Studying Intercultural Contact Through Stereotype Threat

Abstract

The objective of the present research was to study stereotype threat as a mean of intercultural contact among target audience i.e. college going females on their mathematical ability. It was hypothesized that females will perform poorly and will take more time in comparison to males on the applied numerical ability test. The stereotype ‘women are poor in numerical ability’ was activated in stereotype threat condition. For this purpose, the Numerical ability subset of Differential Aptitude Test was administered under the stereotype threat condition and under the no stereotype threat condition. Each reading set contained one male and one female. The participants were matched between 18–21 years and based on stream and geographical background. Different ways of rapport formation and sets of instructions were given to participants in each condition. For the participants of stereotype threat condition, the stereotype that ‘women are poor in mathematical ability’ was activated whereas no such activation was done in the no stereotype threat group. Data was pooled in for both stereotype and no stereotype threat conditions (n=50). The results between the males and females in stereotype and no stereotype threat condition and between males and between females in both conditions were found to be insignificant. The limitation of the study was that the data were collected through convenience sampling, was not homogenous and included participants from various cultures. The study can be expanded by taking participants from different cultures and age groups for future research in this direction.