Psych 356 (6): Math, Anxiety, and Stereotype Threat

stereotype threat

“socially premised psychological threat that arises
when one is in a situation or doing something for which a negative
stereotype about one's group applies”

math anxiety and stereotype threat similarity

- distracting thoughts
- affecting WM/attention capacity "leftover" for task
- both lead to avoidance

math anxiety

A fear or dread associated with mathematics
• Related to but distinct from trait anxiety and test anxiety
• ~17% of population
• Related to impaired math performance, achievement, & persistence
• Disproportionally affects females

Used to think it mostly developed in adolescence
• Now we know even first graders
• When doing math, even young children show activation in amygdala (fear
center)

dunlosky et al karpicke et al study strategies

- effective study strategies: self-testing, distributed study, interleaved practice, elaboration/self-exploration
- less effective: rereading, highlighting

math anxiety and study strategies - study

Sample:
• 293 University of Michigan Undergraduates
• All taken math course in last 12 months
• Mage=19.03, 36.2% male
• Materials
• Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (AMAS; Hopko et al.,
2003)
• Desirable Difficulties in Math Scale (home grown)
• Math Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire
(Berger & Karabenick, 2011)

• I study math by testing myself with new math
problems or practice exams without looking at the
solution. [self-testing]
• When I study math, I mostly reread my notes.
[rereading]

results:
- less likely to do self-testing or interleaving if they have math anxiety
- Math anxious individuals tend to use less effective study strategies
more often
• They don’t seem to be avoiding studying math per se, but using more
superficial and less deep processing strategies
• Differences arise in relatively high skilled students

causes of math anxiety

standard motivation theory: value (importance) and self-efficacy (can i do it)
- missing early skills -> compounds
- subtle cues in environment (math-anxious parents, math-anxious teachers, no representation)

claude steele - studies on stereotype threat

Verbal GRE
Students by race - Black + White students
Two conditions
1 = diagnostic “genuine test”
2 = non-diagnostic “psychological factors”
Experiment 1 & 2
Black students consistently performed worse in #1
White students consistently performed better in #1


Verbal fragment task
Stereotype threat condition: _ _ c e — race/mice
Self-doubt condition: f l _ _ _ — flunk/flash
Results
Black students more often chose race in #1
White students more often chose mice in #1

shih study - asian-female

Female Identity Salient Condition
• (b) whether they had a roommate, (c) whether their floors were coed or
single sex, (d) whether they preferred coed or single-sex floors, etc.

• Asian- identity-salient condition
• (a) whether their parents or grandparents spoke any languages other than
English, (b) what languages they knew, (c) what languages they spoke at
home, etc.

• Control condition
• (a) whether they lived on or off campus, (b) whether they used the university
telephone service.

took math test, filled out questionnaire
- repeated the same thing for Canadians

results:
US: female identity would do worse than control, but Asian identity would do better than control; Asian > control > female
Canada: control > Asian > female

stereotype threat - men at stanford

people who identify as "good at math" most affected by stereotype -worried because they identify with the subject

stereotype threat triggers

- Situations in which members of one’s group are underrepresented in a domain
• Situations in which physical objects suggest that members of one’s group do not belong in
- Situations in which members of one’s group are treated negatively (overtly or subtly)
• Situations in which members of one’s group are treated negatively (overtly or subtly

reducing math anxiety and stereotype threat (1)

Math Anxiety: One-on-one tutoring, Expressive writing

Stereotype threat
• Explicitly teaching about stereotype threat
• Seeing successful examples of people like you
• Promoting the message that “difficult” means important, and that you are
learning, not that you can’t do it

tutoring and math anxiety

- lower fear response
- less math anxiety

reasons: encouraging feedback, no social pressure, no time pressures, no performance
- 2-sigma problem: almost 2stdev increase because tutoring

expressive writing

reduced math anxiety for tasks with high WM demand

ways to reduce math anxiety (2)

• Celebrate Mistakes
• Create a classroom culture that normalizes struggles and celebrates
mistakes
• Communicate to students that you love mistakes and welcome them in
your class
• •Give work that encourages mistakes by keeping students at the edge of
their skills
• •Consider having students present incorrect solutions to the class and then
work as a team to find a correct answer
• Make sure students recognize that some math concepts/procedures are
hard for everyone and it takes time to learn

"racially fair" test

telling people a test was racially fair worked, but only when a strong case was made

reframe difficulty - result

if people believe difficulty = important, they do better (vs impossible)

miyake et al

Tested whether self-affirmation would reduce effects of
stereotype threat for undergraduate women in a physics class
• In this study, all participants wrote an essay
• Affirmation condition: selected a set of values important to them from
a list and wrote about them- relationships with friends and family,
learning, etc)
• No affirmation condition: write the same essays but about their least
important values
• Did this 2 times throughout the semester
• 15 minutes each time

result: affirmation helps females > males -> reduce gender gap