Mattel's 1994 Teen Talk Barbie proclaimed to a generation of young girls that "math is hard." Over a decade later, the president of Harvard gave a similar message. Despite the lack of rigorous evidence, there is widespread belief that boys are naturally better than girls in math. Does this stereotype affect students in math-related courses? We investigated whether acceptance of this stereotype affects students' mindset and performance in undergraduate statistics classes, particularly women in historically male fields such as business.
To assess students' learning mindset, we developed a composite questionnaire by combining several widely-used instruments that measure psychological variables such as students' statistics anxiety, math self-concept, and cognitive competence. We also included questions about students' beliefs in biological gender differences in math. The mindset questionnaires were distributed on the first day of class to students in psychology, sociology, and business statistics classes. We obtained students' grades at the end of the course.
Significant correlations indicated that greater endorsement of stereotyped beliefs was related to negative mindsets for learning statistics, particularly for women, but to some extent, for men as well. Additionally, we found that men endorsed stereotypic beliefs more strongly than women did, that women expressed a more negative mindset for learning statistics, and that these gender differences were greater in business classes than in psychology and sociology classes. Thus, increased stereotype salience exists in business classes. We are currently analyzing students' grades to see if stereotypic beliefs is related to performance as well as to mindset, particularly for women in business classes.