Stereotype threat, implicit theories of intelligence, and racial differences in standardized test performance

C. Steele and Aronson (1995) proposed a theory of stereotype threat that purports to explain the well-documented disparity in academic achievement between African Americans and European Americans. Stereotype threat is the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group as self-characteristic. C. Steele and Aronson (1995) conducted several studies with students from Stanford University and found that requiring students to record their race prior to taking a standardized test (race prime) was enough to impair African American students' performance on a standardized test. The first goal of the present study was to examine the generalizablity of C. Steele and Aronson's (1995) findings by replicating the study using students from a less competitive academic environment than that of Stanford University.;Work by Carol Dweck and her colleagues (Dweck & Elliott, 1983; Dweck, 1986; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; and Elliott & Dweck, 1988) has revealed that one's view about the malleability of intelligence has an influence on behavior patterns in challenging academic situations. Specifically, it has been asserted that students who believe that intelligence is a malleable quality (incremental theorists) have better achievement outcomes than those who believe intelligence is a fixed trait (entity theorists). Because African American students performance in C. Steele and Aronson's (1995) could be confounded by their implicit theories of intelligence, the second goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between students' implicit theories of intelligence and the predicament of stereotype threat on several performance outcomes.;The present study did not find the expected decrease in test scores among African American students exposed to the race prime in comparison to those not exposed to the race prime. This study implies that the predicament of stereotype does not affect all members of stereotyped groups and that this predicament may depend on the academic environment of the educational institution. Second, there was evidence found that entity theorists may perform significantly better than incremental theorists in challenging situations and that African American students are significantly more likely than European American students to endorse an incremental theory of intelligence. It is good to know that with the pervasive stereotype that African Americans are genetically intellectually inferior, African American students do understand intelligence is a malleable quality and that with hard work they can successfully respond to any challenge.