and Practice?

Stereotypes about different groups persist in organizations. Employees from such groups may experience stereotype threat, or the concern that they are being judged on the basis of demeaning stereotypes about groups to which they belong. The goal of this focal article is to discuss whether stereotype threat is a useful construct for organizational psychology research and practice. To this end, we focus on consequences other than acute performance deficits in laboratory settings. In particular, we examine studies that highlight the effects of stereotype threat on intrapersonal outcomes (e.g., job attitudes), interpersonal outcomes (e.g., negotiation), and on the relationship between employees and their organization. The research reviewed suggests that stereotype threat is a potentially important phenomenon in organizations, but it also highlights the paucity of research in an organizational context. We provide suggestions for future research directions as well as for the prevention and amelioration of stereotype threat in the workplace. Stereotype threat is the concern of con-firming or being reduced to a negative stereotype about one’s group (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995; Steele, Spencer, & Aronson, 2002). Over the past 2 decades, hundreds of laboratory studies have demon-strated that stereotype threat results in performance deficits when people attempt to perform difficult tasks in domains in which they are negatively stereotyped (for a meta-analysis, see Nguyen & Ryan, 2008). For example, when women are reminded of the stereotype that men are better in math, they perform considerably worse on a dif-ficult math test compared to women who do not receive this reminder (Gresky, Eyck, Lord, & McIntyre, 2005). Although stereo-type threat research began with a focus on Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Courtney von Hippel