Told that a test measures language ability, college students from a lower-class background perform more poorly than upper-class students.
• Older adults who read a newspaper account of how aging impairs memory did more poorly on a memory test than those who had not read the story.

Summary of Research

UWL hosted stereotype-threat researcher Valerie Purdie-Vaughns in 2013:

Stereotype Threat and the Psychology of Achievement Gaps: Causes and Solutions to Student Underperformance Valerie Purdie-Vaughns (now V alerie Purdie Greenaway ), Columbia University(introduced by Bill Cerbin)

This address uses the psychologist’s toolbox to understand why certain schools and workplaces cause students to underperform relative to their potential and what interventions combat underperformance. Environments like work or school can trigger stereotype threat for students from under-represented groups – an added stress from the possibility of being seen through the lens of negative stereotypes, rather than being accepted equally as individuals. The cumulative toll of contending with such a threat, repeatedly and over long periods of time, can threaten students’ sense that they can meet the demands of the environment. Performance and health can suffer as a consequence. This framework helps to explain intergroup disparities across a wide range of outcomes, including education (e.g., gender and racial achievement gaps) and health (e.g., racial health disparities) that have tended to be studied in isolation. This framework also provides concrete strategies for psychological interventions that target stress associated with stereotypes and bias. When well-timed and supported by environmental structures, these strategies help buffer students against the cumulative costs of stereotype threat.

Biographical Information: Valerie Purdie-Vaughns is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Columbia University. Previously she served on the faculty at Yale University. She graduated from Columbia University in 1993 and completed her doctorate at Stanford University in 2004 as a student of Dr. Claude Steele. Dr. Purdie-Vaughns is an expert on racial and gender achievement gaps in academic and workplace settings and how stigma undermines intellectual performance. She also conducts research on other forms of stigma including: stigma and LGBTQ groups, stigma of mental illness, and stigma based on multiple identities (intersectionality). Valerie has authored numerous publications that have appeared in journals such as Science, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology. She has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation, W.T. Grant Foundation and the Department of Education. She is also a regular guest on National Public Radio (NPR) as a psychology consultant on The Takeaway. As a true believer in the power of psychology to effect social change she regularly consults with universities, corporations and federal agencies about how diversity works “on the ground.”

Talking directly to students about stereotype threat is counterproductive. Instead, researchers have developed, over the past several years, types of brief interventions–some as brief as 15 minutes–that can have striking effects on students’ achievement. These are not teaching strategies, but instead, social psychological interventions that focus on how students think about themselves and school. They are intended to reduce barriers that impede student achievement. Each of the following videos describes one such intervention.

Part 1 is about Values Affirmation and describes how simple values affirmation exercises can have a positive effect on student achievement. Before a course, students simply write about values that are important to them. Their achievement improves more than that of students who do not write about their values.

Part 2 focuses on Social Belonging and describes a study in which students participated in several exercises that improved their sense of belonging in school. The intervention had long-term positive effects on their academic achievement.

And, Part 3 is about Attribution Training which describes how it is possible to change the way students think about their own success and failure. This, in turn, has a positive effect on their achievement.

References/Research

Steele, C. M. (2018). " How Stereotypes Can Impact School Performance with guest Claude Steele." 28 minute interview on Stanford Radio .

Steele, C. M. (2011). Whistling Vivaldi : How stereotypes affect us and what we can do.  New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.  conjunction with Prof. Purdie-Vaughns' visit, CATL and UW System's Office of Professional and Instructional Development (OPID) distributed multiple copies of Steele's book for reading groups, so copies are widely available on campus.  Here are the discussion questions prepared by CATL (feel free to choose those most interesting to your group).  Here is a brief glossary of psychology terms used in the book . 

Tough, P. (May 14, 2014) Who Gets to Graduate? The New York Times. 

Willingham, D. (11/11/2013).  What’s behind stereotype threat? danielwillingham.com

Wilson, T. D. (2011).  It’s About Me, Not My Group: Closing the Achievement Gap. Redirect: The Surprising Science of Psychological Change  New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

Hoskins, D. (2016). Stereotype threat.  In Instructor's Guide to Inclusive Excellence. University of Wisconsin at La Crosse Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.uwlax.edu/catl/teaching-guides/instructors-guide-to-inclusive-excellence/build-your-base/stereotype-threat/

Updated Nov. 2019.

• Share full article

The 25 Photos That Defined the Modern Age

A group of experts met to discuss the images that have best captured — and changed — the world since 1955.

Supported by

By M.H. Miller ,  Brendan Embser ,  Emmanuel Iduma and Lucy McKeon

• Published June 3, 2024 Updated June 4, 2024, 12:05 p.m. ET

This story contains graphic images of violence and death.

Let’s get this out of the way first: Of the dozens of photographers not represented here that a reasonable person might expect to have been included, the most conspicuous absentees include Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Richard Avedon, Dawoud Bey, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Imogen Cunningham, Roy DeCarava, William Eggleston, Walker Evans, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton and Irving Penn. Putting together a list of the 25 most significant photographs since 1955 — both fine art photos and reportage — proved a difficult task for the panelists (even the chosen time frame was controversial). They were: the Canadian conceptual photographer Stan Douglas , 63; the Vietnamese American photographer An-My Lê , 64; the acting chief curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, Roxana Marcoci, 66; the American documentary photographer Susan Meiselas , 75; the American photographer Shikeith , 35; and Nadia Vellam, 51, T’s photo and video director. Each participant (including myself, the moderator, 36) submitted up to seven possible nominees for the list. We gathered at The New York Times Building on a morning last February (with Shikeith joining on video from a shoot in Los Angeles) to begin our deliberations.

We chose judges from the realms of both fine art and reportage because, increasingly, the line between the two has collapsed. The modern age has been defined by photographs — images that began their lives in newspapers or magazines are repurposed as art; art has become a vehicle for information. Therefore, it was important to us and our jurors that we not draw boundaries between what was created as journalism and what was created as art. What was important was that the photographs we chose changed, in some way, how we see the world.

The conversation naturally turned into a series of questions. Like how important was it for a photograph to have expanded the possibilities of the medium? And how much did it matter who took a photo and what their intentions were? The list that emerged is less concerned with a historical chronology or an accepted canon than it is with a set of themes that have been linked indelibly to the photographic medium since its inception: labor and activism; war; the self and the family. Intriguingly, beyond an image by Wolfgang Tillmans from the ’90s, fashion photography is largely absent. So, too, are many world historical events that have been captured in landmark photographs, including the assassination of JFK, the fall of the Berlin Wall and anything from the pandemic lockdown or the presidency of Donald Trump. There were just too many other photographs to consider.

The process of producing the final list was clearly not scientific. It was more of a debate among a certain group of people on a certain day and is best considered that way. At the end of nearly four hours, jittery from caffeine, the group stood before a pile of crumpled masterworks on the floor as we assembled our chosen 25 images on a conference table. Many of our questions weren’t resolved (indeed, are unresolvable), but the results — which aren’t ranked but rather presented in the order in which we discussed them — are nothing if not surprising. — M.H. Miller

The conversation has been edited and condensed.

M.H. Miller: I thought we should start by talking about the time frame we settled on, starting in 1955.

Stan Douglas: It’s an agenda.

Miller: A little bit. It certainly shows an American bias, so I apologize to our Canadian representative — 1955 is really the beginning of the American civil rights movement, an era from which a number of us nominated photographs, and photography was so important in just making people aware of what was going on in the country. An-My, you chose Robert Frank’s picture of a streetcar in New Orleans, taken that year.

