Implicit Social Cognitions Predict Sex Differences in Math Engagement and Achievement

By Brian A. Nosek, Frederick L. Smyth. 2011

250 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Gender stereotypes about math and science do not need to be endorsed, or even available to conscious introspection, to contribute to the sex gap in engagement and achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The authors examined implicit math attitudes and stereotypes among a heterogeneous sample of 5,139 participants. Women showed stronger implicit negativity toward math than men did and equally strong implicit gender stereotypes. For women, stronger implicit math=male stereotypes predicted greater negativity toward math, less participation, weaker self-ascribed ability, and worse math achievement; for men, those relations were weakly in the opposite direction. Implicit stereotypes had greater predictive validity than explicit stereotypes. Female STEM majors, especially those with a graduate degree, held weaker implicit math=male stereotypes and more positive implicit math attitudes than other women. Implicit measures will be a valuable tool for education research and help account for unexplained variation in the STEM sex gap.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a0e711509a8239bdd4ef9eea1df6aba6fd676633

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Citations in the corpus

Why Are Some STEM Fields More Gender Balanced Than Others? (2017, unknown): “…associations whose identity as women is important to them are also less likely to declare an interest in pursuing math-based careers than women who hold lower implicit math-male associations or identify less strongly with their gender (Kiefer & Sekaquaptewa, 2007; see also Nosek & Smyth, 2011).”
Bridging the Gap by Enhancing the Fit: How Stereotypes about STEM Clash with Stereotypes about Girls (2015, background): “Children, adolescents, and adults consistently show stronger associations between STEM and males than with females (e.g. Cvencek, Meltzoff & Greenwald, 2011; Kessels et al., 2006; Nosek, Banaji & Greenwald, 2002; Nosek & Smyth, 2011; Steffens, Jelenec & Noack; 2010).”
Implicit Gender Stereotypes and Essentialist Beliefs Predict Preservice Teachers’ Tracking Recommendations (2016, background): “In fact, despite the widespread rejection that math is for men and not for women (Hyde, Fennema, Ryan, & Frost, 1990) results reported by Nosek and Smyth (2011) indicate that implicit gender stereotypes about math and science are common and equally shown by men and women.”
Gender and competition in adolescence: task matters (2013, methodology): “Importantly, we study competitiveness in two tasks with varying gender associations; a “male” oriented task based on mathematical ability and a “female” oriented one based on verbal ability (e.g. Cvencek et al. 2011; Nosek and Smyth 2011).”
Beneath the numbers: A review of gender disparities in undergraduate education across science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines (2016, unknown): “associations for STEMwomen can be seen in work done by Nosek and Smyth [15]: college women, even those majoring in STEM courses, show a strong association between”
Stereotypes About Gender and Science (2016, unknown): “…Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) indicates that people implicitly associate math (Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002; Nosek et al., 2007; Nosek & Smyth, 2011) and science (Kessels, Rau, & Hannover, 2006; Lane, Goh, & Driver-Linn, 2012; Nosek et al., 2007) with men more than with women.”
Investigating Variation in Replicability: A “Many Labs” Replication Project (2022, unknown): “4 Though the sex difference in implicit math attitudes effect was within the 95% confidence interval of the original result, the replication estimate combined with another large-scale replication (Nosek & Smyth, 2011) suggests that the original effect was an overestimate.”
“I’m Not a Science Nerd!” (2018, background): “…have found that both implicit and explicit science-gender associations are related to outcomes, such as math expectancy beliefs and participation (Nosek & Smyth, 2011) as well as self-concepts and sense of fit (Cvencek, Kapur, & Meltzoff, 2015; Cvencek, Meltzoff, & Greenwald, 2011; Gilbert,…”
Math and Science Attitudes and Achievement at the Intersection of Gender and Ethnicity (2013, background): “The stereotype that math is a male domain is persistent and pervasive in North American culture (Benbow & Stanley, 1980; Fennema, Peterson, Carpenter, & Lubinski, 1990; Hyde, Fennema, Ryan, Frost, & Hopp, 1990; Nosek & Smyth, 2011).”
Teachers’ Bias Against the Mathematical Ability of Female, Black, and Hispanic Students (2019, background): “…differences in reaction time in people’s automatic associations between concepts (e.g., girl–art, boy–mathematics; for example, see the Implicit Association Test [Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998; Nosek & Smyth, 2011], or Nosek, Hawkins, & Frazier, 2011, for a review of implicit bias measures).”
Women's Representation in Science Predicts National Gender-Science Stereotypes: Evidence from 66 Nations. (2015, background): “Future research should address this issue because both stereotypes and gender diversity vary substantially by field (Nosek & Smyth, 2011; Smyth & Nosek, 2013).”