Domain-specific effects of stereotypes on performance

We report the results of an experiment mirroring an earlier study that found that Asian American women performed better on a math test when their Asian identity was salient and worse when their female identity was salient (Ambady, Shih, Kim, & Pittinsky, 2001 Ambady, N., Shih, M., Kim, A., and Pittinsky, T. L., 2001. Stereotype susceptibility in children: Effects of identity activation on quantitative performance, Psychological Science 12 (5) (2001), pp. 385–390.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Shih, Ambady, Richeson, Fujita, & Gray, 2002 Shih, M., Ambady, N., Richeson, J. A., Fujita, K., and Gray, H., 2002. Stereotype performance boosts: The impact of self-relevance and the manner of stereotype activation, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (2002), pp. 638–647.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Shih, Pittinsky, & Ambady, 1999 Shih, M., Pittinsky, T. L., and Ambady, N., 1999. Stereotype susceptibility: Identity salience and shifts in quantitative performance, Psychological Science 10 (1) (1999), pp. 81–84.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In this paper, we assessed the performance of Asian American women on a verbal test, a situation in which the valence of the stereotypes associated with the same two identities (i.e., female, Asian) is reversed. Consistent with the stereotypes, women performed better on the verbal test when their female identity was made salient than when their Asian identity was made salient. These results, taken together with the previous findings, indicate that identities are not globally adaptive or maladaptive.