Research Article Why DoWomen Underperform Under Stereotype Threat? Evidence for the Role of Negative Thinking

ABSTRACT—This study investigated the role of negative thinking as a potential mediator of performance deficits under stereotype threat. After being assigned to a stereo-type-threat or a no-threat condition, 60 female partici-pants were asked to complete a difficult math task. Using the thought-listing technique, women under stereotype threat reported a higher number of negative thoughts spe-cifically related to the test and to mathematics compared with women in the no-threat condition. Moreover, women under stereotype threat also showed a sharp decrease in performance that (a) was most pronounced in the second half of the test and (b) was mediated by the increase in negative thinking. In the medical sciences, the first documented case of a woman scientist in Europe appears to be Trocta (or Trotula) de Ruggiero, who taught in the early 10th century at the then internationally famous Salerno Medical School in southern Italy. Seven centu-ries later, in 1678, Elena Cornaro Piscopia was the first woman in the world to obtain a college degree, receiving a baccalaureate in philosophy from the University of Padova, Italy. But another 190 years passedbeforeSofjaKovalevskaja became, in 1875, the first woman graduate in mathematics. Over the centuries, prejudice against women regarding their presumed lack of propensity for scientific disciplines in general, and mathematics in particular, has been the dominant view. Of the two most famous female mathematicians of the 19th century, their illustrious colleague Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) said: ‘‘Only two female mathema