title: 'Be prepared': an implemental mindset for alleviating social-identity threat.
abstract: Stereotype threat occurs when people who belong to socially devalued groups experience a fear of negative evaluation, which interferes with the goal of staying task focused. The current study was designed to examine whether priming socially devalued individuals with an implemental (vs. a deliberative) mindset, characterized by forming a priori goal-directed plans, would help these individuals to overcome threat-induced distracting states. Participants from low and high socioeconomic status backgrounds (measured by maternal education; SESm ) completed a speeded mental arithmetic test, an intellectually threatening task. Low-SESm individuals performed comparably and exhibited similar confidence levels to high-SESm counterparts only when induced with an implemental mindset, suggesting that implemental mindset priming may help to create equity in the face of stereotype threat.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.
authors.forename: Tara C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Dennehy
authors.forename: Avi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ben-Zeev
authors.forename: Noriko
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Tanigawa
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D012649:Self Concept; D012933:Social Identification; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013240:Stereotyping
keywords: deliberative mindset; implemental mindset; socioeconomic status; stereotype threat