Before Thanksgiving, I had been writing about Claude M. Steele and other scientists' research on stereotype threat. To refresh our memories, stereotype threat is a condition in which, when we believe that poor performance on a task will reinforce society's stereotype about our identity, we overcompensate and suffer from anxiety, which impedes our ability to perform well, ironically creating exactly the situation we are trying to avoid. Stereotype threat particularly affects us when we are trying to do something we find difficult. Among other things, it explains underperformance by academically talented black college students and subpar performance by women on challenging math assessments. Stereotype threat can have long lasting implications including students effectively knocking themselves out of STEM fields and even dropping out of college. However, there are ways to avoid these results.
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