Stereotype Threat in Children

Stereotype threat (ST) is a situation in which an individual is apprehensive that he or she may confirm a negative stereotype about the social group to which they belong or that they will be judged through the lens of negative stereotypes (Steele & Aronson, 1995). A large body of research showed that ST affects African Americans in intelligence or verbal tasks, people from families with low economic and social status in intelligence tests and women in math and logic tasks. A common immediate effect of ST is the deterioration of performance in the stereotyped field. However, the long-term effect may be the individual’s withdrawal from such a domain even though he or she is predisposed to achieve success in it. ST appears in children at an early school age and may affect them throughout their lives. Therefore, it is important to combat this phenomenon. There are effective ways to reduce this psychological state and many of them require cooperation from teachers and educators.

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