Stereotype threat
September 11, 2015 7:06 PM Subscribe
Picture yourself as a stereotypical male "As it turns out, there is zero statistically significant gender difference in mental rotation ability after test-takers are asked to imagine themselves as stereotypical men for a few minutes. None. An entire standard deviation of female underperformance is negated on this condition, just as a man’s performance is slightly hindered if he instead imagines himself as a woman."
That Michelle is some kind of wonderful. Hot damn.
posted by Bella Donna at 7:27 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Bella Donna at 7:27 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm a white male but I wonder if I could do better on tests by picturing myself as a smart white male.
posted by miyabo at 7:37 PM on September 11, 2015 [11 favorites]
posted by miyabo at 7:37 PM on September 11, 2015 [11 favorites]
I'm a white male but I wonder if I could do better on tests by picturing myself as a smart white male.
Or a Chinese girl.
posted by IndigoJones at 8:00 PM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
Or a Chinese girl.
posted by IndigoJones at 8:00 PM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
I guess there are benefits to being genderqueer.
posted by limeonaire at 8:04 PM on September 11, 2015 [14 favorites]
posted by limeonaire at 8:04 PM on September 11, 2015 [14 favorites]
Something I'd be really curious about is a natural experiment that happened in '97, the year I graduated high school. Previous to '97, the requirement for graduation included taking the MEAP junior year (along with several previous times starting in about third grade). In '97, the testing regime shifted to require another test senior year, but since everyone who was graduating in '97 had taken the qualifying test in '96, we were all told that it literally did not matter. No colleges needed it, it wasn't required for a diploma, it was simply something that by law we had to take and have graded, but it had zero impact aside from wasting our time. There was a lot of grousing from teachers, and I know at least a couple kids did things like write "fuck" as many times as they could, but I wonder if there's any valid comparisons that could be made in test results based on that or similar grandfathered test experiments.
This is a pretty great article, and one thing that really heartens me is that by making kids aware of the stereotype effects, they can be mitigated at least somewhat. I do worry that the No Child Left Untested regimes of dubious educational metrics will fail to account for this and that a generation of minority children will be devalued because of a flawed rubric, but hopefully this is the sort of thing that talking about widely can help to correct.
posted by klangklangston at 8:14 PM on September 11, 2015
This is a pretty great article, and one thing that really heartens me is that by making kids aware of the stereotype effects, they can be mitigated at least somewhat. I do worry that the No Child Left Untested regimes of dubious educational metrics will fail to account for this and that a generation of minority children will be devalued because of a flawed rubric, but hopefully this is the sort of thing that talking about widely can help to correct.
posted by klangklangston at 8:14 PM on September 11, 2015
It would have been interesting to take some of these standardized tests while I'm transitioning from female to male. I absolutely do feel more confident after internalizing my maleness and it would not surprise me at all if I tested better.
posted by desjardins at 8:16 PM on September 11, 2015 [10 favorites]
posted by desjardins at 8:16 PM on September 11, 2015 [10 favorites]
I'd think trans folk would be likely to do better after transitioning in general, since I'd bet it decreases all sorts of stressors with cognitive effects.
posted by klangklangston at 8:24 PM on September 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by klangklangston at 8:24 PM on September 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
Maybe it won’t surprise you to know that a girl’s math performance is empirically shown to decrease in proportion to the number of male test-takers around her, or that conscious reminders of gender differences will significantly decrease females’ math test scores.
You know, that doesn't surprise me at all. I've happened into a number of all-female classes during my school and college years, and it was always a positive experience for all of us.I know I always felt like I learned more. It's reassuring to know that that's A Thing, and that I'm not just some sort of weirdo.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:51 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
You know, that doesn't surprise me at all. I've happened into a number of all-female classes during my school and college years, and it was always a positive experience for all of us.I know I always felt like I learned more. It's reassuring to know that that's A Thing, and that I'm not just some sort of weirdo.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:51 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
Okay so my daughter's taking the ACT tomorrow. While I'm making her eat scrambled eggs I'll have her pretend she's a man and then I'll explain negative stereotypes to her. She's already taking the test at an all girls high school so she won't have too many boys nearby while she does math. Fingers crossed! (This sounds like I'm being snarky but I'm not.)
