Abstract
This study examined how verbal priming of success or failure words influenced the Mental Rotation (MR) performance of women under stereotype threat. Women athletes and non-athletes (N = 67) completed several MR tasks after doing a word scramble that included positive or negative sports terms. The MR performance of athletes was diminished in relation to that of non-athletes when primed with negative sports-related actions. Negative primes also enhanced the performance of non-athletes in relation to their peers who had positive primes, but there were no differences in MR performances under positive priming. Thus, those who identified with a group experienced threat that negatively impacted performance, but non-athletes were unlikely to have been affected by evaluative performance concerns.
Highlights
Individuals are often concerned about how their performance and behavior may reflect poorly on members of the groups with which they claim membership, a phenomenon termed Stereotype Threat (ST; Steele, 1997)
The results indicated that the priming manipulation did not lead to different Mental Rotation (MR) performances in women athletes, but that non-athletes outperformed athletes when negatively primed and outperformed their peers who were positively primed
Regardless of whether the athletic terms were positive or negative, words relating to athletics may have made salient athletic identity for the athletes and providing important meaning for them that resulted in poor performance
Summary
Individuals are often concerned about how their performance and behavior may reflect poorly on members of the groups with which they claim membership, a phenomenon termed Stereotype Threat (ST; Steele, 1997). In order for ST to occur people must associate themselves with a group and be aware of the group stereotype (Shapiro & Williams, 2012). People who belong to a group that is the target of stereotypes may fear that they will “confirm” the negative images of that group, often failing to perform to their abilities on various tasks (Shapiro & Williams, 2012). While threat can hinder cognitive performances among people for whom stereotypes are wellknown (e.g., race, sex), threat can diminish performance in athletics (Stone, Lynch, Sjomeling, & Darley, 1999), academics (Schmader, 2002), and with mental rotation (Brownlow, Valentine, & Owusu, 2008).
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