Social scientists know that in research studies, minority and female students appear to be vulnerable to the phenomenon called “stereotype threat.” Aware that the group to which they belong is often stereotyped as intellectually inferior, their anxiety that a poor showing on a test will confirm the stereotype actually depresses their performance on the test, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now, new research suggests that stereotype threat is experienced by student-athletes, too. Conscious that they may be regarded by professors or other students as “dumb jocks,” they do less well on a challenging test when they’re reminded of their student-athlete identity beforehand.
The study, published in a recent issue of the journal Economic Inquiry, was conducted by Prof. Thomas Dee of the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Professor Dee gave a group of undergraduates — some athletes and some not — a test made up of questions from the Graduate Record Examination (G.R.E.), the admissions test for graduate school. Just before tackling the questions from the G.R.E., the students completed a questionnaire that asked whether they belonged to a sports team, what sport they played and whether they had experienced scheduling conflicts between athletics and academic activities like course meetings and laboratory sessions. (A control group received no questions about athletics, instead answering questions about the dining services on campus.)
Student-athletes who were reminded of their identity as members of a sports team did significantly worse on the test than student-athletes who were not so reminded, and the effect was stronger for male students than for female students.
Psychologists theorize that stereotype threat affects individuals’ performance in three ways. First, the physiological stress they feel at the prospect of being unfavorably evaluated impairs the operation of the prefrontal regions of the brain, the areas responsible for complex thinking. Second, in an effort to ensure that they triumph over the stereotype, people monitor their own performance closely — How am I doing? Am I smart enough for this? Do I belong in college at all? This monitoring, while intended to aid their performance, actually uses up mental resources that would otherwise be applied to the test. And third, individuals under stereotype threat try hard not to think about their performance worries, pushing away negative thoughts and feelings — another well-intentioned move that costs them mental resources needed for the test itself.
Thomas Dee is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and wrote the paper on which this article is based.
© Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.