posted by artychoke at 9:09 PM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by artychoke at 9:09 PM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
I've always wondered if the forced, degrading feminization that I was subject to growing up had any effect on my aptitudes. I still have to combat a lot of internalized misogyny, and maybe my math-anxiety isn't necessarily separated from it.
posted by constantinescharity at 9:15 PM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by constantinescharity at 9:15 PM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
My test-taking uniform has typically been: the stinky t-shirt I've been wearing for two days straight; glasses, never contacts; jeans with at least one coffee stain on them; a hair elastic that goes in and out of my unwashed hair (sometimes I have to not know I have hair; sometimes I need to grab onto it to get answers); and my combat boots, which I might take off and put back on several times over the course of the exam (because sometimes you just need to sit cross-legged or have a good stretch, and then your feet get cold). It's a mess, but it works. I don't think I've been consciously trying to be "manly" (or stinky) as such, but it definitely helps to have nothing on me suggesting that I'm anything but a temporary container for the material. The one time I wore lipstick etc. (unfortunate timing, job interview the hour before), it bugged.
posted by cotton dress sock at 9:22 PM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by cotton dress sock at 9:22 PM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
Given the controversy over the validity of psychological studies recently, I'm curious to know if the size of the study (161 subjects) is statistically strong enough to support the conclusions.
posted by storybored at 9:30 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by storybored at 9:30 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
I re-took the math GRE to try to improve my score. Picking up the test book, I asked for the math test and the invigilator said, "A calculating woman, eh?"
My score went down.
I did get my PhD this year, though, so fuck him.
posted by zeptoweasel at 9:47 PM on September 11, 2015 [43 favorites]
My score went down.
I did get my PhD this year, though, so fuck him.
posted by zeptoweasel at 9:47 PM on September 11, 2015 [43 favorites]
Given the controversy over the validity of psychological studies recently, I'm curious to know if the size of the study (161 subjects) is statistically strong enough to support the conclusions.
Stereotype threat is an area in psych that has been criticized for poor replicability. I wish I had a deeper understanding of statistics because this criticism does get amplified by right wing blogs and I can't really fully evaluate the merits of either side on my own.
posted by atoxyl at 10:22 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
Stereotype threat is an area in psych that has been criticized for poor replicability. I wish I had a deeper understanding of statistics because this criticism does get amplified by right wing blogs and I can't really fully evaluate the merits of either side on my own.
posted by atoxyl at 10:22 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
An n of 161 is absolutely large enough. How well the conclusions generalize to other populations is another story, but 161 is quite a large number of observations.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:34 AM on September 12, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:34 AM on September 12, 2015 [6 favorites]
On the first day of science class on their first day of high school three years ago, a friend's kid's science teacher announced to the whole class that girls were better at multitasking, while boys were better at concentrating on a single task.
posted by ernielundquist at 7:01 AM on September 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by ernielundquist at 7:01 AM on September 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
An n of 161 is absolutely large enough. How well the conclusions generalize to other populations is another story, but 161 is quite a large number of observations.
Did you see those standard deviations? If you plotted those data points on a graph you'd be looking at noise. I agree that the results look interesting, but all those numbers tell you is that it might be worthwhile to fund a larger study.
posted by YAMWAK at 7:41 AM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Did you see those standard deviations? If you plotted those data points on a graph you'd be looking at noise. I agree that the results look interesting, but all those numbers tell you is that it might be worthwhile to fund a larger study.
posted by YAMWAK at 7:41 AM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
I've been an animator for 20 years so I always get perfect scores in these from long practice. I stared frantically at the example for two minutes, knowing that two of them matched but having skimmed the instructions I thought only one was supposed to. Spatial rotation A, reading comprehension D-.
