Black Identity & Stereotype Threat

Thank you for participating in my study and being a great help for finishing my Master's thesis. The fact that I would like to do research on people's output in achievement situations is only half the truth, as my Master's thesis is called "Black Identity and Stereotype Threat".

The theory of Stereotype Threat says that certain minority groups have to cope with certain pressure caused by stereotypes and prejudices they have to face. Studies have shown that e.g. African Americans tend to be less successful in achievement situations than, for instance, European Americans, which lead to the common misconception that different ethnicities might differ in intelligence.

Contrary to that, it has been proved that simply these misconceptions exert so much stress on the minority group that they do worse only because of that very fact - not because of their lack of intelligence.

So, what did I intend?

Everyone had to do the test on analogies, simply the instructions differed. One random half of the participants had the information that 'It has been shown that performance in the analogies task is predictive of general problem solving, but unrelated to intelligence. The research you are participating in is aimed at better understanding analogies.' This information was for the control group and correct.

The other half of the participants read 'It has been shown that performance in the analogies task is highly predictive of general intelligence. Moreover, there seems to be a growing gap in test performance between different ethnic groups. The research you are participating in is aimed at better understanding these differences.' This information is wrong, and had the only purpose to exert stress on the participants. Among this, the participants had to state their ethnicities in beforehand, which again, should exert stress.

The part of the personality tests was aimed at finding out whether different characteristics and awareness of one's ethnical identity influence the stress level.

So, thank you again for participating, as your help was a valuable contribution to an emancipated, anti-racist theory that could help to explain different prejudices about different minority groups.

If I caused you any kind of inconvenience, I truly apologize, and I hope that you can understand that I was not able to pass on this information earlier.

Kind regards,
Monika