Growth mindset deletes the impacts of stereotype threat. And it's teachable.
How to encourage girls' interest in tech — Newsletter No.26
Last year, an interesting study popped up, investigating the effects of gender stereotypes regarding math and the effects on students’ mindsets.
TLDR: Girls generally underperform when they are under the pressure of the math-gender stereotype. But, this impact can be deleted with a growth mindset. The best part is that even a couple-hour growth mindset training can delete the effects of the stereotype threat even for the girls previously identified as students with a fixed mindset.
The effects of the stereotype threat
The first study was done with 202 girl students from high-achieving classes in three senior secondary schools and investigated their mindsets and math ability.
The students were divided into two groups — the stereotype threat group and the non-threat group. Each group consisted of 101 students. The stereotype threat group was asked to read a piece of writing first to activate their awareness of the math-gender stereotype before they started to work on the math test, whereas the control group took the test straight away without the extra reading.
The math test paper was relatively difficult, the total score was 20 points, and students had 25 minutes to complete the test.
Conclusion: The stereotype threat group scored lower than the control group; the math-gender stereotype imposed a depressing effect on the math test scores of girl students.
Adding mindset to the mix
The next step for the researchers was understanding whether these effects are influenced by students’ mindsets. The second study was done on 671 grade-11 girl students of the science track from two high schools who would be measured by the Growth Mindset Scale and ranked by the scores they got.
A total of 181 girls who scored below the 27th percentile were selected to participate in the experiment as students with a fixed mindset. The 181 participants were randomly divided into a group that will receive the mindset training and one that won’t.
Each of the two groups was then subdivided into the stereotype threat group and non-threat group (like in the first study — half would read an article to raise awareness of stereotype threat and the other will just get the test).
Conclusion: The results showed that the overall effect of growth mindset training was significant and that the interaction between the mindset training and the stereotype threat conditions was also significant.
The results of the simple effects test demonstrated that the difference between the math test scores under the stereotype threat condition and those under the non-threat condition was insignificant among girls having received growth mindset training, but significant among girls without growth mindset training.
What next?
It’s clear — the results of the experiment revealed that growth mindset training could effectively weaken the effect of the math-gender stereotype threat on girl students and considerably improve their math performance.
So, we should work on the mindsets of girls.
A fixed mindset means you believe intelligence, talent, and other qualities are innate and unchangeable. If you're not good at something, you typically think you will never be good at it.
By contrast, a growth mindset means you believe intelligence and talent can be developed with practice and effort.
In our next newsletter, the suggestions will be around the topic of how to increase the growth mindset.