You will do better if I watch : anonymity, indentifiability and audience effects in a stereotype threat situation.

Abstract

The current study examined stereotype threat or lift (STL) in terms of various elements of social identity theory. STL occurs when a negative stereotype (or positive stereotype) about a group leads to a decrease (or increase) in performance on a task that the group identifies with. The primary focus was the relationship between STL and identifiability, whereby identifiability refers to whether one views one‟s self as an individual or as an anonymous part of a social group. The study examined STL in relation to humanities and science students‟ ability to recognise patterns using two short forms of the Raven‟s Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) which was developed. The students completed matrices under two conditions; anonymity and visibility to an audience (in-group, out-group and experimenter). When visible, participants performed significantly better than when anonymous, regardless of the STL condition. When examining in-group identification, participants with high in-group identification experienced traditional STL effects while participants with low in-group identification experienced a reversal in effects.