1. Robert Frank, “Trolley — New Orleans,” 1955

Robert Frank used “Trolley — New Orleans” as the original cover of his influential photo book “The Americans,” first published in the United States in 1959. Frank, a Swiss émigré, spent two years traveling the States and capturing what he saw. In this photograph, two Black passengers sit at the rear of a New Orleans streetcar while four white passengers sit at the front; all look out from a row of windows, the mullions between them emphasizing their strict separation. At the time of its publication, “The Americans” was considered by several critics to be a pessimistic, angry portrait of the country. (The magazine Popular Photography famously called it a “warped” and “wart-covered” depiction “by a joyless man.”) Many more viewers and artists, however, found inspiration in the direct, unromantic style pioneered by Frank, whose outsider status likely let him view America’s contradictions from a clarifying distance. He had “sucked a sad poem out of America onto film,” as Jack Kerouac wrote in an introduction to the book. This image, shot in the months before the Montgomery bus boycotts made segregation a national debate, showed America to itself, as if for the first time. The faces in the photographs, Kerouac wrote, don’t “editorialize or criticize, or say anything but ‘this is the way we are in real life.’” — Emmanuel Iduma

An-My Lê: I tried to look for things that spoke to me, but also spoke to a generation.

Douglas: If I had to choose a civil rights image, I wouldn’t choose this one. Great photograph. But something happening on the street would be more appropriate, I think, like the dog attacking protesters , or the photo with the firemen .

Roxana Marcoci: But this was the cover of “The Americans,” and it does happen in the street, actually. I think that what you’re saying is, it’s not a photojournalistic image.

Douglas: The most important thing to me is: does a photograph reveal a new reality, or reveal something that’s been hidden previously? I think that’s a key criterion for making it significant. What impact on the world can that image have? A European might not have recognized that this was happening in the U.S. Maybe a lot of Americans in the North didn’t realize this was happening in the U.S. And I love this photograph, so I’m very happy to keep it.

2. David Jackson, Mamie Till and Gene Mobley Standing Before the Body of Emmett Till at a Chicago Funeral Home, 1955

Mamie Till fixes her eyes on her dead son, as her fiancé, Gene Mobley, holding her, stares at the viewer. Emmett Till , 14, is laid out on a cot in a Chicago funeral home, his face disfigured and bloated. His mother allowed the photojournalist David Jackson to take this picture in September 1955, a few days after two white men had abducted and murdered Till while he was visiting relatives in Mississippi. Quickly acquitted by an all-white jury, the men would go on to sell their confession to Look magazine for $4,000. When this photo was published, first in Jet magazine and then in The Chicago Defender and other Black newspapers, it incited an unprecedented level of outrage in America over racial violence; Jet had to reprint the Sept. 15, 1955, issue in which it appeared because of high demand. For the same reason Mamie Till let this picture be taken, she chose to keep her son’s coffin open during the funeral. “The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all,” she said. An estimated 100,000 people came to view his body. Jackson’s photograph was a call to action for many, including Rosa Parks, who said she thought of Till when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus later that same year. — E.I.

Miller: I feel like you can’t have this conversation, especially with the year we designated as the starting point, without talking about Emmett Till. There’s the devastating series of photographs of Till’s funeral. But there’s also the one from the trial — when Till’s great-uncle is identifying the men who murdered his nephew. The judge didn’t allow that photographer, Ernest C. Withers, to shoot in the courtroom. So it’s a miracle that the picture exists, and that it’s composed as well as it is when it had to be taken in secret. And it’s a moment where you saw a larger shift taking place. Up to that point in the South, a Black witness identifying white defendants in court was unheard-of.

Marcoci: The picture [of his body] was also about the power of the witness, right?

Susan Meiselas: Oh, for sure. Mamie Till and her insistence on an open coffin: how brave an act that was. And it ran in Jet and moved around the world.

Douglas: The issue for me with the trial picture is that it needs a paragraph to explain why we’re looking at it.

Marcoci: The courtroom was a travesty. They went free. But this, Mamie Till with her son, created a generation of Black activists.

Shikeith: I grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Philadelphia, and when we were learning about Black history in the fourth or fifth grade, that picture was brazenly shared with students. It was probably the first time I learned how powerful a photograph can be in having real material change in the world. It’s an image that I’ve lived with my [whole] life, and that’s impacted how I viewed the world and racism and its violence. It scares me. But, you know, it’s the truth. The truth can be very scary for a lot of us.

Miller: Shikeith, you also selected this Gordon Parks photograph, which is one of two color images the group nominated from the 1950s and ’60s — and the second was taken from outer space.

3. Gordon Parks, “Department Store, Mobile, Alabama,” 1956

In 1956, Life magazine sent Gordon Parks to document the effects of Jim Crow segregation laws in the American South through the experiences of one extended family in Mobile, Ala. Parks was one of the few Black photojournalists to work for an establishment magazine at the time, and was known especially for his fashion photography, as is easily apparent from this image. For Life, he photographed everyday scenes — a church choir singing or children drinking from water fountains — intentionally capturing signs reading “White Only” or “ Lots for Colored .” “Department Store, Mobile, Alabama” (1956) was shot for the Life story, which ran at 12 pages under the title “The Restraints: Open and Hidden” but, for unknown reasons, it didn’t make the final edit, and it wasn’t published until 2012, when a five-volume collection of Parks’s photographs was released. “Department Store” has since become a belated icon, one of the most memorable images in a career that also includes directing the 1971 film “Shaft.” Notable most of all for its vivid color, a startling contrast to the predominantly black-and-white imagery from the civil rights era, the portrait depicts Joanne Thornton Wilson, then age 27, dressed in an ice-blue, A-line cocktail dress, with her young niece, Shirley Anne Kirksey, standing beneath the red neon “Colored Entrance” sign in front of a department store. Wilson’s upright posture and outward gaze — peering in the opposite direction of the sign’s blue arrow — subtly signify defiance. But there’s an intimacy and vulnerability in the picture, too. In 2013, Wilson, who went on to become a high school teacher, told the art historian Maurice Berger that she regretted that the strap of her slip had visibly fallen. “Dressing well made me feel first class,” she said. “I wanted to set an example.” She had set an example, of course, which Parks had recorded with such clarity: Wilson also told Berger that she refused to take her niece through the “colored” entrance. — Brendan Embser

Shikeith: I think what’s beautiful about this image is that it’s brilliantly composed — it uses beauty to draw you into a poignant moment in history, becoming a record of the Jim Crow laws in the Southern U.S. I tried to pick photographs that had an influence on me, and that I thought my mother would recognize, to indicate their influence on people who might operate outside of art history conversations. It [can be used as] a tool for educating even the youngest of minds about what marginalized communities went through.

Marcoci: I think that’s a great point: the pedagogical nature of photographs. In this picture, there’s the elegance and grace of these two figures, and then the ugliness of that “Colored Entrance” sign. There’s such a tension between them.

Nadia Vellam: You don’t immediately realize the context because you’re so attracted to the two people in the image. It asks you to spend more time looking.

Douglas: It’s quite an exquisite picture. It’s basically an X, which draws your eye into the center, which then takes you to that woman’s gaze outside the frame. Inside the frame, there’s something quite sweet. But outside — both beyond that door and out in the world that’s made that door — there’s something quite ugly.

