Research has shown that stereotypes can impair the standardized test performance of African Americans. A recent psychological study, which examined the long-term effects of stereotypes, suggests that stereotypes may also impact a person's academic self-assessment and overall learning ability.
Authors Joshua Aronson, New York University, and Michael Inzlicht, Wilfrid Laurier University, found evidence that stereotype vulnerability - the tendency to expect, perceive, and be influenced by stereotypes about one's social category - is associated with uncertainty about one's academic self-knowledge. These findings are presented in the study "The Ups and Downs of Attributional Ambiguity: Stereotype Vulnerability and the Academic Self-Knowledge of African American College Students," published in the December 2004 issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society.
Psychologists have long argued that people need a clear sense of their intellectual abilities and liabilities in order to develop their academic potential. Accurate answers to questions such as Which talents should I develop? Which should I abandon? and Am I smart enough to go to college? can help people set appropriate goals, spend their time and efforts wisely, and avoid being embarrassed or demoralized by failures.
But research makes clear that some groups of people, such as African Americans, are at a disadvantage in this development, because they experience chronic attributional ambiguity, which is an uncertainty about whether their academic accomplishments truly reflect their abilities, or whether they were given an easy ride because teachers had lower expectations. This uncertainty may be the result of negative stereotypes (i.e. "blacks are less intelligent"). While this uncertainty alleviates the pain of receiving negative feedback ("my work is fine, but my teacher is prejudiced"), it could eventually leave people unclear about their competence.