2008/11/01 by Michael Johns, Michael Inzlicht, Toni Schmader · 2 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Cultural Differences and Values #Racial and Ethnic Identity Research
paper · doi:10.1037/a0013834
openalex publication_date 2008/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Research shows that stereotype threat reduces performance by diminishing executive resources, but less is known about the psychological processes responsible for these impairments. The authors tested the idea that targets of stereotype threat try to regulate their emotions and that this regulation depletes executive resources, resulting in underperformance. Across 4 experiments, they provide converging evidence that targets of stereotype threat spontaneously attempt to control their expression of anxiety and that such emotion regulation depletes executive resources needed to perform well on tests of cognitive ability. They also demonstrate that providing threatened individuals with a means to effectively cope with negative emotions--by reappraising the situation or the meaning of their anxiety--can restore executive resources and improve test performance. They discuss these results within the framework of an integrated process model of stereotype threat, in which affective and cognitive processes interact to undermine performance.