4. Alberto Korda, “Guerrillero Heroico (Che Guevara),” 1960

Alberto Korda, a favored photographer of Fidel Castro, captured this image of a 31-year-old Che Guevara by chance during a funeral in Havana in 1960 to honor the victims of a freighter explosion. Guevara, at the time the president of the National Bank of Cuba, happened to move into Korda’s line of sight while Castro was giving a speech. His expression is one of restrained anger; the Cuban government accused the United States of being responsible for the tragedy, which it denied. Five years later, Guevara resigned from Castro’s cabinet and joined revolutionary causes abroad, including in Congo and Bolivia, where he led guerrillas in a failed coup attempt. Korda’s photo wasn’t widely published until after Guevara’s execution by Bolivian soldiers in 1967, when posters, murals and eventually T-shirts emblazoned with Guevara’s face began to appear around the world. In the original portrait, he is flanked by another man and some palm fronds, but the reproductions are cropped to show just Guevara’s head. Korda’s image made Guevara into something more than a man, or even a famous revolutionary; he became a symbol for revolution itself. — E.I.

Miller: We have two pictures of Che Guevara to consider. Stan, you picked Che following his execution , and Susan, you picked the more famous portrait of him by Alberto Korda. It’s in every college dorm.

Marcoci: It’s in every tattoo parlor.

Douglas: They’re both propaganda images. One is the revolutionary looking to the future, which we’ve seen in everything from Soviet realist paintings to Obama posters. So, in many ways, a cliché, even though it’s had this huge impact. The image of Che dead [which was taken by the Bolivian photographer Freddy Alborta] is both iconic in that it’s like [an Andrea] Mantegna [1431-1506] painting of the dead Christ [“ Lamentation Over the Dead Christ ,” circa 1480], but also as evidence, on the part of the people who killed him, that the guy is dead. It’s just such a weird photograph: the officer on the right who’s poking at Che’s body to prove he’s just a human. Just mortal. And it somehow seemed like the end of the export of revolution from Cuba, which very much shut down after Che’s death.

Meiselas: And then he’s resurrected as a tattoo.

5. Diane Arbus, “Boy With a Straw Hat Waiting to March in a Pro-War Parade, N.Y.C., 1967”

The boy in “Boy With a Straw Hat” doesn’t look like a typical Arbus subject. Wearing a prim collared shirt, bow-tie and boater hat, with one American flag at his side and another, much smaller one twisted into a bow on his lapel, the thin-lipped paradegoer seems like the paragon of anodyne conservatism. He’s nothing like the cross-dressers, carnival entertainers, nudists and others relegated to the margins of society that fascinated Arbus, whose work prompted one of the more protracted debates on the ethics of photography, as her images were so often said to skirt the lines of voyeurism and exploitation. Yet his steady gaze prompts a similar sense of unease in the viewer, as does the small pin on his jacket that reads Bomb Hanoi. “Boy With a Straw Hat” was the cover image of Artforum’s May 1971 issue, published two months before Arbus’s death by suicide at age 48. In 1972, when her posthumous MoMA retrospective drew record crowds, the art critic Hilton Kramer refuted the idea that she was merely capturing her subjects for the sake of spectacle; he argued that she collaborated with the people she photographed, and that that act of participation provided dignity — or at least authenticity — especially for those individuals who are shunned or otherwise invisible. Arbus herself once said that the “best thing is the difference. I get to keep what nobody needs.” — B.E.

Miller: A number of us nominated Diane Arbus photos.

Douglas: [I picked] the sitting room in Levittown [“ Xmas Tree in a Living Room in Levittown, L.I., 1962 ”], which is one of those suburbs created in the postwar period that people could buy [homes in] with their G.I. Bill money, in which Black people couldn’t live. It’s a case of there [being] something outside the image, which is very powerful: The construction of this new suburban reality, while Emmett Till’s being killed.

Marcoci: I chose the “Giant” [“ A Jewish Giant at Home With His Parents in the Bronx, N.Y., 1970 .”], because this was one of the first pictures where I was really thinking, “Who is that person? What would it be like to be him?”

Meiselas: One of the things that photographs do is make us emotional. Some of Arbus’s most memorable pictures are the ones that make you feel more than think.

Vellam: I’d vote for “Giant” just because it spawned so many people’s idea of portraiture: Katy Grannan, Deana Lawson, Larry Sultan. Like this idea of going into a place — in her case, middle-class suburbia — that you may not even have spent any time in otherwise. I feel like that became its own genre: There’s so much photography that has come out of her idea of going into people’s homes.

Marcoci: If I were to choose just one Arbus, I’d probably choose “Boy With a Straw Hat”: A portrait of an individual that’s this very interesting collective portrait of America, too. There’s this tension between the innocent face and then those buttons: “God Bless America” and “Bomb Hanoi.”

Shikeith: He’s sort of the archetype for the Proud Boys. You can see that smirk on his face.

Meiselas: There were pictures from the R.N.C. [Republican National Convention] four years ago that looked so much like this.

Miller: Stan and An-My both nominated a very different kind of photograph from the Vietnam War era: Malcolm Browne’s picture of Thích Quảng Đức’s self-immolation.

6. Malcolm Browne, the Self-Immolation of the Buddhist Monk Thích Quảng Đức in Saigon, 1963

The AP reporter Malcolm Browne was among the only photojournalists on the scene when the monk Thích Quảng Đức set himself on fire in 1963 in Saigon as an act of protest against the South Vietnamese government’s persecution of the Buddhist majority. As flames engulfed Quảng Đức, hundreds of monks surrounded him, mourning while he burned. The photo, sent out as soon as possible on a commercial flight to reach the AP’s offices, was published on front pages internationally the following morning. When President John F. Kennedy saw it, he reportedly exclaimed, “Jesus Christ!” and then ordered a review of his administration’s Vietnam policy. (He would later say, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.”) Browne won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for the photograph, which also contributed to the collapse of support for the South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm, who was assassinated in a coup that year. President Kennedy was assassinated just a few weeks later, and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, would escalate the war. Browne’s photograph, which is newly resonant today, enshrined the act of self-immolation as the most extreme form of protest. — Lucy McKeon

Lê: I think it’s one of the most incredible monuments that exists as a photograph. [It documents] an extraordinary act of sacrifice for a cause. These days, you see [some] people protesting, and it’s all about their egos. And here, there’s no ego. It’s one of the few pictures I know that’s so violent and peaceful at the same time.

Douglas: He was there for five minutes, apparently, burning, and just didn’t flinch, didn’t say a word. This is what you do when you have no other recourse, when you feel the suppression is so severe that this is the only way you can get your statement heard.

Meiselas: It makes me think of the Napalm Girl, as well [ Nick Ut’s 1972 image of Kim Phuc Phan Thi , age 9, fleeing a napalm attack in the village of Trảng Bàng]. That moment impacted a generation. The question is, which one mobilized us further?

Lê: The Napalm Girl picture, for me, represents the notion that all Vietnamese are victims of war. I started watching war movies in college, and every time the word “Vietnam” comes up, that is the image that people have in their mind. I think the monk speaks to [something] beyond himself. He’s not a victim.

