Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 2, 2025

Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing
Published on: January 24, 2020
Stereotype lift and stereotype threat effects on subgroup mean differences for cognitive tests: A meta-analysis of
Reed Priest1, Annie Griebie1, You Zhou1
1Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Abstract:
A large body of literature has studied the effect of stereotype threat and stereotype lift on cognitive test performance. Research on stereotype threat (ST) examines whether the awareness of a negative stereotype can decrease stereotyped group members' test performance. A less commonly studied influence of stereotypes is stereotype lift (SL), defined as an increase in a group's test performance due to not being part of a negative stereotype. For example, men might perform better on math tests if they are primed on the stereotype that men are better than women at math. Walton and Cohen (2003) previously meta-analyzed the impact of SL on cognitive tests, finding an overall d = 0.24. We report an updated meta-analysis on SL with more samples and moderator analyses. We then meta-analyzed between-group effects (majority-minority group differences both in the presence and absence of SL and ST) to compare their relative contributions to subgroup mean differences on cognitive tests. Our results indicate that SL has a small influence on cognitive test performance (d = 0.09, SDres = 0.19), and that subgroup mean differences result largely from between-group effects rather than from the effects of ST and SL. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Stereotype Threat and Self-fulfilling Prophecies
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Stereotype Content Model
Confirmation Biases
Fundamental Attribution Error
Statistical Significance

