Fighting the beat and winning: stereotype threat and White people’s rhythmic performance

A commonly held stereotype about White people in the United States is that they do not have rhythm. Stereotype threat posits that targets in stereotyped domains run the risk of confirming stereotypes in contexts in which they may be evaluated. We examined whether White people experience stereotype threat in domains diagnostic of rhythmic ability. We predicted White people under stereotype threat would perform worse on a rhythm task and have higher domain disengagement relative to White participants in the control condition. White Americans (<i>N</i> =118, 81 women, <i>M</i>_<i>age</i> = 18.81, <i>SD</i> = 1.06) were either told a rhythmic video game task was diagnostic of their rhythmic ability or told the game was to help future game development (i.e. non-diagnostic of ability). We found that White people in the stereotype threat condition performed more poorly on the game than those in the control condition. Furthermore, they also had higher domain disengagement than those in control. Stereotype threat may impede White individuals' ability to perform actions requiring rhythmic ability (e.g. clapping on beat, dancing).