Awareness of a negative stereotype about one's group is claimed to depress performance under evaluation.
Replication and meta-analytic evidence is weak, and the large multi-site attempts have mostly failed. The original 1995 finding remains widely taught, which is itself an instance of the replication problem.
In practice
- A university moves the demographic question to the end of the paper on the strength of a finding that large multi-site attempts have since failed to reproduce.
- A department that removes the question altogether sees no change in the score gap, which is what the weaker evidence predicts.
- Possible explanations
- The proposed explanation is that awareness of a negative stereotype adds a worry about confirming it, which consumes working memory during the test.
- In its favour
- The mechanism is specific and testable, and the original studies were carefully designed; the phenomenon is plausible on general findings about anxiety and working memory.
- Against it
- Large multi-site replications have mostly failed, meta-analytic evidence is weak and shows signs of publication bias, and the classroom interventions built on it have not produced the expected gains.
- Standing
- Replication and meta-analytic evidence is weak.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- Theories of the mind, from the lab to the bookshop