Our Racial Interior | The American Prospect - stereotype threat
Our Racial Interior | The American Prospect
Other studies have found that test takers under identity threat show physiological signs of anxiety -- increasing heart rate and higher blood pressure -- even when they say they don't feel anxious. Steele refers to this pattern of denial as "trying to slay a ghost in the room." The Herculean effort of trying to disprove a stereotype, Steele argues, "leaves little mental capacity free for anything else we're doing." These cognitive effects, he explains, are as potent a limit on the life chances of minorities as the segregated institutions of his youth in Chicago.
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