The Threat of Living Up to Expectations

Abstract

Spanish

The present study examines whether the recognition of stereotypes undermines the academic performance of Hispanic students, a phenomenon known as stereotype threat. With regard to race, stereotype threat has been examined predominately between African American and White students, yet limited research has investigated how Hispanic students respond to negative racial stereotypes. This study utilizes a t test to explore whether the presence of negative racial stereotypes influences the academic performance of Hispanic students on standardized tests. Data from the study suggest that racial stereotypes inside the classroom have a negative influence on the academic performance of Hispanic college students on standardized exams.

Keywords

stereotype threat Hispanic race academic performance achievement gap

The existence of achievement gaps in school are well documented in education research (Nettles, 1988; Ogbu, 1978; Swail, Cabrera, & Lee, 2005; Terenzini, Springer, Yaeger, Pascarella, & Nora, 1996). Education environments, both inside and outside of the classroom, are embedded with racial stereotypes that influence students’ academic performance (Steele, 2010). In many ways, achievement gaps reinforce generalizations regarding students’ group characteristics. Questions of which racial groups tend to struggle academically in education and why certain groups struggle are common questions asked by education researchers.

Education literature generally demonstrates that students of color, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, lag behind White and Asian students in academics (Cook & Cordova, 2007; Horn, 1998; Kojaku & Nunez, 1998; U.S. Department of Education, 2000). Poor college attendance rates, low standardized test scores, and low degree completion rates are common characteristics of the African American and Hispanic experience in the American education system (Hemphill & Vanneman, 2011; Vanneman, Hamilton, Baldwin Anderson, & Rahman, 2009). As Aronson, Fried, and Good (2001) point out, “virtually every measure of academic achievement taken at every level of schooling shows African Americans trailing their White counterparts” (p. 114).

Decades of research has attributed such gaps to factors such as school quality, socioeconomic status, and educational opportunities (Ogbu, 1978; Osborne, 2007). Yet, when background characteristics are held constant, academic performance remains lower for African Americans and Hispanics than White students (Jensen, 1980; Ramist, Lewis, & McCamley-Jenkins, 1994). The achievement gap among African American and White students is less apparent during the early stages of students’ academic career. By the end of fifth grade, significant gaps in achievement begin to separate African American and White students (Alexander & Entwhistle, 1988; Valencia, 2002). Such trends suggest that during their developmental process, young students of color begin to internalize negative stereotypes that begin to disrupt how students view members of their own social group. Research suggests that as students of color grow older, psychological factors such as stress and anxiety become more prevalent in academic settings (Osborne, 2007; Smith & Hung, 2008).

Research suggests that the presence of negative racial stereotypes has a negative influence on the cognitive function of students (Jordan & Lovett, 2007). Extensive literature has examined how negative racial stereotypes influence the test-taking skills of African American and White students (Blascovich, Spencer, Quinn, & Steele, 2001; Steele & Aronson, 1995). However, scant research has investigated how Hispanic students respond to negative racial stereotypes. This study investigates whether negative racial stereotypes influence the academic performance of Hispanic students. Specifically, a t test is used to evaluate whether the presence of negative racial stereotypes influences the academic performance of Hispanic students on standardized tests. Survey questionnaires (see Appendices C and D) are also used to examine how students in the sample perceive their own academic performance on standardized exams.

Literature Review

Defining Stereotype Threat

Steele and Aronson (1995) have argued that negative stereotypes of social groups have led to the self-characterization of individuals, a process they have referred to as stereotype threat. The threat of confirming or furthering stereotypes, they have contested, hinders the academic performance of students who belong to negatively stereotyped groups (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Steele and Aronson have claimed that terms such as “yuppie, feminist, liberal, or White male . . . [raise] the possibility for potential targets that the stereotype is true of them and, also, that other people will see them that way” (p. 797). For students of color, recognizing negative stereotypes of their own social group disrupts students’ ability to perform academically by causing stress and anxiety in school (Steele, 2010; Walton & Spencer, 2009).

Steele and Aronson (1995) were the first among many researchers to evaluate how stereotypes influence academic test scores of students of color (Aronson et al., 2001; Jordan & Lovett, 2007; Taylor & Walton, 2011). The authors defined stereotype threat as the “risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group” by causing a self-evaluative threat to the individual (p. 797). In their study, the authors placed the experimental group in a high-threat situation, which they defined as an environment where negative racial stereotypes were present. By comparison, the treatment group in the study was placed in a low-threat situation, which they defined as an environment in which negative racial stereotypes were not prevalent.

