We used the same test on which blacks had underperformed under ordinary testing conditions. But we told a different group of participants that the test was a “task” for studying problem solving in general, and emphasized that it did not measure a person’s intellectual ability. With this instruction, we made the stereotype about blacks’ intelligence irrelevant to interpreting their experience on this particular “task,” since it couldn’t measure intellectual ability. With this instruction we freed these black participants of the stigma threat they might otherwise have experienced on a difficult
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These differences seem so small, I wonder if there are other effects going on. Are these trials blind to the people interacting with subjects, or do *they* know which instructions subjects are being given? There may be lots of other environmental influences in play if the experimenters are aware of the conditions while experiment is being conducted/test being taken. Must be blind studies! (Which can be done by writing the disarming statement on the exam without anything needing to be said).
I don’t think this would invalidate the results necessarily, but could point to mechanisms that stereotype threat are imposed.
