Well, what was actually tested was if showing girls and boys a video declaring that girls are bad at math would make them perform worse at a math test right after[0]:
> Students in the two groups were brought to separate classrooms and watched the video that either activated stereotype threat or nullified the stereotype and then completed the mathematics test. The testing session took approximately 40 min.
> The video shown to the stereotype threat group depicted a scientist telling students that recent research “shows that math intelligence levels among students do not change as students get older. Students are born with a certain amount of natural math ability which does not change.” Students were then shown brain imagery and were given a detailed explanation regarding how some students are born with better mathematics skills (as indicated by more brain activity). In this condition, the students were also told that “females have lower levels of this kind of brain activity than males. This makes sense because girls often get lower scores on standardized tests compared to boys.” These students were also told that the “test that you will take today is a very good measure of your natural math ability.”
[0]: An examination of stereotype threat effects on girls’ mathematics performance. Developmental Psychology Vol. 49, Iss. 10, (Oct 2013): 1886-1897.
Stereotype threat has been proposed as 1 potential explanation for the gender difference in standardized mathematics test performance among high-performing students. At present, it is not entirely clear how susceptibility to stereotype threat develops, as empirical evidence for stereotype threat effects across the school years is inconsistent. In a series of 3 studies, with a total sample of 931 students, we investigated stereotype threat effects during childhood and adolescence. Three activation methods were used, ranging from implicit to explicit. Across studies, we found no evidence that the mathematics performance of school-age girls was impacted by stereotype threat. In 2 of the studies, there were gender differences on the mathematics assessment regardless of whether stereotype threat was activated. Potential reasons for these findings are discussed, including the possibility that stereotype threat effects only occur in very specific circumstances or that they are in fact occurring all the time. We also address the possibility that the literature regarding stereotype threat in children is subject to publication bias.
Did you read a different paper, or do you disagree with the author's own abstract?