How Does Stereotype Threat Affect Students?

Subsequent research examining how African American students perform on standardized tests in high-threat situations confirms Steele’s and Aronson’s (1995) findings. One of the fundamental tenets of Steele’s and Aronson’s work points to the increased anxiety levels that students experience during tests. Studies using real-time indicators gauged the physiological effects caused by standardized tests. For example, Blascovich et al. (2001) revealed that African American students experience significant physiological reactions while completing challenging math exams. In this study, students were randomly assigned to either low- or high-threat situations before the exam. Results of the tests demonstrated that African American students experienced increased skin temperature and blood pressure before and during the exam. The increases in blood pressure persisted after a 5-min rest period and continued through the second portion of the task. In low-threat conditions, African Americans did not experience increases in blood pressure or skin temperature. Such reactions are consistent with the hypothesis that stereotypes increase situational-specific anxiety for students of color (Blascovich et al., 2001; Osborne, 2007).

Behavioral variables such as test-taking skills are also affected by negative stereotypes. Test-taking skills include a variety of factors such as test-wiseness, memory, and time management on exams (Scherbaum, Blanshetyn, Marshall-Wolp, Mccue, & Strauss, 2011). Scherbaum et al. (2011) examined how stereotype threat can differentially influence the test-taking behaviors of students of color. The authors evaluated the impact of stereotype threat on time management (e.g., amount of time spent on each question) and response choice behaviors (e.g., changing answers). The amount of time a student spends per item on an exam and the number of times a student switches answers often affect test performance (Geiger, 1991; Mueller & Wasser, 1977). For example, test takers who change their response increase the likelihood of answering an exam question correctly (Geiger, 1991). Test takers are three times more likely to change their response to a correct answer than an incorrect answer (McNulty, Sonntag, & Sinacore, 2007).

In the case of African American test takers presented with high stereotype threat situations, the group completed fewer exam questions than other test takers, and did so less accurately (Scherbaum et al., 2011). African American students in high-threat situations tended to complete fewer items than other African American students in low-threat situations and White students in either situation. Also, African American students in high-threat situations tended to re-read items more than other participants (Scherbaum et al., 2011). Geen (1991) revealed that students experience reduced accuracy and speed and greater caution in situations of critical evaluation. Such findings support the idea that test anxiety, competitive pressure, and evaluation apprehension are induced by negative stereotypes.

The effects of stereotype threat can be potentially devastating for students of color, particularly in academic environments where students are challenged with complex tasks. For example, the impact of stereotype threat can potentially influence students of color taking college entrance exams, course exams, or other high-stakes academic tasks. The additional stress, anxiety, and apprehension during test taking may cause a student’s memory and time management to suffer while completing tasks. The extent to which negative racial stereotypes influence the academic performance of Hispanic students on academic tasks, however, is largely unknown.

Situational Threat

Stereotype threat is viewed as a potential contributing factor of long-standing achievement gaps in education (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Given that the negative impacts of stereotypes arise from specific situations as opposed to an individual’s characteristics or personality traits, stereotype threat is not limited to people of color. People tend to have at least one social identity that can be negatively stereotyped. Most individuals are subject to experiencing stereotype threat under conditions where the stereotype is relevant (Smith & Hung, 2008; Steele, 1999). For instance, women tend to underperform on math exams when they are told that their performance is being compared with the performance of men (Johns, Schmader, & Martens, 2005). However, women’s performance does not change when completing tasks that do not require math, such as reading comprehension or verbal exams (Aronson et al., 1999).

In specific contexts, White students perform worse on tasks when compared with students of color who hold a reputation for high ability or skill in a given task. For example, Aronson et al. (1999) investigated how White males perform on standardized math exams after being informed that their performance on the test would be compared with that of Asian American males. Results from the math exams indicate that White males who believed they would be compared with Asian American males performed worse than White male subjects who believed their math scores would be compared with that of other White men. Similar effects have also been found among White males who believed they would be compared with African American males regarding their athletic performance (Beilock, Stone, McConnell, Horton, & Harrison, 2004). Thus, negative stereotypes have been found to influence the task completion and cognitive function of individuals across various contexts, which include race and gender.

