Stereotype threat prevents perceptual learning

Robert J. Rydell; Richard M. Shiffrin; Kathryn L. Boucher; Katie Van Loo; Michael T. Rydell

doi:10.1073/pnas.1002815107

Edited* by Claude M. Steele, Columbia University, New York, NY, and approved June 28, 2010 (received for review March 4, 2010)

Abstract

Stereotype threat (ST) refers to a situation in which a member of a group fears that her or his performance will validate an existing negative performance stereotype, causing a decrease in performance. For example, reminding women of the stereotype “women are bad at math” causes them to perform more poorly on math questions from the SAT and GRE. Performance deficits can be of several types and be produced by several mechanisms. We show that ST prevents perceptual learning, defined in our task as an increasing rate of search for a target Chinese character in a display of such characters. Displays contained two or four characters and half of these contained a target. Search rate increased across a session of training for a control group of women, but not women under ST. Speeding of search is typically explained in terms of learned “popout” (automatic attraction of attention to a target). Did women under ST learn popout but fail to express it? Following training, the women were shown two colored squares and asked to choose the one with the greater color saturation. Superimposed on the squares were task-irrelevant Chinese characters. For women not trained under ST, the presence of a trained target on one square slowed responding, indicating that training had caused the learning of an attention response to targets. Women trained under ST showed no slowing, indicating that they had not learned such an attention response.

Footnotes

¹To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rjrydell{at}indiana.edu.
Author contributions: R.J.R., R.M.S., and M.T.R. designed research; R.J.R., K.L.B., K.V.L., and M.T.R. performed research; R.J.R. analyzed data; and R.J.R., R.M.S., K.L.B., and K.V.L. wrote the paper.
↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
*The control instructions read: “In this laboratory, we have been researching how people solve a number of different types of problems. We hope to understand what strategies people use and how these strategies impact problem solving. Thus, we have created a task to attempt to look at how different people approach solving problems in the laboratory. It is important that you take this task seriously so that we can learn more about learning styles and problem solving.”
^†The bulk of the ST instructions were taken verbatim from the Appendix of ref. 3, p. 276. We added: “One reason why women do more poorly on some math tasks, like word problems on the SAT or ACT, is that they have a more difficult time correctly choosing the information needed to solve the problem from the irrelevant and distracting information that is also provided. The current research is looking at this skill and why women perform more poorly at this skill than men.” This addition was to explicitly connect math to the search task.
^‡The shortened form of the control instructions read: “As was mentioned at the outset, we hope to understand what strategies people use and how these strategies impact problem solving. Thus, we have created a task that attempts to look at individual differences in problem solving style in the laboratory. It is important that you take this task seriously so that we can learn more about learning styles and problem solving.” The shortened form of the ST instructions read: “As was mentioned at the outset, one reason why women are poorer on some math tasks, like word problems on the SAT or ACT, is that they have a more difficult time correctly choosing the information needed to solve the problem from the irrelevant and distracting information that is also provided. The current research is looking at this skill and why women perform more poorly at this skill than men. In our lab, we are interested in how underperformance in information selection impacts math performance.”
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1002815107/-/DCSupplemental.