We stewed, feet on our desks; then we had a simple idea. We’d present the test in a way that made the cultural stereotype about women’s math ability irrelevant to their performance. We’d say something like this: “You may have heard that women don’t do as well as men on difficult standardized math tests, but that’s not true for the particular standardized math test; on this particular test, women always do as well as men.” (This is a close rendition of what was actually said in the real experiment.)
