...Scholastic Aptitude (SAT; Wilder Powell, 1989; see also Coley, 2001), and approximately two-thirds of a standard deviation on the quantitative section of the Graduate Record Exam (GRE; Educational Testing Service, 2002). Cultural stereotypes prevail even beyond these documented gender differences in math performance. The average American is not only familiar with the stereotype of women as inferior mathematicians, but also believes that the stereotype has some truth to it (Eccles, Jacobs, & Harold, 1990; Swim, 1994; see also Devine, 1989).

Gender differences in both genetically endowed capabilities (Benbow & Stanley, 1980) and socialization experiences (e.g., Eccles, Barber, Jozefowicz, Malenchuk, & Vida, 1999) have been proposed to account for these discrepancies in math performance. For example, researchers have argued that gender differences exist with respect to spatial abilities (Fennema & Sherman, 1977), approaches to solving math problems (Harris & Carlton, 1993), treatment in the classroom (Eccles et al., 1999), perceptions of math ability (Meece, Parsons, Kaczala, Goff, & Futterman, 1982), and interest in math (Eccles et al., 1999). Although each of these explanations provides possible insight into test score differences, none of them conclusively explains why women--including those who have high math GPAs and/or who are highly identified with math and/or who want to pursue math as a career--consistently perform lower than men on standardized tests. Further, none of these explanations account for the replicable finding that women perform equally as well as men on challenging tests of mathematical aptitude under certain conditions. For this, we must turn to another theoretical account: stereotype threat.

Stereotype Threat

Stereotype threat is a situational pressure that stigmatized individuals experience when they are in jeopardy of confirming a negative stereotype about themselves and their in-group (Steele, 1997). In evaluative situations in the mathematical domain, for example, women must contend not only with the stressful nature of the evaluation per se, but also with the threatening possibility of confirming the cultural belief that they are inherently less competent than men are at mathematics. Because of this additional pressure, the performance of stigmatized individuals suffers when they are reminded of their group membership (e.g., female) or of the relevant stereotype (e.g., women are inferior mathematicians), but not when the stereotype is removed or nullified (Keller & Dauenheimer, 2003; Quinn & Spencer, 2001; Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999; Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995; Wheeler & Petty, 2001). Moreover, these threat-induced performance deficits are most likely to occur when there is at least some identification with the domain (Spencer et al., 1999; Steele, 1997), which is almost certainly the case for women who are pursuing math-related careers.

Numerous studies have documented women's struggle with stereotype threat in the domain of mathematics (e.g., O'Brien & Crandall, 2003; Schmader, 2002; Schmader & Johns, 2003; Spencer et al., 1999), some of which have elicited lower performance through seemingly subtle cues. For instance, women who took a test in a group with a majority of male participants did worse than those tested with a majority of female participants (Inzlicht & Ben Zeev, 2000). The cues to elicit stereotype threat, therefore, range from the explicit, such as statements about typical gender differences (Keller, 2002; Smith & White, 2002), to the implicit, such as testing conditions with peers of the other sex.

Before considering further the consequences of stereotype threat for women in the domain of math, it is important to note that stereotype threat can affect any individual or group provided that the situation evaluates ability in a domain for which a relevant negative stereotype exists. A compelling set of studies has shown that both African American (e.g., Osborne, 1995, 1997; Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995) and Latino/a American (Gonzalez, Blanton, & Williams, 2002) students perform worse on "intelligence" tests than do their European American peers when race or the diagnostic nature of the exam is made salient. Moreover, European American men are not immune to stereotype threat. Their performance suffers when stereotypes of inferiority are made salient, such as when they are subtly told that African Americans have more natural athletic ability (Stone, Lynch, Sjomeling, & Darley, 1999), that women are better at affective processing tasks (Leyens, Desert, Croizet, & Darcis, 2000), or that Asian Americans are superior mathematicians (Smith & White, 2002).

Finally, the effects of stereotype threat have been documented in children as well as in adults. Ambady, Shih, Kim, and Pittinsky (2001) found that lower elementary and middle school Asian girls performed worse on math tests when gender was made salient but better when race was made salient. Likewise, McKown and Weinstein (2003) found that children from stigmatized ethnic groups were not only more aware of broadly held stereotypes than nonstigmatized children were, but also that their awareness heightened the impact stereotype threat activation had on their performance.

Ego-Protective Responses to Stereotype Threat

Given the well-documented detrimental effects of stereotype threat on women's performance in math testing situations, it is important to consider how women may cope effectively with this threat. Previous researchers have considered a number of response strategies that individuals use to protect the self when faced with stereotype threat (for a discussion, see Pronin, Steele, & Ross, 2004).

Unfortunately, many women adopt an extreme ego-protective response of leaving the stereotyped domain altogether through a process of disidentification (Schmader, Johns, & Barquissau, 2004; see also Osborne, 1995; Steele, 1997). Disidentification occurs when, after having experienced repeated failures or threats of failure in a stigmatized domain, individuals remove the centrality of that domain from their self-concept (Steele, 1997). This process is consistent with the broader literature on self and social identity, which suggests that shifts in personal values often occur when individuals perceive that success is unlikely in a domain central to their identity (Crocker & Major, 1989; Major, Spencer, Schmader, Wolfe, & Crocker, 1998; Tesser & Campbell, 1980). Indeed, the coping response of disidentification, in conjunction with stereotype threat, could help to explain why African Americans have lower achievement outcomes (e.g., grades and test scores) than European Americans and why they show a pattern of weakening correlations between academic outcomes and self-esteem from the 8th to 12th grades (see Osborne, 1995, 1997). It could also help to explain why girls show better computational mathematical ability than boys until the 10th grade, at which point they begin to decline in math performance and continue to perform worse than male peers, even if they choose to pursue math as a profession (Benbow, Lubinski, Shea, & Eftekhari-Sanjani, 2000; Meece et al., 1982).

Although disidentification may explain the process by which some women leave the domain of mathematics entirely, it does not explain how women respond to stereotype threat while operating within the domain. One important antecedent to disidentification may be psychological disengagement, which is the "defensive detachment of self-esteem from outcomes in a particular domain such that self-esteem is not contingent upon one's successes or failures in that domain" (Major et al., 1998, p. 35). For example, Osborne (1995, 1997) found that African Americans reported their global self-esteem to be higher than the reports of European Americans, even though their school performance was worse. In a similar vein, Major et al. (1998) found that African Americans' state-specific self-esteem did not change significantly as a result of positive or negative feedback that directly followed an "intelligence" test, whereas European Americans' self-esteem either increased or decreased depending upon their receipt of positive or negative feedback. Major et al. hypothesized that, because African Americans faced a negative stereotype about their intellectual ability, they had defensively removed any potentially harmful effects to their self-esteem by ceasing to care about their performance in that particular instance. Although this may be an effective response to one particular instance of negative feedback, over time it may lead individuals increasingly to view the domain as unimportant or not central to their self-concept (Osborne, 1999).

Another ego-protective strategy women may use when faced...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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