Stereotype threat, mental arithmetic, and the mere effort account

Abstract

Stereotype threat (i.e., the concern that is experienced when one feels "at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group" (Steele & Aronson, 1995, abstract)) has been shown to negatively impact performance. A working memory interference account for this effect suggests that cognitive resources that could be devoted to task performance are instead expended on processing the information resulting from the activation of the negative stereotype. It is this reduction in working memory capacity that produces the performance debilitation. More specifically, Beilock et al. (2007) suggest that these worries occupy the phonological loop of Baddeley's (1986; 2000; Baddeley & Logie, 1999) multicomponent model of working memory. According to Trbovich and LeFevre (2003), participants solving mental arithmetic problems in a horizontal format rely on the phonological loop to keep track of intermediate values. Thus, Beilock et al. suggests that when threatened participants are presented with horizontal mental arithmetic problems that involve borrowing (e.g., 57 - 28), performance should be debilitated. To test this hypothesis, females completed horizontal or vertical modular arithmetic problems (subtracting the second number from the first, dividing by the mod, and then reporting, true or false, whether the result was a whole number) under threat and no threat. Consistent with the prediction, the performance of threatened females was debilitated on horizontal problems.