Dzifa Adjei

(she/her/hers)

  • Ann Arbor, MI
  • Some of my favorite things to do on campus are to eat moms and/or get smoothies from Knowlton
  • I want to do research in developmental psychology and a really large aspect of most children’s lives is their education so this course seemed appropriate.
Proposal Brainstorm 1/28/19
  • I would be interested to do my proposal on stereotype threat and how it affects black students in high schools, specifically how stereotype threat is created and if it needs to be verbal or if for example being the only student of color in a classroom can imply it. So the  dependent variable being potential score on an exam given at the end of a simulated class period where the number of students of color is manipulated as well as verbal stereotype acknowledgement being given or not given.
  • I would be interested to look at study strategies for memorization and whether/how using several methods of study (a la Quizlet’s learn function) potentially helps a student learn information better than a singular study strategy (flashcards, self testing, etc.). The population would probably also be high school students because a lot of material in high schools requires rote memorization and it’s more applicable.
Literature Review Outline 4/15/19

Factors in Producing Stereotype Threat

            Gender.

  • Inslicht
    • Placing females in the minority, or in an environment in which they are outnumbered by males, is sufficient to create a threatening intellectual environment that causes deficits in their intellectual performance
    • Whether minority induced performance deficits, if any, are specific to a stereotyped domain or generalize
    • Minority: 2:1, Same sex: all three women, mixed 1:2
    • Females math performance decreased as the relative number of males increased
  • Beaton
    • Solo women performed worse and found more stereotype words from fragments than non-solo and control women
    • Group composition significantly predicted stereotype anxiety and performance!!
    • Solo women were more likely to report stereotype anxiety
  • Murphy
    • Main effect of gender on composite cardiovascular scores (qualified by GenderXCue interaction (women who watched unbalanced video showed greater increases in sympathetic cardiovascular activation)
    • Women who watched the gender imbalanced video were more vigilant to details about it, as well as MSE items in the experiment room
    • Physiological reaction as indicators of anxiety? (osborne)
  • Kapitanoff
    • Significant correlation between stereotype endorsement scores and anxiety for women: endorsers reported more math anxiety
    • Main effect of instructor gender for women only (more than twice as many women with male professors dropped out of the class)
    • Endorsers dropped the class more often than non-endorsers
  • Nadler
    • ST condition had a significant effect on performance on easy items but not difficult ones.
    • There was a significant difference in perceived stereotype threat with participants in the threatening condition scoring higher
    • Test performance was measured using the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices
    • Stereotype threat effectiveness was measured with the Perceptions of Stereotype Threat Scale (!!!!)
    • threatening instructions described it as evaluative of intellectual ability, and having shown group differences
  • Rydell
    • Garbage article for garbage people, but concluded that ST women didn’t improve in a task (so didn’t learn how to do it) where control women did

Race.

  • Owens
    • Significant differences between black and Latinx students on how they experience stereotype threat
  • Deaux
    • second generation West Indian immigrants did identify more strongly as African American, and perform significantly worse on the exam in the diagnostic condition
    • similar to how domain identification affects ST (chang), strength of minority group identification affects ST
  • Osborne
    • DID NOT FIND A RACEXSEX INTERACTION EFFECT
    • Large significant effect of race on achievement
    • Large significant effect of race on anxiety
    • Anxiety mediated the effect of race on achievement for AA and Latinx students
  • Chang
    • Significant main + effect of domain identification and persistence
    • Significant interaction effect between high negative racial experience and domain identification on persistence
    • Major change as outcome of ST
  • Cromley
    • They didn’t find significant effects of stereotype threat on STEM retention
    • Black students started the year with more stereotype bias than white ones! And stereotype bias increased over time.
    • Significant positive growth for sex stereotype bias as well

Stereotype Threat & Middle/Late Childhood

  • McKown (2009)
    • Age and verbal ability are positively correlated with stereotype consciousness
    • Parent reported cultural socialization positively correlated with knowledge of broadly held stereotypes?
    • Children as young as FOURTH GRADE who were broadly aware of stereotypes experienced stereotype threat, supporting the idea that research should turn to look at stereotype threat in children younger than high school or college age
  • McKown (2003)
    • Higher age predicts likelihood of knowing stereotypes
    • Between ages of 6 and 10, still much younger than most other ST research
  • Ambady
    • It is around midde school that gender differences in STEM emerge, gather more sources on that specific gap and how middle school is a prime age for this research
  • Désert
    • Low SES students endorsed negative stereotypes more when they thought they were being evaluated
    • More evidence that even in other domains, there is some experience of stereotype threat in middle/late childhood
  • Bowen
    • Writing an affirmative essay reduced grade decline, supports the potential for an intervention making this research important (maybe move to implication section?)

Current Study

            Intersectionality or lack thereof:

  • Baker
    • Black women were more likely to rely on co-ethnic support, have African American professors, and be involved in a majority-black student org
    • So, black women received more co-ethnic support (but is that just because they sought it out??

 

Hypothesis. It has been shown that Stereotype threat negatively affects cognitive function for women, and for black students. The current study wishes to investigate whether women of color experience an increased deficit in cognitive performance as a result of the intersecting stereotypes and oppression.

Symposium Presentation Reflection

Looking at several different poster presentations on I.S. Symposium day, I noticed a few things. Firstly, that a lot of posters were formatted in a way that made it difficult to understand the experiment, usually by including too much text that was too small as well as listing testing instruments without giving example measures or even explaining direction. Another thing I noticed was some posters oversimplifying complex concepts for the sake of the explanation, but in doing so muddying the terms and confusing their study. This reminded me to be clear about background and methods when both crafting and presenting my I.S., because it is essential to others understanding the work you have done.

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