Negative stereotypes don’t just hurt people’s feelings, they can undermine people’s performance. Tell an African American student that his performance on the GRE is diagnostic of intellectual ability, and his test performance will decline compared to similar students informed that the test is non-diagnostic. People are influenced by negative stereotypes about race and intelligence. The same stereotype threat has been shown to undermine the performance of women taking math tests, or Caucasians engaging in athletic endeavors.