When I was a young woman in animation classes that were almost entirely male, this spatial reasoning thing was constantly recited to me (even by teachers!) as the reason why there were so few women animators. Now the gender ratio in animation courses tends to be at parity and there's plenty of incredible young women students, but they tend to favour hand-drawn animation instead of the more prestigious and high-paid-- and not coincidentally 'masculine'-- computer animation. This is now unconsciously considered the 'natural order', even though hand-drawn requires all those high spatial reasoning skills that women supposedly lacked 20 years ago, while the computer does all that stuff for you!
I'd love someone to do a test like this on knitters, using knitting-type examples and presenting it as a domestic science test of some kind. By far the most fiendish spatial reasoning problems I've ever tried to solve were fixing a dropped stitch five rows down in a lace pattern. There's always a lady in a kitting shop that can take one look at a thing like that and mentally unravel the whole thing and re-knit it in her head.
posted by Erasmouse at 3:08 PM on September 12, 2015 [20 favorites]
When I was a young woman in animation classes that were almost entirely male, this spatial reasoning thing was constantly recited to me (even by teachers!) as the reason why there were so few women animators. Now the gender ratio in animation courses tends to be at parity and there's plenty of incredible young women students, but they tend to favour hand-drawn animation instead of the more prestigious and high-paid-- and not coincidentally 'masculine'-- computer animation. This is now unconsciously considered the 'natural order', even though hand-drawn requires all those high spatial reasoning skills that women supposedly lacked 20 years ago, while the computer does all that stuff for you!
I'd love someone to do a test like this on knitters, using knitting-type examples and presenting it as a domestic science test of some kind. By far the most fiendish spatial reasoning problems I've ever tried to solve were fixing a dropped stitch five rows down in a lace pattern. There's always a lady in a kitting shop that can take one look at a thing like that and mentally unravel the whole thing and re-knit it in her head.
posted by Erasmouse at 3:08 PM on September 12, 2015 [20 favorites]
I'm not sure the priming step in this experiment necessarily implies that women aren't good at spatial relationships. Rather, the "feminine" descriptors might just prime the subjects to think about other things that are really very cognitively costly:
"takes care of her family, works part time, and is insightful, helpful, and agreeable"
All of these things (except possibly for being insightful) are complex behaviors that not only take place over extended periods of time, but are also tiring. Just referring to them myself, now, I feel burdened and distracted. Being agreeable? It involves controlling facial expressions and emotions. "Taking care" of anything involves _paying attention_ to it, noticing any deficiencies or time-determined tasks that are due, and then tuning your response to the particular circumstance -- even taking care of a houseplant, or a car, or a file server. Working part time? Geez, that's draining - it implies the work part and that there's an entire other part of your days that's devoted to something else.
On the other hand, the "male" descriptors are much less _cognitively_ challenging:
"tough, risk-taking, and does weight training after work."
Weight training at least _seems_ mindless. It can be meditative. Being tough also seems like a closing-off of the self, something you do _so that_ you are free to focus on other things. Risk taking is potentially complicated, but the idea of a risk-taker is that they are accepting a known immediate risk in order to actually do some activity. Any risk I think of immediately (hang-gliding; driving fast; even starting a business) is contained in time and has a connotation of freedom.
My point is this: the phrases that primed the people may have imposed different "background"/unconscious cognitive burdens. The "feminine" ones may have, in a way, caused the subjects to be distracted by their own imagined and real life burdens, leading to a worse result in the complex task they were asked to do.
posted by amtho at 6:18 PM on September 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
"takes care of her family, works part time, and is insightful, helpful, and agreeable"
All of these things (except possibly for being insightful) are complex behaviors that not only take place over extended periods of time, but are also tiring. Just referring to them myself, now, I feel burdened and distracted. Being agreeable? It involves controlling facial expressions and emotions. "Taking care" of anything involves _paying attention_ to it, noticing any deficiencies or time-determined tasks that are due, and then tuning your response to the particular circumstance -- even taking care of a houseplant, or a car, or a file server. Working part time? Geez, that's draining - it implies the work part and that there's an entire other part of your days that's devoted to something else.
On the other hand, the "male" descriptors are much less _cognitively_ challenging:
"tough, risk-taking, and does weight training after work."