Extending the Concept of Stereotype Threat to Hispanics

Studies investigating how Hispanic students respond to negative racial stereotypes are limited relative to the number of studies investigating African American students (Aronson & Salinas, 1997; Croizet & Claire, 1998; Gonzales, Blanton, & Williams, 2002). Still, existing literature points out that the academic performance of Hispanic students is hindered by the presence of negative racial stereotypes much in the same way that African American students’ performance suffers in the presence of negative racial stereotypes (Aronson & Salinas, 1997; Schmader & Johns, 2003). In an unpublished study, Aronson and Salinas (1997) found that Hispanic students in high-threat situations performed worse on standardized exams than Hispanics in low-threat situations. Similarly, Schmader and Johns (2003) examined the impact of negative stereotypes on working memory among Hispanic and White subjects. The experimenters created a high-threat situation by framing their working memory exam as a task that was “highly predictive of general intelligence” (p. 445). Students were primed by identifying their ethnicity in a demographic questionnaire prior to beginning the exam on working memory. Consequently, the Hispanic subjects (n = 33) in the sample displayed evidence of reduced working memory capacity compared with White students (n = 40) in the study (Schmader & Johns, 2003).

Many existing studies on Hispanic students have not focused exclusively on students’ Hispanic status as an indicator of sensitivity to stereotype threat. Rather, ethnicity has often been coupled with other factors such as gender (Gonzales et al., 2002) or socioeconomic status (Croizet & Claire, 1998). Thus, studies have focused on Hispanics with double minority status, which is defined as “the psychological state created when two devalued identities interact to influence the individual in a way that is greater than the sum of the independent” (Croizet & Claire, 1998, p. 659). Thus, the relationship between stereotype threat and race/ethnicity for Hispanic populations has been complicated by factors such as gender. This study focuses on the influence of stereotype threat on a sample population, which includes male and female participants.

Method

Participants

To investigate how Hispanic students are affected by stereotype threat, this study was conducted with a sample of 62 students in a summer bridge program for first generation college-bound students who recently graduated from high schools in a large urban school district. The summer bridge program provided academic and social support to assist students’ transition into college. Fifty-eight percent of the students were female, and 42% were male. The experimental and the control groups shared an equal number of women and men. The average household income of students in the sample was US$29,000 per year. The average household income of students in the experimental group was US$31,000 per year. For the control group, the average household income of students was US$27,000. All participants in the study self-identified as “Hispanic.”

Materials and Procedure

All research participants were given 40 min to complete 40 questions from the verbal section of a SAT exam. The exam covered topics such as reading comprehension, grammar, and critical reading. The test questions were in multiple-choice format. Although all research participants were asked to complete the same exam, 31 participants were randomly assigned to an experimental group and the other 31 students into a control group. Students in the experimental group were placed in a high-threat situation, whereas the control group was placed in a low-threat situation. Each group completed the same set of test questions. Data collection for the study was collected in one session; the experimental and control groups (N = 62) completed the exam in separate locations during the same time frame. Item responses for the multiple-choice exam were provided on answer sheets, which were collected immediately after the 40-min session concluded. Prior to beginning the SAT exam, participants in the high-threat situation were asked to read the following segment of an article from Education Week (Achievement gap, 2011) discussing the achievement gap in education:

The “achievement gap” in education refers to the disparity in academic performance between groups of students. The achievement gap shows up in grades, standardized-test scores, course selection, dropout rates, and college-completion rates, among other success measures. It is most often used to describe the troubling performance gaps between African-American and Hispanic students, at the lower end of the performance scale, and their non-Hispanic white peers, and the similar academic disparity between students from low-income families and those who are better off. In the past decade, though, scholars and policymakers have begun to focus increasing attention on other achievement gaps, such as those based on sex, English-language proficiency and learning disabilities.

With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, closing achievement gaps among these various student groups became a focus of federal education accountability, and schools and districts were required to disaggregate student test scores and other performance data by student characteristics to enable better comparisons between groups. This created both greater awareness of racial disparities and rising concern about other kinds of achievement gaps. The attention led to more targeted interventions for different groups of students, but had not closed most achievement gaps to an appreciable degree a decade after the law passed. (para. 1-2)

Upon reading the excerpt above, participants in the experimental group presumably became more conscious of their own identity as students of color by internalizing the racial stereotypes associated with their own social group. By contrast, students in the low-threat group were not asked to read the excerpt on the achievement gap. Instead, students in the low-threat group were verbally notified that the testing instrument was being used as a pilot test; they were informed that their participation in completing the exam was simply a means to develop a testing instrument for next year’s program cohort. Therefore, students in the low-threat condition (i.e., control group) were given instructions with no mention of the exam being a reflection of their academic ability or performance.