7. NASA/William A. Anders, “Earthrise,” 1968

On Christmas Eve 1968, aboard Apollo 8 during its pioneering orbit of the moon, William A. Anders photographed the Earth “rising” above the lunar horizon. The picture was the first of its kind — and it was also unplanned. Anders, the youngest of the three astronauts on the spacecraft, had been tasked with taking photographs of the moon’s craters, mountains and other geological features. He spontaneously decided, however, to include Earth in the frame when he noticed how beautiful it was. “Here was this orb looking like a Christmas tree ornament, very fragile,” Anders would recall in a NASA oral history. “And yet it was our home.” His first shot was in black and white. For the next, he switched to color, which emphasized the contrast between the moon’s gray surface and the planet’s blue-green vibrancy. “Earthrise” was the first image most of humanity saw of the planet we live on, a nature photo like none before it and a reminder of how small our world really is, in comparison with the rest of the universe. As Joni Mitchell would sing of the image, on 1976’s “ Refuge of the Roads ”: “And you couldn’t see a city on that marbled bowling ball/Or a forest or a highway/Or me here least of all. …” — E.I.

Lê: “Earthrise” isn’t the first image of the Earth seen from space. There were earlier low-resolution ones in the ’40s , made from unmanned missiles or whatever. There was one made on Apollo 4, in 1967 . But I think this one, taken by a crew member on Apollo 8 the next year with a Hasselblad, is important because it’s humbling: seeing the Earth in relationship to the Moon, and thinking about us not being the only people on this Earth. Perhaps this is when we started thinking about how we should take care of our home.

Miller: Stan, you nominated a later photo, “ Sunset on Mars ” (2005).

Douglas: I’ve always had this knee-jerk response to Apollo being American propaganda somehow, part of the arms race — who’s going to get [to the Moon] first, the U.S. or the Russians? And once the U.S. got there, they lost interest. It wasn’t really about exploration, but dominance. This image on Mars is something quite extraordinary, because in effect, the camera is a prosthesis. It’s both a very artificial one and a human one. We actually extend our vision through it.

8. Ernest C. Withers, “I Am a Man: Sanitation Workers Strike, Memphis, Tennessee,” 1968

In the last weeks of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. took part in a protest of Black sanitation workers striking for safer conditions and decent wages in Memphis, Tenn. In a speech, King emphasized the connection between the United States’ civil rights battle and the struggles of poor and disenfranchised people worldwide, a message that resonated with the crowd. Their protest signs bore the phrase “I Am a Man,” a stark acknowledgment of all the ways this most basic fact was disrespected. “We were going to demand to have the same dignity and the same courtesy any other citizen of Memphis has,” one of the participants, James Douglas, recalled in a 1978 documentary titled “I Am a Man.” The defining photo of the strike was taken by the Black photojournalist Ernest C. Withers, a Memphis native who previously shot the trial of Emmett Till’s killers, and also made famous images of the Montgomery bus boycott , the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. Withers’s picture became the official record of King’s last major civil rights action. Years later, however, Withers’s own story was revealed to have been more complicated. Like King, the photographer drew the attention of the F.B.I. Unlike King, he became a paid informant. Yet he continued to produce some of the most iconic images of the movement: On April 4, 1968, less than a week after taking this photo, Withers was on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, photographing the blood stain at the scene of King’s assassination. — L.M.

Shikeith: I think I first saw this image around the time the Million Man March was happening [in 1995]. I have a greater understanding of manhood [now] and how much of it I want to align with, and how much I don’t. But I understand how vital the need to identify as a man was in that moment.

Meiselas: I love the contrast of “I am a man,” singular, and “I am a collective.” It’s just all there: perfect distance, perfect composition. Whether or not Withers was working for the F.B.I. …

Douglas: Was he?

Meiselas: Yeah.

Douglas: And his role was to just …

Meiselas: Report on his fellow men. They paid him to spy on his colleagues. It’s a dark story. But let’s not go there.

9. Blair Stapp, Huey Newton, Black Panther Minister of Defense, 1968

In the summer of 1968, outside of the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland, Calif., where Huey P. Newton stood trial for the murder of a police officer, supporters held up posters of him that instantly became synonymous with the Black Panther Party. The year before, Newton, the party’s co-founder and Minister of Defense, had collaborated with fellow Panther Eldridge Cleaver and the photographer Blair Stapp to stage a portrait of himself in a black leather jacket and a tipped beret, holding a shotgun in one hand and a spear in the other. He’s seated on a rattan peacock chair that recalls chairs woven by inmates in the United States-colonized Philippines decades earlier. Its oval back piece frames Newton’s head like an oversize halo. Two Zulu warrior shields are propped against the wall. Stapp’s portrait and the peacock chair itself have since become an enduring symbol of Black Power. Michelle Obama sat in one for her 1982 prom portrait . Melvin Van Peebles recreated the photograph in his 1995 film “Panther.” The visual artist Sam Durant memorialized Newton in bronze in 2004 , and Henry Taylor painted it in 2007 . After two hung juries, the murder charges against Newton were dropped in 1971. For him, the struggle was about survival — or as he put it, “survival pending revolution.” — B.E.

Shikeith: I was trying to think of images that my grandmothers revered in a way. I think this is one of those images that exists in a lot of Black domestic spaces as a symbol for strength and determination. And it has this royal demeanor that’s been continuously emulated in Black photographic practice, whether amateur or professional.

Marcoci: The beret is almost [like] Che’s.

Shikeith: You can see people replicating this pose on the wicker chair throughout Black portraiture in the ’80s and early ’90s. I’m really interested in photographs that’ve had a long-lasting effect on our daily lives.

10. W. Eugene Smith, “Tomoko in Her Bath,” 1972

In the Magnum photojournalist W. Eugene Smith’s picture of Tomoko Kamimura, 15, she is being bathed by her mother at their home, in Minamata, Japan. Kamimura had been born with a kind of mercury poisoning that would later come to be known as Minamata disease, caused by a chemical factory contaminating the city’s water and food supply for more than 30 years. Smith and his wife, the photographer and activist Aileen M. Smith, lived in Minamata in the early 1970s, taking thousands of photographs to document the toll of the disaster — 1,784 people died after contracting the disease and thousands were left with severe neurological and musculoskeletal disabilities. Images from the series were printed by Life magazine in 1972, and Kamimura’s portrait became, for a time, one of the most famous images in the world. Amid the public outcry, “rumors began to circulate through the neighborhood claiming that we were making money from the publicity,” Kamimura’s father, Yoshio, would later write, “but this was untrue — it had never entered our minds to profit from the photograph of Tomoko. We never dreamed that a photograph like that could be commercial.” The Chisso Corporation, which owned the factory, has paid damages to some 10,000 victims. Kamimura died in 1977, at the age of 21. Smith died the following year. Twenty years later, after a French TV network wanted to use the photograph, Aileen M. Smith transferred control of it to Kamimura’s family. They haven’t allowed the photograph to be reproduced since. — L.M.

Meiselas: Without this documentation by Eugene Smith, I don’t think Minamata and the mercury poisoning would ever have been confronted. So when you do choose to represent a victim, I hope it’s purposeful.

Douglas: I heartily agree. And it’s a beautiful image of a loving relationship between mother and daughter.

Vellam: Smith documented people, but he was also very conscious of what he was doing while he was documenting them. I think he took a very long time after he shot everyone to figure out what he even wanted to show from them.

Meiselas: He believed that they should be better understood.

