McKown &
Weinstein,
2003
These studies examined the development of stereotype
awareness and stereotype threat in children. As children
become aware that other individuals might believe in and
use stereotypes, susceptibility to stereotype threat
might increase. In Experiment
1, children ranging from under seven to over ten years
of age with stigmatized (African-American, Latino,
Native American) and nonstigmatized (White,
Asian-American) ethnic identities completed one task
requiring them to infer another person's stereotype and
a second
task to assess awareness of widely held cultural
stereotypes. Results showed that awareness of
other's stereotypes increased dramatically between six
and ten years of age. A similar effect was found
for awareness of cultural stereotypes, but stigmatized
children showed greater awareness of these stereotypes
at every age. In Experiment 2, the same children
who participated in the first experiment were asked to
complete two tasks: one involved writing letters
backward under limited time, and a second involved
identifying which one of four words did not belong with
the others. The tests were described as being either
diagnostic of ability (stereotype threat for members of
stigmatized groups) or not diagnostic of ability
(control). Performance on the writing task, but
not the word puzzle, was affected by stigma status, test
description, and awareness of cultural stereotypes.
For children aware of stereotypes, performance was lower
for the children with stigmatized ethnicities than for
children with nonstigmatized ethnicities but only when
the test was described as diagnostic. There were no
differences in performance between these groups of
children when the test was described as nondiagnostic of
ability. These results indicate that awareness of
broadly held stereotypes is a precondition for
stereotype threat effects and also show that this
awareness, and hence vulnerability, increases with ageBack to top | Previous
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