Participants in the high-threat situation (i.e., experimental group) were informed that the exam measured academic ability. This information was communicated to students verbally by the test administrator as well as within the written instructions for the exam. The rationale for communicating this information with students is that those students who believe that their performance on the given exam is indicative of their academic ability are more likely to be impaired by negative stereotypes (Aronson et al., 1999). Given that all of the participants in the study had been admitted to 4-year universities, the effects of being highly motivated and performance-conscious may have potentially generated more pronounced results for students in the high-threat condition (Jordan & Lovett, 2007). Instructions for participants in the high-threat condition were as follows:

Instructions: The following exam is designed to measure students’ academic ability and content knowledge. Your raw score on the exam will be made available to you after the exam upon your request. You have 40 minutes to complete 40 multiple-choice questions on the exam. Fill in circles for numbers 1 through 40 on your answer sheet.

Your participation in completing the exam is completely voluntary. Your identity will remain anonymous at all times. If at any point you would like to discontinue taking the exam, you may do so at any time.

After completing the verbal section of SAT exam, participants were debriefed by the researcher on the purpose of the exam and the fundamental tenets of stereotype threat. All participants in the study completed an eight-question post-test survey regarding their perceptions of the exam. Surveys gauged how students perceived their own performance while taking the exam. Specifically, participants in the sample were asked to express their level of confidence while taking the exam and whether they felt pressure to perform well on the exam. This information was collected to examine whether students in the sample population were influenced by high- or low-threat conditions. Despite the limitations of self-reported data regarding students’ perceptions of their own academic performance (Steele, 2009), survey questionnaires were used to triangulate data collected from students’ test scores and as a way to understand how students experienced the exam. Although the data collected in the study represent the experiences of only 62 college-bound Hispanic students, the findings presented in this preliminary investigation are important in understanding how negative racial stereotypes influence the academic performance of Hispanic students in academic settings.

Results

Results from the SAT exam were evaluated by comparing the experimental group and control group. The t tests were used to determine the average number of items answered correctly and to compare how students in the experimental group performed versus the control group as a whole. Similar to the gaps in performance found in past studies (Blascovich et al., 2001; Osborne, 2007; Steele & Aronson, 1995; Taylor & Walton, 2011), differences in scores between the experimental and control group were found (see Appendix A). Results demonstrate that the average test scores for students placed in the high-threat condition (i.e., experimental group) scored approximately 8.8% lower on the verbal SAT exam compared with the low-condition group (i.e., control group).

On average, students in the high-threat group answered 17.66 questions correctly (raw score), roughly 2.27 points less than the low-threat group, who averaged 19.93 points on the exam (raw score). This difference in score on the 40-question multiple-choice exam was statistically significant at the p < .05 level. The gap in score between the high-threat condition and low-threat condition is consistent with previous stereotype threat studies (Steele & Aronson, 1995), which have typically found a difference in score of approximately 10% to 15% between the two groups.

The test scores between Hispanic students in low- and high-threat conditions demonstrate a statistically significant difference in exam scores. Although the 2.27 point difference between the two groups may appear marginal, such a difference in score can play an important role in high-stakes testing. Although the difference in test scores is based on a relatively limited sample population, the data presented here reveal that the presence of negative racial stereotypes inside the classroom may influence how Hispanic students perform on standardized exams.

Student responses on the post-test survey questionnaire demonstrate that students in the high- and low-threat groups experienced the test-taking process differently. Participants in the high-threat group generally reported feeling more stress and anxiety while taking the exam. When asked whether students felt “pressure” to perform well on the exam, students in the high-threat group generally reported feeling a greater need to perform as compared with students in the low-threat group who reported feeling pressure to perform less often. Students in the high-threat group who reported feeling pressure to perform well overwhelmingly cited race/ethnicity as a factor for wanting to do well on the exam. For example, a student in the high-threat group stated, “I felt pressure to do well [on the test] because I wanted to prove that Hispanics can do well in school, too.” Another student shared, “I tried hard [to do well on the exam] because I didn’t want to keep up the same old stereotypes about Hispanics.” Multiple students in the high-threat group referred to the achievement gap when discussing why they felt increased pressure to perform. For example, one student shared, “I wanted to do [well] but I started getting nervous because I didn’t want to add to the achievement gap.” Another student commented, “I was thinking about the gap between whites and Hispanics [during the test] . . . and how we do worse in school.”

Discussion and Implications

The threat of underperforming in school is more prevalent for students of color who are concerned about not affirming negative stereotypes (Jordan & Lovett, 2007; Scherbaum et al., 2011). In other words, students of color who are concerned with performing well academically are most affected by high-threat situations. According to Jordan and Lovett (2007), the most motivated, academically skilled, and achievement-oriented students are the most likely to be hindered by stereotype threat. Students who believe academic tests are indicative of their intellectual ability tend to be the most impaired by negative stereotypes (Aronson et al., 1999). As Steele (1999) points out, “A person has to care about a domain in order to be disturbed by the prospect of being stereotyped in it” (p. 6). Students who view their academic performance or intelligence as a single entity are more vulnerable to lose interest or motivation when they struggle in the presence of stereotype threat.