11. Photo Archive Group, “Photographs From S-21: 1975-79”

Some photographs, taken in the darkest moments of history, end up saying very different things from what their creators intended — like the images that Stalin’s secret police took during the Great Purge, or the ones white spectators took of lynchings in the United States. One of the more extensive photographic records of an authoritarian regime comes from the Khmer Rouge army, which controlled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and whose genocidal purges of minority groups and political opponents led to the murder of almost a quarter of the country’s population. Before killing most of its victims, the army took their portraits, in part to prove to leaders that the supposed enemies of the state were indeed being executed. Of the nearly 20,000 people sent between 1975 and 1979 to what was known as the S-21 death camp, the Khmer Rouge’s most notorious torture center, only about a dozen survived. In 1994, the American nonprofit organization Photo Archive Group cleaned and cataloged more than 5,000 photographs taken of prisoners before their executions. A selection of the images, known as “Photographs from S-21: 1975-79,” was published as a book called “The Killing Fields” in 1996 and shown at MoMA the following year. Who was the girl pictured here? What had she seen? It’s impossible to know. And yet the regime’s photographic record offers a way into humanizing and remembering the victims of one of the most ruthless atrocities of the 20th century. S-21 is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, where a number of the images from “Photographs From S-21: 1975-1979” are on permanent display. — L.M.

Lê: So these pictures were found in an archive in Cambodia [in 1993]. After the Khmer Rouge took over [in 1975], they went on a rampage, killing teachers and anyone who they felt wasn’t one of theirs. The bodies were buried in different locations. But they photographed these people before killing them. There were thousands of these pictures.

Douglas: If you want to make them disappear, why do you document them?

Lê: But that’s the thing. It’s the banality of evil. It’s unconscionable, right? Civilians being just collateral damage in war. Perhaps there are other ways to speak about violence, and I think this [set of photographs] certainly does.

12. Cindy Sherman, “Untitled Film Stills,” 1977-80

Cindy Sherman was 23 when she began making her “Untitled Film Stills,” a series of 70 black-and-white staged self-portraits that explore stereotypes of women in film and mass media. As a student at Buffalo State College, where she originally studied painting, she became fascinated by performers such as Vito Acconci and Chris Burden, artists who put their own bodies center stage. Sherman also liked to dress up as stock characters for parties, purchasing clothes from flea markets and experimenting with cosmetics. In “Untitled Film Stills,” she plays the career girl, ingénue, librarian , mistress, femme fatale and runaway , alternately heartbroken, hung over, daydreaming or determined to escape a predator as though trapped in some film noir. But which film? That feeling of vague recognition was Sherman’s point, as well as that of other artists of the era experimenting with pictures from mass media, who would eventually be called the Pictures Generation, a name based on a 1977 exhibition curated by Douglas Crimp . They wanted viewers to almost recognize the images, so as to heighten the uncanny nature of their work. Sherman initially sold eight-by-ten prints from “Untitled Film Stills” for $50 out of a binder from her desk at her day job as a receptionist at the nonprofit gallery Artists Space in New York. Douglas Eklund, who organized a Pictures Generation exhibition in 2009, noted that the series “never ceases to astonish, as if Sherman knew how to operate all of the machinery of mass-cultural representation with one hand tied behind her back.” Her intuitive grasp of the self-portrait’s theatrical appeal, especially when that self could be manipulated — decades before anyone could have imagined camera filters on an iPhone — has kept “Untitled Film Stills” relevant ever since. — B.E.

Marcoci: There’s something about the “Untitled Film Stills.” It’s this relationship between still and moving images. Cindy Sherman has the capacity to encapsulate, in a single [work], a narrative. She calls on this pantheon of women’s roles from movies that we think we’ve seen, but none of them are based on an actual film still. There’s one [“Untitled Film Still #13,” 1978] where she looks like Brigitte Bardot in a head scarf from Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt” (1963), but she’s a librarian. She’s reaching for a book. She makes the Bardot type into an intellectual, which is [an agency] that most male Hollywood filmmakers of the time, or even a filmmaker like Godard, would not have given the real Bardot. She was able to see something about how we engage with mass media and tweak it.

Douglas: I’m not convinced about Sherman. [There’s] an art-world canonization of the work. How important was it? How influential? I don’t think it was that important or influential outside of a very small area.

Marcoci: On the other hand, if you ask people if they know about Sherman, they probably do.

Lê: They do. Many young women find Sherman’s work empowering.

Marcoci: I never thought that we would just be considering photojournalism.

Meiselas: No.

Douglas: I mean, looking at the art world, I would include Ed Ruscha’s “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” [1966].

13. Ed Ruscha, “Every Building on the Sunset Strip,” 1966

As a teenager in Oklahoma City in the 1950s, Ed Ruscha delivered newspapers by bicycle daily along a two-mile route. He dreamed about making a model of all the buildings on his circuit, he later recalled in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, “like an architect standing over a table and plotting out a city.” After moving to Los Angeles for art school in 1956, Ruscha became obsessed with the city’s architecture, particularly on the Sunset Strip, that part of Sunset Boulevard that stretches for about two miles, like his old paper route, across West Hollywood. In 1966, Ruscha photographed both sides of the Strip by securing a motorized camera to the bed of a pickup truck. The result was “Every Building on the Sunset Strip,” a nearly 25-foot accordion-fold, self-published artist’s book. Today, Ruscha is most famous for his text-based paintings, many of which reference corporate logos and advertising slogans, for which he is widely celebrated as postwar America’s answer to the Dadaist nonsense movement. But his photography shares with the paintings a repetitive, deadpan humor. In addition to the Sunset Strip, Ruscha photographed swimming pools, gas stations, parking lots and apartments, and collected the images into small books that provoked the ire of critics — and fellow photographers — who deemed the work lacking in style and meaning. (“Only an idiot would take pictures of nothing but the filling stations,” the photographer Jeff Wall once complained.) But what he created was a kind of time travel, a meticulous, obsessive visual cartography of a long-lost Los Angeles. He and his brother, Paul, still make the trip to photograph the street every couple of years. — B.E.

Marcoci: I love [Ed] Ruscha, and I think we’ve barely touched on conceptual photography. Obviously superimportant, but is he really the photographer that did so much for photography through that series?

Meiselas: I know what you mean. Of course, because the photographs came way early, we rediscovered them after he became famous for painting.

Miller: Well, he’s certainly not as famous as a photographer as some people on this list, but I don’t know if we need to get hung up on that.

Douglas: I think “Sunset Strip” was extraordinary. Ruscha produces photographs governed by a hard-core conceptual procedure. In the case of “Every Building on the Sunset Strip,” the procedure is in the title and, in order to fulfill it, he had to make hundreds of stops along a Los Angeles street. But I also thought this was too inside the art world.

Miller: Maybe this is a good time to talk about Nan Goldin.

14. Nan Goldin, “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” 1979-2004

Nan Goldin originally presented “Ballad,” named after a song from Bertolt Brecht’s satirical musical “The Threepenny Opera,” as a series of 35-millimeter slides shown by a carousel projector in bars and nightclubs and backed by an eclectic soundtrack — from Dean Martin to the Velvet Underground. Goldin’s visual diary is itself a bohemian opera of New York’s downtown counterculture, a community freed from convention yet abandoned many times over by society; it documents sex, addiction, beauty, violence, powerful friendship, the AIDS crisis and the joyful struggle to live beyond the limits of the mainstream. Friends were photographed doing the twist at a party or preparing to inject heroin. In “Nan One Month After Being Battered” (1984), a portrait of domestic abuse, the artist’s bloodshot eye meets the lens head-on. Goldin’s “Ballad” has since been credited with inspiring everything from selfie culture to the raw, diaristic aesthetic and saturated color now commonplace across social media and in fine art. Over the years, Goldin would revise and update the series, presenting it with new images and a different soundtrack, and it would become an ubiquitous presence in galleries and museums. But because the work has so thoroughly permeated the culture, it’s easy to overlook just how radical it was when it debuted. In “ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed ,” Laura Poitras’s 2022 documentary about Goldin, the photographer describes a resistance to her art in the ’80s, “especially from male artists and gallerists who said ‘This isn’t photography. Nobody photographs their own life.’ It was still a kind of outlier act.” — L.M.

