Converging Evidence That Stereotype Threat Reduces Working Memory Capacity

Schmader, Toni
Johns, Michael

¹Department of Psychology, University of Arizona.

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Toni Schmader, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721. E-mail: [email protected].

Portions of this research were presented at the 14th Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Society, New Orleans, Louisiana, June 2002, and at the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Los Angeles, February 2003. This research was supported in part by National Science Foundation Grant BCS-0112427 and by a faculty small grant awarded to Toni Schmader from the University of Arizona Foundation. We are indebted to the countless hours put in by the research assistants who ran these studies—Kristen Hooks, Amy Hooks, Jodie Deutsch, Ryan Hendrix, Mike Stanfill, David Trotter, Yassiin Nasser, and Martin Kaasa—and also to Amy Baesler for her help preparing materials. We also thank Marchelle Barquissau and Brian Lickel for their valuable help and advice in planning this research.

Received Date: May 21, 2002; Revised Date: May 13, 2003; Accepted Date: May 14, 2003

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85(3):p 440-452, September 2003.

Although research has shown that priming negative stereotypes leads to lower performance among stigmatized individuals, little is understood about the cognitive mechanism that accounts for these effects. Three experiments tested the hypothesis that stereotype threat interferes with test performance because it reduces individuals' working memory capacity. Results show that priming self-relevant negative stereotypes reduces women's (Experiment 1) and Latinos' (Experiment 2) working memory capacity. The final study revealed that a reduction in working memory capacity mediates the effect of stereotype threat on women's math performance (Experiment 3). Implications for future research on stereotype threat and working memory are discussed.