A Research Study About The Stereotype Threat Effect On African- American College Students

In recent times, many people suffer from lack of exercise, because of studying and working. Especially, students need to do many exercises, such as basketball, tennis, or football, for growing. For this reason, many schools organized sports classes; however, I think that students do not need to participate in school’s sports class because some students, who do not relish sports, get a stress from this program.

A stereotype is a generalization that is usually exaggerated or oversimplified and is often offensive to distinguish a group. Stereotypes can negatively affect students and societal views. Stereotypes have been lingering for decades. A new study, Psychology of Women Quarterly, finds that stereotypes are as strong today as they were 30 years ago.

I was a sophomore in high school when I met a black junior at my school named Jordan. She was first in her class and had been taking advanced placement classes since she was a freshman, which my school does not offer freshman. I was in awe when she offered to help me make my schedule for my junior year and advised me on what classes and teachers were the best. Whenever I need advice for school, I still call Jordan to talk about my situation with her. Through this relationship, I have learned that black people need to help other black people because only we know what is feels like to be black and successful. In my experience, success isn’t expected from black students. While applying for a black scholarships the GPA minimum for many of them was 2.5, which is below the 3.0 national average. In essence, they were expecting below average blacks to apply for their

Results from numerous studies suggest that African Americans are likely to experience stereotype threat related to performance in Caucasian dominated tasks. Steele & Aronson (1995) conducted a study that examined the effects of stereotype threat of African Americans on standardized tests. The participants included African American and Caucasian Stanford University students who completed a modified version of the verbal GRE examination (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Participants were randomized into two testing groups, the diagnostic condition, which tested intellectual ability and exposure to stereotype threat, and the non-diagnostic condition, which involved laboratory problem solving tasks unrelated to stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995).

“Data shows that high school students who play sport are less likely to drop out. Furthermore, participation in sports also has been associated with completing more years of education and consistently higher grades in school. Not surprising that the discipline and goal setting that is learned in competitive sports helps in

The idea of not performing adequately on a task is something that many people can relate too. This uncomfortable feeling can be experienced throughout many different situations. Previous research suggests that stereotypes on how people are perceived to act or perform can hinder their thought processes and impact their overall performance. This is referred to as stereotype threat. Individuals undergo stereotype threat when they feel pressure to conform to the stereotype that is present. Stereotype Threat is not limited to any category or situation, but has been found to be more prominent in certain areas. This paper will focus on stereotype threat effects in math performance between genders, race/ethnicity and age.

Stereotype threat is a belief in which one person may think that they are being evaluated based on negative stereotypes. Because of this, students who are reminded of negative stereotypes about their race/gender tend to perform worse on tests because it makes them feel inferior. This causes anxiety within a student and causes them to perform worse than they otherwise would if they weren't reminded of their race or gender before the test. So for example, if an African American college student is sitting within a classroom of all white students he/she will be reminded of their race. This causes the student to constantly be aware of their race and will cause the anxiety so they won't perform as well while taking it with all white students in the

According to the textbook on page 453, a stereotype type threat is when someone has the fear of being judged on the basis of a negative stereotype. This can trigger anxiety that can be interfered with a person’s performance. In my opinion, I feel that with a stereotype threat can depend on the cognitive effect on how a child can perform in a school setting. An example of a stereotype threat would be differentiating between which race would have the better test scores, or has a very good IQ.

Is it possible that the way society sees a group can influence how that group performs on tests of intelligence? According to the Stereotype Threat Theory, it can. Stereotype Threat Theory “refers to the conscious or unconscious belief that one belongs to a group stereotypically known for specific performance deficits. The hypothesis is that these beliefs lead to suboptimal performance on tasks specific to the stereotype” (Stoet 94). Stereotype threat leads to a large gap between privileged, un-stereotyped groups and affected groups in society with regards to jobs, education, and social interactions. This gap comes from stereotyped groups feeling they need to act in the way society tells them to, creating societal “chains” on these groups, essentially an unstated law telling them what they can and cannot do. This is because stereotype threat causes groups to identify with what society provides their status to be Experiments show commonly stereotyped groups perform worse on intellectual tests they are told their group generally does bad on. Therefore, commonly stereotyped groups suffer from the stereotype threat on intellectual tests.

Stereotype produces numerous situations when most are negative in nature. Many studies have been extended since first reported by Steele and Aaronson in earlier years. The term stereotype threat is a threat that diminishes performances, beginning from a negative stereotype about one’s own social group (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aaronson 1995). Stating that stereotypes can harm performances on tasks that are stereotyped. When being associated with a negative stereotype or being judged by it, pressure is built to confirm that the stereotype is incorrect. Some stereotypes are associated with certain types of jobs, which causes stereotype threat to play a role. Several things are thought to be correlated with stereotypes on performances.

In a study conducted by Aronson and colleagues (2002), implicit theories were used as an intervention to reduce the effect of stereotype threat among African American college students. Stereotype threat occurs when African American students are aware of the negative stereotype in which they are seen as intellectually inferior to Caucasians, and this awareness places them at risk of underperforming because of fear of validating the stereotype (Steele, 1997). African American and Caucasian students were assigned to one of three conditions. The first condition was the experimental group, the malleable pen pal group. Participants were taught the idea that intelligence is malleable and expandable. The second condition was the control pen pal group.

Stereotype threat tends to affect multiple groups universally and culturally, and has become one of the most widely researched topics in social psychology. The theory of stereotype threat offers a situational explanation for the ongoing debate regarding the source of group differences in academic aptitude, however, some people may argue that stereotype threat is unlikely to be the sole explanation, and that it is important to acknowledge the several other factors that shape these academic performances (NCBI (4)). A study by Pennington et al.., uncovered a total of 17 other proposed mediators that govern different stereotyped populations. One proposed mediator includes anxiety, suggesting that it influences African American’s intellectual ability

The role of stereotype threats that occur in the standard intellectual and cognitive assessments, could be in various forms and ways such as race or gender. The hypothesis is that gender gaps between students could cause a stereotype threat specifically among female students in their academic performance in various intellectual tasks in “target-directed skills such as throwing and catching objects” (Passer & Smith, 2015, p.364). The hypothesis will discuss if there is such a wide gap between female and male students in these “male-dominated” activities and what ways are the female individuals’ under the stereotype threat, and if there are any ways to solve this problem.

Sports are known as one of the healthy activity and have become essential for everyone. Physical educations and movements help the children to be healthy, fit and lower the chances of getting infected or have obesity. There are various of sports the school have offered but, students choose the sports that are more comfortable for them so they would enjoy it. High school have sports that help the teenagers to collaborate often, creates the feeling of satisfaction and improve their health.

Firstly, in order to consider stereotype threat, we must first consider what a stereotype is. A stereotype is a widely held view or thought about a particular group of people and in individual cases this may or may not reflect reality. There are so many different stereotypes in the world we live in and unfortunately many of them are negative. For example, a stereotype that some people hold at the moment is that ‘all Muslims are terrorists’. Now, whilst this is clearly not true, it is a belief that some people have. They decide to categorize these people because of what they have heard on the news, or what they have been told by others.