Every fall, millions of American high school students take the SAT. And every year, the results of these tests show that non-Asian minorities underperform Caucasian students and that female students underperform male peers in quantitative fields. Traditionally, psychologists attribute these scores to real differences in ability caused by poverty, gender roles, etc.
But there may be another cause: black or female test takers’ fears that performing poorly will reinforce others’ negative stereotypes about them. This pressure creates lower scores.
Researchers at Stanford showed this by giving black and white sophomores a version of the GRE test. In one group, subjects were told the test was simply a data-gathering tool; another group was told the test measured verbal and reasoning ability.
With the potential for stereotype in place—i.e., when test takers thought they were measuring verbal and reasoning ability—the black students scored lower than the other group.
What does this mean?
According to a 2009 study published the journal Psychological Science, this means that the SAT and many other standardized tests underpredict the performance of non-Asian minority students, and the performance of women in quantitative fields. In fact, the researchers posit that female students are, in fact, twenty points more competent in math than their SAT scores show. And non-Asian minority students are forty points more competent on the math and reading sections of the SAT than shown by their scores.
The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up and does not stop until you get into the office.
—Robert Frost