Marcoci: We’re talking about an artist who’s very much engaged with youth culture, with the cultures that transgress gender binaries. Also with the ravages of a generation that takes drugs, that loves, that dies young. “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” is a ballad. It shows this group of people as images set to music.

Meiselas: It was radical, it was very impactful to the photographic medium. But here’s my question: Would we be choosing either Nan [Goldin] or Cindy Sherman if we didn’t know their names?

Marcoci: Did you watch the “Ballad”?

Meiselas: Of course. I watched it in 1985.

Marcoci: How many times?

Meiselas: How many times has she changed it?

Marcoci: But even that I like. You don’t need to choose one picture. It’s interesting for me when photography is not just a moment that’s frozen in time, when it has the capacity to change.

15. Wolfgang Tillmans, “Lutz, Alex, Suzanne & Christoph on Beach (B/W),” 1993

A slightly different, color image of the same people in “Lutz, Alex, Suzanne & Christoph on Beach (B/W)” was first published by i-D magazine in 1993 for an unconventional fashion story about camouflage. The German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans staged the scene in Bournemouth, England, where he’d attended art school the previous year, and captured a whorl of bodies in military fatigues, each person clasping another’s arm, thigh or chest, and all wearing camouflage patterns from different countries — a post-Cold War utopia. The black-and-white version was printed on color paper, which accounts for the warmth of its tone. On the beach, Lutz, Alex, Suzanne and Christoph appear as if from a scene in Charles and Ray Eames’s 1977 short film “Powers of Ten,” which zooms out from a sunny picnic into the farthest reaches of the universe. Tillmans’s photograph “seems to model something like chosen family,” says the curator Phil Taylor, who edited a collection of the artist’s interviews. The way Tillmans envisions family in this early portrait — as a tight embrace amid the implied violence of the outside world — is emblematic of the way he would go on to depict men kissing at gay nightclubs or activists at antiwar demonstrations, each a picture of solidarity against the odds. — B.E.

Lê: I think Wolfgang [Tillmans] captured youth culture — in magazines like i-D and The Face — at a time [the early ’90s] when young people were being captured in a different way: It was very clinical and idealized, and he just came out with this very real [take on] youth culture. The pictures were a little more grainy, and I think it [changed] the way young people are seen. My students always bring up his work. I think it’s a way to photograph your family and friends and turn them into real protagonists. And I see that influence as very long-lasting.

Marcoci: What’s interesting in this image is [that] it’s four friends on a beach, dressed in camouflage. Camouflage immediately makes you think of military uniforms, of obedience, of listening to orders. But in the techno culture of these clubs in the 1990s, it had become a symbol of individuality and freedom: the exact opposite of what the uniform means.

Meiselas: This image, if I didn’t know his name, I would’ve just turned the page.

Lê: I think we need a picture that speaks about youth. And I think even though this picture was made in ’93 …

Miller: … That’s still how young people are photographed today.

16. Lee Friedlander, “Boston,” 1986, From the Series “At Work,” 1975-95

Lee Friedlander is best known for photographing America’s social landscape, from mundane street scenes in the Midwest to nudes of Madonna that were taken in the late 1970s. Between 1975 and 1995, he created six series of photographs depicting employees at different types of workplaces, including Rust Belt factories, a telemarketing call center and a New York investment firm. One of these series, commissioned by the M.I.T. Museum and produced between 1985 and 1986, looks at office workers in the Boston area who used desktop computers for their jobs. At the time, this was a fairly new development, but one that Friedlander presciently recognized would come to define not just corporate life but humanity itself. His subjects are often seemingly oblivious — or indifferent — to the presence of the camera. Likewise, his camera often omits the computers themselves, the ostensible subject of his images. Instead, the workers, sitting at brightly lit desks, are pictured from the chest up, their detached expressions familiar to any of us as they sit engrossed in (or bored by) screens just out of frame. With this series Friedlander had tapped into the dark comedy of the mundane. His influence can be seen in a generation of younger photographers who seek to question everyday life — from Alec Soth to LaToya Ruby Frazier — and whose images would mostly be viewed on screens. — E.I.

Marcoci: I love this series.

Douglas: I love it, too, but I put this in out of guilt for not having more art people in here. It’s images of these people just engaged in the world around them.

Meiselas: In autonomous labor. I remember when I first saw this series of white-collar workers in front of machines.

Lê: No one had done that before.

17. LaToya Ruby Frazier, “The Last Cruze,” 2019

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s series “The Last Cruze,” named after the compact car made by General Motors, follows the 2019 closure of an auto plant in Lordstown, Ohio, that had been open since 1966. Over nine months, Frazier documented the impact one corporation can have on a community, which lost thousands of jobs. A selection of images from the series were first published in The New York Times Magazine in May 2019, and the work was later presented as a multimedia installation: More than 60 portraits and video interviews with union workers and their families were mounted to orange metal trusses at the Renaissance Society in Chicago. In the accompanying monograph, Frazier included essays by artists and critics as well as members of the local chapter of the United Auto Workers union. On its cover is this photograph, which she shot from a helicopter, showing a group of workers and their families protesting the plant’s abrupt shuttering and requesting a new product to work on. Other images show Lordstown residents in various states of mourning — wiping away tears or proudly displaying union memorabilia. Born in a Pennsylvania steel manufacturing town, Frazier embedded herself with the Ohio workers, producing one of the most detailed records of the gutting of America’s working class. “‘The Last Cruze’ is a workers’ monument,” she has said. “It is half-holy, half-assembly line.” — L.M.

Marcoci: LaToya Ruby Frazier is a true artist-activist. These workers were losing their pension plans, their health benefits, you name it. It’s a work that includes more than 60 pictures of union workers along with their testimonies, because she also did these interviews with them.

Miller: I think “The Last Cruze” might be the only complete photographic record we have of the impact that corporate decision-making has on a work force. GM skipped town, cut their costs and the people of Lordstown were left holding the bag. We have another picture, nominated by Susan, that also documents labor.

18. Sebastião Salgado, “Serra Pelada Gold Mine, State of Pará, Brazil,” 1986

One of the most striking aspects of Sebastião Salgado’s photographs of an open-air gold mine in Brazil is the scale. Several thousand men — their bodies hunched and fragile — are rendered miniature against the backdrop of a massive pit in the earth. In the photos, most of the miners are climbing into or out of that pit, holding tools or ferrying sacks up and down narrow ladders and steep slopes. In several shots, Salgado chose not to include the horizon within the frame; the viewer can’t see where the workers’ dangerous journey ends. The photographer, who was born in the state of Minas Gerais (which means “general mines”) in Brazil, spent 35 days at Serra Pelada, living alongside the miners while he took these photographs. When they were published in 1987 in The New York Times Magazine, they revealed a late-20th-century gold rush and the appalling conditions facing those at the bottom of it. In the nearly four decades since, Salgado has gone on to capture the burning oil wells in Kuwait, the genocide in Rwanda and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Some critics have labeled him an “aesthete of misery,” using the plight of the poor and disenfranchised to make visually striking pictures. When these images are exhibited in a fine art context, their size is so massive, the sheer aesthetics of the imagery threaten to eclipse the act of documentation. But in a profile in The Guardian this year marking his 80th birthday, Salgado responded, “I came from the third world. When I was born, Brazil was a developing country. The pictures I took, I took from my side, from my world, from where I come from. … The flaw my critics have, I don’t. It’s the feeling of guilt.” — E.I.

