Reducing Sterotype Threat

Armor Against Prejudice – Reducing Stereotype Threat

Differences strongly ignites interest. In the interest of differences, science and research try to discover group differences in intelligence. Research finds that the differences in intelligence deal with ethnicity and race. At first looking at gender, males and females have som emany similarities. According to Myers (2011), our gender similarities greatly outnumber our gender differences. There are so many different reason for these differences. One may be because of math and spatial abilities. According to Myers (2011), in 20 of 21 countries females displayed and edge in math computation, but males scored higher in math problem solving. Another difference in gender differences in intelligence may be our ability to spell. According to Myers (2011), females are better spellers: At the end of high school only 30 percent of average males spell better than the average female. Differences are not only found in gender though, it is also found in ethnicity. One example is the bell curve of IQ for different ethnicities. Whites bell curve IQ is centered are 100, African Americans around 85, and subgroups of Hispanics are between the two. According to Myers (2011), racial groups differ in average intelligence scores. Although this statement is disturbing, it is agreed upon by most scientist. There are many more examples than just these for differences in intelligence for gender and ethnicity.

Stereotype threat is the fear of failing in a way that reinforces derogatory stereotypes of one’s social group, undermines performance in school, sports and the workplace (Yong 2013). This type of threat is what effected many different people today. This occurs because of everyone’s differences. Research shows that our gender and ethnicity give us predisposed feelings of how we perform in certain situations. According to Yong (2013), working memory is the collection of cognitive skills that allows us to temporarily hold and...