14 DAY TRIAL // Women's reactions to stereotypes have been documented in a number of scientific studies, and they have shown that females are very likely to experience the negative consequences of negative stereotypes, if they are simply made aware of them. With this knowledge in mind, Indiana University Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences Assistant Professor Robert J. Rydell has designed the first test in which women were subjected to competing stereotypes – a positive and a negative one – at the same time.
Rydell managed to prove that negative stereotypes adversely influenced the working memory, in that they took such a large portion of the women's brain power to deal with, that they left very little for the task at hand, which, in this case, was solving a mathematical problem. On the other hand, the professor showed, positive stereotypes had no such effect on the brain, or on the working memory, and, as a result, it could literally counteract and cancel the effects of negative ones.
“This research shows that because people are members of multiple social groups that often have contradictory performance stereotypes (for example, Asian females in the domain of math), making them aware of both a positive group stereotype and a negative stereotype eliminates the threat and under-performance that is usually seen when they dwell only on their membership in a negatively stereotyped group,” the expert explained.
“People seem motivated to align themselves with positively stereotyped groups and, as a byproduct, can eliminate the worry, stress and cognitive depletion brought about by negative performance stereotypes, increasing actual performance,” Rydell went on to say. The research that he conducted, entitled “Multiple Social Identities and Stereotype Threat: Imbalance, Accessibility, and Working Memory,” appears in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The study also revealed the fact that female college students who were only made aware of negative stereotypes performed significantly worse in tests than those who were told the positive ones as well, and also than those who were told both before asked to solve the problems. Surprisingly, the research also revealed that, when asked which group they identified themselves mostly with – women or college students – the participants selected the second option in their overwhelming majority.
“The activation of the stereotype is relatively automatic and hard to control. Whether you choose to endorse or believe the stereotype, however, is under your control. One option is to think about the positive groups you're associated with that are related to the task at hand,” Rydell concluded.