Does Stereotype Threat Affect Men in Language Domains?

Currently, boys and men tend to underperform in language domains in school and on standardized tests, and they are also underrepresented in language-related fields of study. Stereotype threat is one way in which psychologists have found that stereotypes can affect students’ performance and sense of belonging in academic subjects and test settings Researchers have traditionally found that when girls and women are reminded of stereotypes that math is for boys, girls and women tend to underperform on math tests. Stereotype threat has also been found to affect women’s sense of belonging in math settings. We sought to test whether stereotypes that women have better language skills than men would affect men in the same way. We conducted a series of four experiments (N=542) testing the effect of explicit stereotype threats on men’s performance in language-related tasks, and their sense of belonging to language-related domains. We found little evidence for stereotype threat effects on men in language tasks. Mini-meta analyses revealed aggregate effect sizes indistinguishable from zero across our studies, and Bayesian analysis suggested that the null hypothesis was consistently more likely than the alternative. Future research should explore other explanations for gender gaps in language.