The Causal Mechanisms of Stereotype Threat

刻板印象威胁发生在当意识到一个社会群体在特定领域的负面刻板印象时，该群体的成员会产生次优表现（见斯蒂尔，1997）。例如，刻板印象威胁导致非裔美国人在评估智力的测试中表现更差，白人在评估自然运动能力的任务中表现更差，女性在数学中表现更差。由于刻板印象威胁的影响是如此巨大，而且往往是由社会中代表性不足的群体成员揭示的，因此了解刻板印象威胁如何导致不太理想的表现是很重要的。换句话说，为什么刻板印象威胁会发生？关于刻板印象威胁如何发挥其影响的一个假设是，一个人对确认负面表现刻板印象的担忧减少了成功执行技能所需的工作记忆容量。但是，工作记忆的减少可能不是刻板印象威胁如何运作的唯一解释，特别是对于程序化技能（即，在工作记忆之外运行的多步骤程序的技能），如高水平的体育运动、外科手术或编写计算机编程代码。先前的研究已经表明，程序化技能失败时，执行者被提示注意技能执行的方式，破坏了流畅的自动化行为的执行，而不是通过减少工作记忆容量可用于性能（Beilock卡尔，2001）。在目前的工作中，我们提出刻板印象威胁可以通过多种机制损害表现，以及特定技能如何在记忆中实现和认知表征（即，工作记忆密集型技能与程序化技能）决定了他们将如何受到一个人对负面表现刻板印象的意识的伤害。具体来说，我们研究如何刻板印象的威胁效应实现的功能的工作记忆的要求，正在执行的技能，个人的工作记忆容量执行的技能，和执行者的技能水平。通过专注于了解刻板印象威胁背后的认知机制，可以更全面地了解这种有害现象，从而产生关于刻板印象威胁效应如何、何时以及对谁将被揭示的新预测，以及最终如何预防它们。

Stereotype threat occurs when the awareness of a negative stereotype about a social group in a particular domain produces suboptimal performance by members of that group (see Steele, 1997). For example, stereotype threat leads African-Americans to perform worse on tests described as assessing intelligence, Whites to perform worse on tasks described as assessing natural athletic ability, and women to perform worse in math. Indeed, stereotype threat is wide-ranging and affects many social groups in a variety of critical situations. Because the implications of stereotype threat are so considerable and are often revealed by members of underrepresented populations in society, it is important to understand how stereotype threat leads to less-than-optimal performances. In other words, why does stereotype threat occur? One hypothesis for how stereotype threat exerts its impact is that one's worries about confirming a negative performance stereotype reduce the working memory capacity necessary for successful skill execution. But reductions in working memory may not be the only explanation for how stereotype threat operates, especially for proceduralized skills (i.e., skills that run as multi-step procedures largely outside of working memory) such as high-level athletics, surgical procedures, or writing computer programming code. Previous research has demonstrated that proceduralized skills fail when performers are prompted to pay attention to skill execution in a manner that disrupts the fluent execution of automated behaviors, rather than by reducing the working memory capacity available for performance (Beilock & Carr, 2001). In the current work, we propose that stereotype threat can harm performance by multiple mechanisms, and that how particular skills are implemented and cognitively represented in memory (i.e., working-memory intensive skills vs. proceduralized skills) dictate how they will be harmed by one's awareness of a negative performance stereotype. Specifically, we examine how stereotype threat effects are realized as a function of the working memory demands of the skill being performed, the working memory capacity of the individual performing the skill, and the skill level of the performer. By focusing on understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying stereotype threat, a more comprehensive account of this detrimental phenomenon can be developed, which in turn generates novel predictions about how, when, and for whom stereotype threat effects will be revealed, and, ultimately, how they may be prevented.