The Role of Gender Identities and Stereotype Salience With the Academic Performance of Male and Female College Athletes

    Authors

    C. K. Harrison; J. Stone; J. Shapiro; S. Yee; J. A. Boyd;V. Rullan

    Comments

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    Abstract

    An experiment was conducted to examine factors that moderate the experience of academic identity threat among college athletes who represent a stigmatized group on most college campuses (Yopyk & Prentice, 2005). It was hypothesized that because they are more engaged in academics, female college athletes would be especially threatened by the prospect of confirming the "dumb-jock" stereotype. As predicted, female college athletes performed more poorly when their athletic and academic identities were explicitly linked, but only on moderately difficult test itemsU The results also revealed that male college athletes performed significantly better (see stereotype reactance and self-affirmation) on more difficult test items when only their athletic identity was primed prior to the test. This is an important finding as there is little research on the impact of positive stereotypes on performance. The discussion focuses on the different motivational processes (i.e. self-affirmation) that impact the academic performance of male and female college athletes when aspects of their campus identity are primed within a classroom context.

    Journal Title

    Journal of Sport & Social Issues

    Volume

    33

    Issue/Number

    1

    Publication Date

    1-1-2009

    Document Type

    Article

    First Page

    78

    Last Page

    96

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000262610600006

    ISSN

    0193-7235

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