Stereotype Suppression Consumes Cognitive Resources and Degrades Task Performance
Greg Walton · #64 Greg Walton: The Big Impact of Small Interventions · Aug 20, 2019 · at 5:43
Stanford psychologist Greg Walton explains the cognitive mechanism causing stereotype threat to hinder high-stakes performance.
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“Stereotype threat happens most in spaces where people are really identified, where they want to succeed. They care about that space. They care about doing well in that space. They also, though, have called to mind the stereotype, and they don't want to be thinking about that stereotype. They want to be able to think about the task before them, because it's really hard. Stereotype threat happens most when people are doing things that are really pushing the edges of their abilities. So it's actually the effort to suppress The thoughts about the stereotype that takes up cognitive resources and makes it harder for people to actually devote resources to performing well on the task.”
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