Meiselas: The scale of what he presented to us at the time was really quite amazing.

Douglas: It was like, “Holy moly, that’s still going on?”

Meiselas: Exactly.

19. Stuart Franklin, an Unidentified Man Blocking a Column of Tanks in Tiananmen Square, 1989

On June 5, 1989, as a column of tanks rolled into formation on Chang’an Avenue bordering Tiananmen Square, the Magnum photographer Stuart Franklin watched from the sixth-floor balcony of the nearby Beijing Hotel. He was holed up there with several other foreign correspondents, who were all covering the weekslong protests, led by hundreds of thousands of unarmed students, against the Chinese Community Party. Two nights before, the People’s Liberation Army had cleared the area with force; the next morning, they prevented parents from looking for students lost in the fray, and the soldiers fired live rounds even as medics attempted to rush the injured to safety. (Thousands are thought to have been killed in the protests, although an official death toll has never been released.) Suddenly, around noon on the 5th, a young man in a white shirt and dark pants, holding shopping bags in his hands, approached the first tank. On the video footage, it attempts to maneuver around him. Like a matador taunting a bull, he flings his arms in fury and, when the tank turns back, the man jumps out again. Yet the dramatic photograph Franklin took, with five tanks and a destroyed bus in the frame, draws its power from its stillness, its potential energy. (Four other photographers are known to have captured the same scene, including Jeff Widener, whose tightly framed version for The Associated Press ran on the front page of The Times.) Authoritarian regimes cannot tolerate symbolic images of resistance and, while the Tank Man — whose identity has never been confirmed — became an inspiration for pro-democracy movements across the world, he was snuffed out from official Chinese memory. Today, image searches in China for “Tiananmen Square” only turn up cheerful pictures of a tourist destination. — B.E.

Douglas: Multiple photographers shot this image because they were all in the same corner of a hotel overlooking Tiananmen Square. They couldn’t really shoot anywhere else on the square. The first time I saw this scene, it was a video.

Meiselas: Right, there was a television camera. The stills are very different. And I don’t care whose image it is. I’m thinking about the man in front of the tank and what happens when one man stands up. And I love how this looks alongside Ernest Withers’s “I Am a Man.”

20. Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, “The Day Nobody Died,” 2008

In 2008, the artist duo Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin were embedded with the British Army in Afghanistan during a period that was, at the time, the deadliest week since the war began in 2001. They brought a lightproof box containing a roll of photographic paper, and, occasionally, exposed six-meter segments of the paper to the sun for 20 seconds at a time. They were creating photograms, which, as opposed to conventional war photographs, display the marks of their making but little else. The resulting works — 12 in total — set out “to create a kind of post-mortem of photojournalistic representation of conflict,” as the artists wrote when the work was first exhibited. They made these images on days when a BBC fixer was executed or a suicide attack killed nine Afghan soldiers. But they also made one on the day that the title refers to — a day with no fatalities. In a literal sense, there isn’t anything to see in the images except splashes of light as abstract as a blurry sonogram. When Broomberg and Chanarin arrived in Afghanistan, the war was in its seventh year and, by then, a surfeit of photographs depicting death and violence had long been circulating. There’s hardly consensus on what to leave out when depicting war, but there is some consensus on the need to bear witness. With their photograms, Broomberg and Chanarin found a new, unexpected, but no less emotional way of doing so. — E.I.

Miller: There were a lot of different kinds of images of war from the George W. Bush era. Nadia, you nominated Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s “The Day Nobody Died,” which is very abstract.

Douglas: What is it?

Vellam: They did this project in Afghanistan where they took rolls of photo paper and put them outside, exposing them to the sun or the weather. Whatever would happen while the photo paper was exposed was the work. It’s about a new idea of photography, about it not depicting something specific but creating a mood. And this one was taken, as the title says, on a day nobody died, which is such an interesting and different way to talk about a conflict.

21. Richard Drew, “Falling Man,” 2001

When it was first published by The Associated Press, the photojournalist Richard Drew’s image of a man falling to his death from the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, was denounced by many readers as exploitative. Several media outlets published the image once, on Sept. 12 — including The Times, on page A7 — but it then disappeared from circulation, confined to shock websites like rotten.com. There was no shortage of graphic images of 9/11, including footage of the planes flying into the buildings. But Drew’s photo was uniquely unsettling because of its uncomfortable elegance: a single victim, framed by both north and south towers, caught in a fragile stasis before death. The image eventually began a strange afterlife as “one of the most famous photographs in human history,” according to the journalist Tom Junod, who wrote a 2003 essay in Esquire in which he attempts to identify the falling man. He couldn’t — not definitively. No one has. Recalling war photography that valorizes the unknown soldier, “Falling Man” would go on to be one of the inspirations for a novel by Don DeLillo and an opera by Daniel Levy. Long after the dust settled on the former site of the World Trade Center, the photograph of the unnamed man remains, like “an unmarked grave,” in Junod’s words, merely asking that we look at it. — E.I.

Miller: I think “Falling Man” is the defining image from the most violent day in America since the Civil War.

Shikeith: I was in middle school when 9/11 happened. Images from that day seem to seep into you. You carry them for life and they dictate certain fears and anxieties.

Miller: And then there are all the images from what happened in the years to come. The pictures of soldiers torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib military prison are arguably the most famous photographs from the war on terror.

22. Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, Abu Ghraib Hooded Detainee, 2003

In early 2004, investigations into abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib detention facility had already been reported by news outlets including The New York Times and CNN. But the government had kept all photographs of torture out of view — until leaked images reached CBS. Even then, the news anchor Dan Rather would claim, the network’s executives only granted permission to show them when faced with the threat of a scoop by The New Yorker’s investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. (CBS executives justified holding the photos on various grounds, including the desire to avoid retaliation against American hostages.) The Abu Ghraib photos finally appeared in both outlets later that year. Their subject matter is brutal: men stripped naked and made to form a human pyramid with soldiers grinning behind them; a hooded man standing atop a box, hooked to electrical wires. The fact that American soldiers had recorded these scenes on their personal cameras only made them more disturbing. The photos significantly shifted American public opinion on the war on terror, further demonstrating the power of an image to alter a story. They also speak to a broader shift in news photography, in which everyone — no matter their intentions — is now a potential journalist. — L.M.

Shikeith: Both “Falling Man” and the hooded Iraqi detainee have a hard-core bodily effect on me. I think there was a sort of naïveté to the world I grew up in, just this idea that America is the greatest place on earth. For a moment there, we believed the myth. At least I did. When I started seeing these images, I developed a distrust in a lot of things. It only got worse. I have a very pessimistic outlook, but it sort of begins here, with these images.

