Twenty Years of Stereotype Threat Research: A Review of Psychological Mediators

Charlotte R Pennington, Derek Heim, Andrew R Levy and Derek T Larkin

PLOS ONE, 2016, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-25

Abstract: This systematic literature review appraises critically the mediating variables of stereotype threat. A bibliographic search was conducted across electronic databases between 1995 and 2015. The search identified 45 experiments from 38 articles and 17 unique proposed mediators that were categorized into affective/subjective (n = 6), cognitive (n = 7) and motivational mechanisms (n = 4). Empirical support was accrued for mediators such as anxiety, negative thinking, and mind-wandering, which are suggested to co-opt working memory resources under stereotype threat. Other research points to the assertion that stereotype threatened individuals may be motivated to disconfirm negative stereotypes, which can have a paradoxical effect of hampering performance. However, stereotype threat appears to affect diverse social groups in different ways, with no one mediator providing unequivocal empirical support. Underpinned by the multi-threat framework, the discussion postulates that different forms of stereotype threat may be mediated by distinct mechanisms.

Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0146487

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0146487

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