Weight training at least _seems_ mindless. It can be meditative. Being tough also seems like a closing-off of the self, something you do _so that_ you are free to focus on other things. Risk taking is potentially complicated, but the idea of a risk-taker is that they are accepting a known immediate risk in order to actually do some activity. Any risk I think of immediately (hang-gliding; driving fast; even starting a business) is contained in time and has a connotation of freedom.
My point is this: the phrases that primed the people may have imposed different "background"/unconscious cognitive burdens. The "feminine" ones may have, in a way, caused the subjects to be distracted by their own imagined and real life burdens, leading to a worse result in the complex task they were asked to do.
posted by amtho at 6:18 PM on September 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
Or, viewed another way (if the male-primed women did better than they would with no priming -- I'm not clear on this from what I've read so far), maybe focusing on the more traditionally male description was a bit cognitively freeing for the women.
This is not to say that the whole thing doesn't come from gender stereotypes, but just that maybe thinking about it as a kind of cognitive burden of traditionally-feminine attitudes and/or defensive positioning. If that were to be true, then lightening or selectively eliminating that burden might be something that people can do consciously.
posted by amtho at 6:27 PM on September 12, 2015
This is not to say that the whole thing doesn't come from gender stereotypes, but just that maybe thinking about it as a kind of cognitive burden of traditionally-feminine attitudes and/or defensive positioning. If that were to be true, then lightening or selectively eliminating that burden might be something that people can do consciously.
posted by amtho at 6:27 PM on September 12, 2015
...and recognizing that burden, and the _benefits_ that come from people willingly taking on these kinds of burdens, could help people think about femininity more positively.
posted by amtho at 6:38 PM on September 12, 2015
posted by amtho at 6:38 PM on September 12, 2015
Given the controversy over the validity of psychological studies recently, I'm curious to know if the size of the study (161 subjects) is statistically strong enough to support the conclusions.
Oh and I forgot to add I would definitely like to know the same about the original studies, the ones that claim men are better than women at spatial visualisation.
posted by storybored at 8:40 PM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Oh and I forgot to add I would definitely like to know the same about the original studies, the ones that claim men are better than women at spatial visualisation.
posted by storybored at 8:40 PM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well, I know I start cussing myself out for being another stupid dumb fucking giiiirl most of the time while parallel parking, but especially if some dude is there watching me.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:08 PM on September 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:08 PM on September 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
storybored: sample size is rarely a problem because it is well understood statistically and the significance of your result reflects your sample size. Where you more often run into problems is reproducibility and, as somebody else mentioned earlier, that's where studies about stereotype threat tend to have their issues. Sample size not so much.
posted by Justinian at 10:05 PM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Justinian at 10:05 PM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well, I know I start cussing myself out for being another stupid dumb fucking giiiirl most of the time while parallel parking, but especially if some dude is there watching me.
Yeah, man. I'm the one who aced the parallel parking part of the driving test after only having practiced parallel parking like once in high school. Dude next to me had to take his whole driving test twice. But get us in the car and apparently I'm the one who "can't drive" and "can't parallel park" and is "from another planet" when I ask what his preferred way to reach a destination is (or if I don't ask, in which case it's "Why'd you go this way?"). Ahh.
posted by limeonaire at 4:27 PM on September 13, 2015
Yeah, man. I'm the one who aced the parallel parking part of the driving test after only having practiced parallel parking like once in high school. Dude next to me had to take his whole driving test twice. But get us in the car and apparently I'm the one who "can't drive" and "can't parallel park" and is "from another planet" when I ask what his preferred way to reach a destination is (or if I don't ask, in which case it's "Why'd you go this way?"). Ahh.
posted by limeonaire at 4:27 PM on September 13, 2015
If anyone's seen the Mythbusters episode (Battle of the Sexes 2, I think) where they judge parallel parking--they basically took off points every time someone re-adjusted and went back and forth in the slot. Here's the results. Statistically even.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:23 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:23 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
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posted by pos at 7:21 PM on September 11, 2015