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The Social Dimension of Stress: Experimental Manipulations of Social Support and Social Identity in the Trier Social Stress Test
Published on: November 19, 2015
'Be prepared': an implemental mindset for alleviating social-identity threat
Tara C Dennehy1, Avi Ben-Zeev, Noriko Tanigawa
1Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.
Abstract:
Stereotype threat occurs when people who belong to socially devalued groups experience a fear of negative evaluation, which interferes with the goal of staying task focused. The current study was designed to examine whether priming socially devalued individuals with an implemental (vs. a deliberative) mindset, characterized by forming a priori goal-directed plans, would help these individuals to overcome threat-induced distracting states. Participants from low and high socioeconomic status backgrounds (measured by maternal education; SESm ) completed a speeded mental arithmetic test, an intellectually threatening task. Low-SESm individuals performed comparably and exhibited similar confidence levels to high-SESm counterparts only when induced with an implemental mindset, suggesting that implemental mindset priming may help to create equity in the face of stereotype threat.
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