Hacker News Reader

Comment by attack | Hacker News Reader

> To be selected to participate in Beilock and her colleagues’ first study of mathematical performance, for example, women had to perform baseline tasks with greater than 75 percent accuracy, and they had to agree with the statements “I am good at math” and “It is important to me that I am good at math.” Why do these things matter?

So people give up a little when others tell them that they are bad at what they've worked so hard to do well at, or do a little extra if superiority appears to be within reach. Seems like a whole lot of fluff for such a simple observation.

View on HN

I think you missed the point. It's not that "people give up a little when others tell them that they are bad..." The effect is self-afflicted, you just have to think that there is a negative stereotype that affects you, and your performance will suffer. Moreover, the effect is actually stronger if you think that you are pretty good at whatever the stereotype says you should be bad at.

The point is that, regardless of whether the stereotype is true or not, this is a scientifically established psychological reaction that causes people to perform below their capacity, and it only affects those that are from a stereotyped group. This means that, in your example above, women will constantly be at a disadvantage compared to men in math performance.

Does it matter? If you were a member of such a group, I'd wager you would think it unfair, and doubly so since you are already trying to break a negative stereotype.

Giving up is not self-afflicted?

No causality relationship was proven. Much less I have no idea what was actually established given a total lack of numbers. A 1% drop? A 15% drop? Big difference.

People afflicted by stereotype threat don't just give up. (If anything they try harder.) It's a physiologically measurable effect. Think of it as an added level of anxiety that non-afflicted people don't have to face. Studies have shown that it for examples results in lowered short-term memory capacity.

No-one is immune to this effect. A study was done on white male engineering students on a math test. The ones that were told that the purpose of the test was to figure out why "Asian students are better at math" systematically underperformed compared to those who were not.

Some people may want to brush this effect away and just claim that the disadvantaged groups don't "have it" or that everyone has advantages and disadvantages, but remember that this strikes disproportionately at members of some groups of people, through no fault of their own.

Regarding research results, it was a popular article. The numbers exist and are closer to 15% than 1%. If you want to learn more, check out http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/, it has an extensive bibliography.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com