Stereotype threat may not impact women's inhibitory control or mathematical performance: Providing support for the null hypothesis

Charlotte Pennington, Damien Litchfield, Neil M McLatchie, Derek Heim

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Underpinned by the findings of Jamieson and Harkins (2007; Experiment 3), the current study pits the mere effort motivational account of stereotype threat against a working memory interference account. In Experiment 1, females were primed with a negative self- or group stereotype pertaining to their visuospatial ability and completed an anti-saccade eye-tracking task. In Experiment 2 they were primed with a negative or positive group stereotype and completed an anti-saccade and mental arithmetic task. Findings indicate that stereotype threat did not significantly impair women's inhibitory control (Experiments 1 and 2) or mathematical performance (Experiment 2), with Bayesian analyses providing support for the null hypothesis. These findings are discussed in relation to potential moderating factors of stereotype threat, such as task difficulty and stereotype endorsement, as well as the possibility that effect sizes reported in the stereotype threat literature are inflated due to publication bias.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)717-734
JournalEuropean Journal of Social Psychology
Volume49
Issue number4
Early online date15 Oct 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2019

Bibliographical note

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Pennington, C.R., Litchfield, D., McLatchie, N. and Heim, D. (2019), Stereotype threat may not impact women's inhibitory control or mathematical performance: Providing support for the null hypothesis. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., 49: 717-734, which has been published in final form at [https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2540.  This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.

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