The study explains that women who are reminded of their femaleness and (subtly) the stereotype that "women aren't good at math" do worse on math tests, whereas when their test is proctored by a female mathmetician, their test scores go up. Therefore, I can see why the researchers might expect a similar effect by reminding African-American students about Obama.

Maybe if Obama had been actually been present to proctor the test, it would've worked!

Having women give the test isn't in the same category as reminding some kid that there's a black prez. Watermelons and pomegranates.

This article is really fucking stupid, I cannot actually believed this was published; it is somewhat racist, and it grossly misunderstands psychology. As if I needed another reason not to look at Vanderbilt as a possible place for a masters.

There also seems to be some journalistic malpractice taking place in terms of quoting the NYU study. The surprise seems to be coming from Begley, not Aronson (the researcher). He seems to be taken out of context.

It'll be interesting to see if she responds. These "studies" always get me. It certainly has it's place, but I've never really understood (had to learn it, though) what this incessant need to MEASURE and quantify damn near everything is supposed to be about. The way I see it in terms of testing and such......

These kinds of test scores tend to improve based on increased knowledge of the subject matter and test sophistication. If you're solid in both of these areas, you kick butt. If you aren't - you don't.

SOMEwhere along the line these blasted things began to be used to bolster the false premise of the genetic intellectual supremacy of the lack of melanin in the skin. These tests do what I mentioned above. They DON'T speak in the LEAST bit to ANYbody's intellectual genetic superiority/inferiority because these tests do NOT test GENES.

In fact, it's that simple.

Researching these things is a way of understanding how performance is affected by factors such as stereotype threat.

If we didn't learn about such things as "stereotype threat", then it would be EASIER to believe that the performance of African Americans on certain tests are inferior due to some genetic inferiority, instead of the now well-accepted view that a stereotype threat lowers performance because it distracts the test-taker.

And guess what, stereotype threat has been shown to be a very good explanation -- one which rejects the notion that differences are due to some inherent genetic quality -- how is that NOT a good study to spend money on?

FTW!!!