Stereotype threat and women's math performance

When women perform math, unlike men, they risk being judged by the negative stereotype that women have weaker math ability. We call this predicament s tereotype threat and hypothesize that the apprehension it causes may disrup t women's math performance. In Study 1 we demonstrated that the pattern obs erved in the literature that women underperform on difficult (but not easy) math tests was observed among a highly selected sample of men and women. I n Study 2 we demonstrated that this difference in performance could be elim inated when we lowered stereotype threat by describing the test as not prod ucing gender differences. However, when the test was described as producing gender differences and stereotype threat was high, women performed substan tially worse than equally qualified men did. A third experiment replicated this finding with a less highly selected population and explored the mediat ion of the effect. The implication that stereotype threat may underlie gend er differences in advanced math performance, even those that have been attr ibuted to genetically rooted sex differences, is discussed. (C) 1999 Academ ic Press.