Deeply ingrained stereotypes like “girls can’t do math” tend to make people underperform. It’s an effect known as stereotype threat, which arises when people fear that they’ll confirm a negative stereotype about their group. Negative stereotypes about testing can lead to lower scores on standardized tests like the SAT and GRE. Yet that stereotype threat can also motivate students to score higher than their socially privileged peers, according to a forthcoming study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. With a subtle change to the format of a math test, the psychologists showed how students can reverse stereotype threat’s effect. Read more at NOVA Next.