Making lemonade? Defensive coping style moderates the effect of stereotype threat on women’s math test performance

Abstract

People high in defensive pessimism—a coping style characterized by ruminating on worse case scenarios when under stress—perform better under high than low academic pressure. The goal of the present study was to explore whether defensive pessimists might also perform better under high rather than low stereotype threat. Results supported hypotheses: specifically, some individuals’ (e.g., defensive pessimists) performance was higher under high than low stereotype threat.