23. Carrie Mae Weems, “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,” 1995-96

Carrie Mae Weems’s “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried” is a work of appropriation that brings together 34 photographs, many of them of Black Americans, dating from the mid-19th century to the late 1960s, which collectively form a lesson on the history of racism in America. At the heart of the work are four images of people who were enslaved in South Carolina — some of the earliest known images that exist of America’s original sin — taken by the photographer Joseph T. Zealy and commissioned in 1850 by the Harvard University biologist Louis Agassiz. Originally intended to illustrate Agassiz’s baseless phrenological theories of Black inferiority, the pictures were rescaled and reframed by Weems, who also tinted them blood-red, making explicit the violence that allowed for their creation. Stored in Harvard’s archives for more than a century, Zealy’s images fell into obscurity, only to be rediscovered in 1976. After Weems used them without permission, the school threatened her with a lawsuit. “I think that your suing me would be a really good thing,” she told the university, as she later recalled to the art historian Deborah Willis. “You should, and we should have this conversation in court.” Instead of proceeding with the suit, Harvard acquired the work, further complicating the idea of ownership that Weems investigates. — E.I.

Vellam: We should talk about Carrie [Mae Weems].

Meiselas: We should definitely talk about Carrie. There are two very different options [“ Kitchen Table Series ,” 1990, and “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried.”]

Lê: I chose the “Kitchen Table Series” [in which Weems poses as the matriarch in various domestic scenes she staged in a single room, containing little else but an overhead lamp and a table]. The kitchen table is symbolic — it’s the intimacy of the home. In a way I always felt these pictures were about people being able to be themselves, being open and visible in a way that they maybe can’t in public.

Marcoci: To me, the “Kitchen Table Series” is a true performance for the camera in a way that Cindy’s is in “Untitled Film Stills.” But “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried” is an amazing work because it engages with race, with slavery, with colonialism, through an archive. The subjects here were really originally presented as specimens. But what Carrie does is give a voice back to these subjects, whose voices were completely muted. She enlarges the photographs. She tints them blood-red. The whole thing becomes a poem.

Shikeith: This particular work taught me how to use photographs to tell a story. And the fact that [Harvard threatened to sue her] introduces this whole other issue about who gets to tell what stories.

24. Deana Lawson, “Nation,” 2018

The idea for “Nation” came to Deana Lawson in a dream. She was haunted by a story that George Washington’s false teeth were made from the teeth of enslaved people . For months, she kept an image of Washington’s dentures — held in Mount Vernon’s collection — on the wall of her bedroom. Lawson dreamed about a person wearing a mouth guard and wondered if she might forge a connection between the majesty of gold — the jewelry of hip-hop and the regalia of the Ashanti Kingdom — and the fact that the first president of the United States could only speak the lofty words of liberty through teeth that once belonged to the oppressed. Lawson is known for portraits she stages in homes and other intimate spaces, often decorated with a large array of objects: family pictures, children’s toys, a Michael Jackson poster. In her images, Black men and women, their skin captured in color with meticulous attention to shade and tone, appear not as documentary subjects but as vessels. “Her people seem to occupy a higher plane, a kingdom of restored glory,” the novelist Zadie Smith has written of Lawson’s photography. At the photo shoot for “Nation,” Lawson offered three hip-hop artists a selection of jewelry and a mouth guard, typically worn during dental procedures, painted gold. “Someone said that I’m ruthless when it comes to what I want,” Lawson says in an interview in her self-titled 2018 monograph. “I have an image in mind that … burns so deeply that I have to make it, and I don’t care what people are going to think.” “Nation” presents an endless series of questions about Black lineage, going back centuries before the nation’s founding. Lawson later printed the picture of Washington’s teeth on a card and slipped it into the edge of the work’s golden frame. — B.E.

Miller: Deana Lawson seems to be doing something similar to Weems in “Nation.”

Marcoci: I think that’s an amazing image. It’s actually a collage, with the picture of George Washington’s dentures tucked into the top right corner. She’s said photography has the power to make history and the present speak to each other.

25. Carlijn Jacobs, “Renaissance,” 2022

On July 29, 2022, when Beyoncé released “Renaissance,” the first of what she’s envisioned as a three-act magnum opus (act two, “Cowboy Carter,” was released this March), the public was exhausted after two and a half years of pandemic restrictions and unprecedented change to their daily routines. They were stir-crazy and impatient for the dance floor. Beyoncé embraced the sounds of house music pioneered by Black and queer D.J.s, as well as the subversive, high-gloss styling of ballroom culture. The singer appears on the album’s cover in a Giannina Azar-designed silver rope dress, sitting astride a horse covered in mirrors. The image was taken by Carlijn Jacobs, a Dutch fashion photographer interested in the art of masquerade and maximalist glamour, and alludes to both rodeo and royalty. It also conjures a range of artistic references, including Kehinde Wiley’s painting “ Equestrian Portrait of Isabella of Bourbon ” (2016); Rose Hartman’s snapshots of Bianca Jagger on a white horse at Studio 54 in 1977; and John Collier’s 1890s painting of Lady Godiva, the 11th-century Englishwoman said to have rode her horse naked through the streets as a form of protest. — B.E.

Vellam: Does anybody else feel like we’re missing a pop-culture celebrity moment? If we’re talking about images that go everywhere, and that people who live in the middle of the country all are going to look at, I don’t feel we have that.

Douglas: I think it’s important to include the idea of celebrity culture in photography. I’m not quite sure what that would be.

Lê: There’s the [2017] picture of Beyoncé pregnant with all the flowers .

Miller: Initially, Shikeith had also picked Beyoncé from the album cover of “Dangerously in Love” (2003).

Marcoci: But sorry, why don’t we then just choose a [Richard] Avedon of a celebrity?

Vellam: Marilyn Monroe [from 1957]. But don’t we feel like we have plenty of photographs from the past? Don’t we want to think about what celebrity is now?

Miller: What’s the iconic pop culture image from the last five years?

Douglas: Is there a Kardashian image?

Vellam: I can’t, because I hate them so much. But yes, you want the thing of [Kim Kardashian] when she broke the internet with her butt [an image that ran on the cover of Paper magazine in 2014].

Douglas: I’m going back to Beyoncé, because [you want] an image of a celebrity who’s not a person but an image. She’s like a simulacrum somehow.

Vellam: With her “Renaissance” cover, suddenly she was plastered everywhere. It was all over the city.

Douglas: I’d buy that.

Shikeith: I think it’s very important that she released this album and highlighted Black queer contributions to music in the culture because, very frequently, those same contributions are erased or attributed to someone else. Especially in pop culture.

Marcoci: Can you hold it up on your phone?

Vellam: Yeah. I listen to it all the time.

Top: Gordon Parks, “Department Store, Mobile, Alabama” (1956) © the Gordon Parks Foundation; NASA/William A. Anders, “Earthrise” (1968); Alberto Korda, “Guerrillero Heroico (Che Guevara)” (1960) © Alberto Korda, courtesy of the Alberto Korda Estate; Stuart Franklin, an unidentified man blocking a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square (1989) © Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos; Deana Lawson, “Nation” (2018) © Deana Lawson, courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery; LaToya Ruby Frazier, “United Auto Workers and Their Families Holding up ‘Drive It Home’ Campaign Signs Outside UAW Local 1112 Reuther Scandy Alli Union Hall, Lordstown, OH, 2019,” from the series “The Last Cruze” (2019) © LaToya Ruby Frazier, courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the first presentation of LaToya Ruby Frazier’s series “The Last Cruze.” A selection of images from the series ran in The New York Times Magazine in May 2019, and the larger work was later shown as a multimedia installation at the Renaissance Society in Chicago. It was not first presented at the Renaissance Society. The article also misstated the date of the Tank Man photograph by Stuart Franklin in Beijing; it was June 5, 1989, not June 4. 

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M.H. Miller is a features director for T Magazine. More about M.H. Miller

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