Aversive responses to stereotypic science and math-based (STEM) images predict women’s long–term STEM memories and underperformance in math

Social identity threat (SIT) is a situational stressor that increases arousal and negative affect, biases memory encoding towards domain-specific negative affect, and impairs women’s performance in contexts where they are outnumbered by men. One consequence of these effects could be that women develop learned aversions towards stigmatized domains in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM). Four studies tested whether stereotypic STEM images (STEMIs) prompt aversive-like responses that predict SIT-like outcomes, including underperformance in SIT contexts and more negative SIT-oriented memories over time. Using a dot-probe paradigm, Study 1 found that only SIT women exhibited greater arousal responses to STEMIs compared to stereotypic non-STEM images (NonSTEMIs), perceived STEMIs as more negatively arousing compared to men, and underperformed; men in this context showed a similar arousal response to STEMIs and NonSTEMIs and performed better. Study 2 replicated this effect among women in STEM majors and linked aversive responses to more negative affect laden memories for the STEM lab experience five weeks later. Using EEG, Study 3 found that enhanced processing of STEMIs presented during an attentional blink task (indexed via increased communication between occipital and prefrontal cortical regions) predicted underperformance on a math test among SIT women but marginally better performance among men. Study 4 mitigated SIT underperformance effects among women utilizing a dot-probe training paradigm that blunted arousal responses to STEMIs; instructing men to attend to STEMIs facilitated their performance. STEM aversions may thus facilitate SIT-like effects, possibly defining what the “threat” in SIT is, however, blunting aversions may attenuate these effects when women work alongside men in STEM performance situations.