Aronson et al. (1999) argue that students who are sensitive to stereotype threat are the most prone to “devastating” effects (p. 118). The participants in the present study (N = 62) were high-performing students entering 4-year universities. As such, the results in this study exemplify how Hispanic students in college respond to negative racial stereotypes in the classroom. Not only are the results of the study consistent with previous stereotype threat literature (Aronson et al., 1999; Steele & Aronson, 1995; Taylor & Walton, 2011), the differences in academic performance on standardized exams such as the verbal section of the SAT indicate that negative racial stereotypes can potentially influence students’ academic experiences with high-stakes testing and thus, students’ educational paths.

Based on the sample, students in the low-threat group answered 19.93 questions correctly, compared with 17.66 points in the high-threat group. The difference in score is not only statistically significant but also relevant to students’ scores on high-stakes exams. The gap in score presented here was based on a 40-question segment of a SAT verbal exam. On an exam with a greater number of questions, the difference in score between the low-threat group and high-threat group may become more pronounced. On a full length exam such as the SAT, ACT, or Graduate Record Examinations (GRE), the influence of stereotype threat can potentially produce considerable gaps in achievement between Hispanics and their counterparts on college entrance exams and other high-stakes tests.

The differences in performance presented in this study may have serious implications for day-to-day academic tasks as well. In an academic environment where negative stereotypes are often reinforced, students of color are vulnerable to long-term impacts of stereotype threat (Walton & Spencer, 2009). Repeated experiences of negative labels or classification can lead to a cycle of poor academic performance, lack of focus, and disengagement in academics (Smith & Hung, 2008). Although the sample population in this study can generally be described as high-performing given that they were students on the path to 4-year colleges, the manner in which negative stereotypes influence these students over time once in college is critical for understanding. Avoiding high-threat situations or circumstances is one way to prevent the negative effects of stereotype threat. By protecting themselves against high-threat situations, students of color can become disengaged in school by disconnecting themselves from the realm in which the stereotype applies (Steele, 1997; Steele, Spencer, & Aronson, 2002).

Aronson et al. (1999) argue that minimizing the effects of stereotype threat requires that students view intelligence as a composition of different talents so that intellectual ability does not hinge on academic performance. The authors assert, “If struggling students can be convinced that there are many different types of intelligence, they may be more likely to continue to learn in an attempt to find and develop areas of strength” (Aronson et al., 1999, p. 118). This approach may prevent struggling students from interpreting their academic performance as a direct measure of their intelligence.

According to Aronson et al. (1999), students of color may not necessarily view their poor academic performance as an indication of their intelligence, academic ability, or self-worth. But, simply reshaping the manner in which intelligence is viewed in the classroom is a short-sighted solution to a larger problem confronting classroom settings. Building students’ resilience to handle negative stereotypes or low academic achievement does not eliminate the existence of negative stereotypes in academic settings. Simply promoting students’ resilience to perform under high-threat conditions will not only enable these conditions to persist but may also signal to students that such social patterns are acceptable. Therefore, addressing the existence of negative racial stereotypes in classroom environments is critical in combating the negative effects of stereotype threat.

Conclusion

This study examined whether the recognition of negative stereotypes undermined the academic performance of Hispanic students. Consistent with previous literature on stereotype threat, the findings presented demonstrated that when confronted with negative stereotypes, the academic performance of Hispanic students suffered. Specifically, the differences between the Hispanic students in the low-threat and high-threat groups revealed that racial stereotypes had a negative effect on Hispanic students’ standardized test scores. Such findings suggest that the effects of stereotypes can ultimately shape students’ academic experiences and educational paths. Yet, further research is needed not only to investigate how negative racial stereotypes influence the academic performance of Hispanic students across different contexts but also to better understand how educators and students can effectively combat the influence of racial stereotypes in academic settings. Such knowledge is critical in creating non-threatening learning environments and curricula for students of color who may otherwise remain vulnerable to the negative impacts of racial stereotypes in the classroom.

Footnotes

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

Appendix E

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Bryan A. Rodríguez is a PhD student in urban education policy at the University of Southern California (USC). His research interests include college access, K-16 policy, and student persistence among underrepresented students. He is currently conducting a study on migrant farm workers and educational inequity.

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