Has Stereotype Threat Dissipated Over Time? A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis

Stereotype threat – the social psychological threat that arises when one is in a situation or doing something for which a negative stereotype about one’s group applies (Steele, 1997) – has been broadly studied throughout the social sciences over the past two decades (for reviews, see Lewis & Sekaquaptewa, 2016; Steele, 2010). It is a theory that is purported to explain variance in disparities between those who are negatively stereotyped in certain domains (e.g. racial-ethnic minorities in academics, women in mathematics) and those who are not (e.g. White men in academics; Steele, 2010). Studies on stereotype threat have been conducted hundreds of times, and have yielded mixed findings. Early studies tended to yield positive findings (for meta-analytic review, see Nguyen & Ryan, 2008) whereas more recent reanalysis (Zigerell, 2017) and replication attempts (e.g., Finnigan & Corker, 2016) have failed to replicate findings. These conflicting accounts call into question the robustness of the paradigm, and raise two possibilities in our minds: either the strength of the evidence was weak to begin with, or something has changed over time to reduce the likelihood of finding stereotype threat effects. We test these possibilities in a pre-registered cross-temporal meta-analysis using multiple meta-analytic techniques.

刻板印象威胁——一种当个体处于某种情境或进行某项活动时，其所属群体存在负面刻板印象所引发的社交心理学威胁（Steele, 1997）——在过去二十年间已被社会科学领域广泛研究（参见 Lewis & Sekaquaptewa, 2016; Steele, 2010 的综述）。该理论旨在阐释特定领域内被负面刻板印象所困扰的群体（例如，学术领域的种族-民族少数群体、数学领域的女性）与未被负面刻板印象所困扰的群体（例如，学术领域的白人男性；Steele, 2010）之间的差异。关于刻板印象威胁的研究已进行数百次，并产生了不一致的结果。早期研究倾向于产生积极的发现（参见 Nguyen & Ryan, 2008 的元分析综述），而近期再分析和复制尝试（例如，Finnigan & Corker, 2016）未能证实这些发现。这些相互矛盾的解释引起了我们对范式稳健性的质疑，并在我们心中引发了两种可能性：要么最初的证据本身就不够充分，要么随着时间的推移，某些因素的变化降低了发现刻板印象威胁效应的可能性。我们通过使用多种元分析方法进行预注册的跨时间元分析来检验这些可能性。