Research Guides: Critical perspectives on the "implicit bias", "microaggression" and "stereotype threat" research programs: stereotype threat

Critical perspectives on "stereotype threat" research

"On the Continued Misinterpretation of Stereotype Threat as Accounting for Black-White Differences on Cognitive Tests" "In the 15 years since the publication of Sackett et al.’s (2004) paper highlighting the high rates of misinterpretation of Steele and Aronson’s (1995) work on stereotype threat, researchers (62.8%) and textbook authors (41.18%) have continued to mischaracterize the results."
"No Strong Evidence of Stereotype Threat in Females: A Reassessment of the Picho-Kiroga et al. (2021) Meta-Analysis" "In communication to the public and media, researchers should not confidently attribute even a portion of disparate academic outcomes between groups to stereotype threat. Likewise, granting agencies should be more hesitant to fund research on the topic. Spending money to chase after statistical phantoms is not a wise use of financial resources."
"The $67.5 million wasted on stereotype threat research" "While much shoddy research falls by the wayside, some of it catches fire and leads to decades of scientists spending money and time chasing after ethereal findings that are probably not real."
"New Developments in Stereotype Threat: Implications for High Stakes Testing" 2021 talk by an early critic.
"Is Stereotype Threat Overcooked, Overstated, and Oversold?" A methodological critique of the seminal 1995 "stereotype threat" study.
"Stereothreat" (NPR Radiolab podcast episode) "We were completely enamoured with this research when we first heard about it, but in the current roil of replications and self-examination in the field of social psychology, we have to wonder whether we can still cling to the hopes of our earlier selves, or if we might have to grow up just a little bit."
"Largest meta-analysis to date suggests the effects of stereotype threat ‘range from negligible to small’" "“When we restrict stereotype threat research to studies showing similarity to high stakes testing-like conditions, the stereotype threat effect decreases substantially. Overall, our results indicated that the size of the threat effect experienced in adults on high stakes cognitive ability tests may range from negligible to small."
"What Do Undergraduates Learn About Human Intelligence? An Analysis of Introductory Psychology Textbooks" "Another type of statement of questionable accuracy was statements which recent research would call into question. For example, stereotype threat... Although it is an intriguing theory, stereotype threat is not a viable explanation for the cause of mean racial and gender group differences in intelligence test scores."
Twitter thread by psychologist Russell T. Warne on the above meta-analysis.
"Stereotype threat effects in settings with features likely versus unlikely in operational test settings: A meta-analysis"
"Researchers Tried to Explore Why 'Stereotype Threat' Harms Performance, But Found It Didn't Harm Performance At All" "At a certain point, the simple storyline that caused the concept to spread so virally in the first place just doesn’t quite hold anymore."
"Hidden Figures: Replication Failures in the Stereotype Threat Literature"
"Tilting At The Windmills Of Stereotype Threat" "If there’s no solid (and plausible) adaptive reasoning in which one grounds their work – as there isn’t with stereotype threat – it should come as no surprise that effects flicker in and out of existence."
"Study fails to find any evidence of ‘stereotype threat’ impairing women’s cognitive control and math ability" "...recent research suggests that the stereotype threat literature may be subject to publication bias; a phenomenon whereby significant findings are published and disseminated at a substantially greater rate than non‐significant findings (Flore & Wicherts, 2015). Whilst this could have stemmed from the desirable implication that stereotype threat might partly explain real‐world achievement outcomes (see seminal papers by Spencer et al., 1999; Steele & Aronson, 1995), the sheer amount of positive findings published in the literature is problematic because it disproportionately inflates effect size estimates and biases meta‐analyses."
"Largest experiment of stereotype threat in high schools ever (N=2064) shows no effect of gender stereotypes on math performance (contrary to dozens of previous non-registered small studies in the literature)"
"Stereotype threat, gender and mathematics attainment: A conceptual replication of Stricker & Ward" "we suggest that much more deep-seated interventions are required if we are to successfully address systemic gender inequities in mathematics"
"Children of the Replication Crisis" "If you turn the pages of any social psychology textbook, you will see sections on stereotype threat, ego depletion, mindset, and priming without any mention of the hugely mixed evidence and replication failures."