After spending yesterday discussing feminism and literature/violence with three lovely feminist ladies I feel inspired to report on this article in Science on stereotype threat - the finding that reminding susceptible groups to stereotypes about them impairs their performance in various ways. In this case, it was stereotype threat in a cohort of women. Since it's a subscription article I'll paste liberally.

Here's the abstract:

Stereotype threat occurs when stereotyped groups perform worse as their group membership is highlighted. We investigated whether stereotype threat is affected by accounts for the origins of stereotypes. In two studies, women who read of genetic causes of sex differences performed worse on math tests than those who read of experiential causes.

So, how was this study designed?

Our studies manipulated participants' beliefs regarding the source of gender differences in math and measured their subsequent math performance (Fig. 1). In study 1 (7), women undertook a Graduate Record Exam–like test in which they completed two math sections separated by a verbal section. The verbal section contained the manipulation in the form of reading comprehension essays. Each test condition used a different essay. Two of the essays argued that math-related sex differences were due to either genetic (G) or experiential causes (E). Both essays claimed that there are sex differences in math performance of the same magnitude. Two additional essays served as a traditional test of stereotype threat. One essay, designed to eliminate underperformance, argued that there are no math-related gender differences (ND). The other essay, designed as a standard stereotype-threat manipulation (S), primed sex without addressing the math stereotype. Controlling for performance on the first math section, we used analyses of covariance to demonstrate that women in the G and the S conditions exhibited similar performances on the second math test (F < 1). Women in the E and the ND conditions, although not different from each other (F < 1), significantly outperformed women in G and S conditions (all P values ≤ 0.01).

So, simply put, if you interrupt somebody's GRE with an essay on how women are genetically inferior in math skills, or merely made them think about their sex, they performed more poorly (ostensibly because the identification of poor math skills with women is pervasive) when subsequently tested in math, and the control group, either not reading about being women or reading how women are just as good at math genetically performed better. Here's the figure:



To summarize figure one women who were presented with stereotype-threat got 20-50% more answers incorrect than the control groups (and the results were statistically-significant by a wide margin).

This is very interesting and shows how important it is to consider that when "math is hard" Barbie came out, people were pissed at feminists for demanding that the doll be fixed. Well, here's proof the feminists were right. When you tell women that they aren't good at math, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And, as we discussed before this applies to other susceptible groups.