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This study
assessed whether men are susceptible to stereotype
threat regarding social sensitivity. Men and women
undergraduates completed a test after it was described
as measuring either "social sensitivity" on which "men
do worse than women" (stereotype threat for men) or
"complex information processing" (control). The test was
actually the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT-15; Costanzo
& Archer, 1993) that assesses individuals' accuracy in
interpreting others' expressive behavior. Men performed
more poorly on the task in the stereotype threat
compared with the control condition, but women did not
differ in their performance between conditions.
Moreover, men in the stereotype threat condition who
reported using more deliberative and less intuitive
strategies showed larger decrements in performance, but
this was not true for women or for men in the control
condition. This is suggestive that stereotype threat
might have reduced men’s cognitive capacity, harming
performance when they attempted to use a more
deliberative strategy. This study provides another
example of stereotype threat with a group (men) not
typically stigmatized and offers some insight regarding
the specific reason that threat harmed their
interpersonal perception.
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