How Stereotype Threat Influences Cognitive Performance: It All Depends on How You Feel!

Studies have shown that mood could be used as diagnostic information for the assessment of situational demands and that, as such, it can regulate resource mobilization. Accordingly, it was found that negative mood causes overestimation of situational demands, which then leads to effort exertion during performance on easy tasks but disengagement on difficult tasks. The present research investigated whether this mood-motivation relation could be extended to specific emotions to explain the effect of stereotype threat (ST). In order to answer this question, the participants in the standard (fear-based) ST and the no-ST conditions had to perform easy (Study 1) or difficult (Study 2) cognitive tasks. To further explore the hypothetical role of threat-related emotions in each study we introduced another condition in which participants under ST were induced to feel anger (i.e., an emotion theoretically characterized by the perception of low situational demands). Although both ST conditions consistently showed greater stereotype-related concerns compared with the control (no-ST) group, the expected increase in easy task performance (Study 1) and decrease in difficult task performance (Study 2) were observed only in the standard (fear-based) ST condition, but not when participants under ST experienced anger. Our findings suggest that specific emotions emerging under ST could govern motivational processes and account for the effect of ST. Accordingly, the way that individuals appraise ST may have an important impact on task performance.