Date of Award
Spring 5-12-2017
Document Type
Thesis
First Advisor
Deborah Schooler
Second Advisor
Raylene Paludneviciene
Abstract
Misconceptions and stereotypes about Deaf people’s verbal intelligence may lead to a social phenomenon known as stereotype threat. When a person is conscious of a stereotype about their group, they may experience stereotype threat, whereby apprehension related to a negative stereotype undermines performance (Steele, 2010). Participants for the study were 27 Deaf undergraduate students. Participants were randomly assigned to high threat or low threat conditions. Regardless of the condition, all participants were then asked to solve seven anagrams and five questions from the verbal portion of the Graduate Record Exam. Participants were asked to evaluate their performance on the anagrams and questions from the Graduate Record Exam. There was no significant effect of gender or threat condition on anagram performance. Participants in the high threat condition performed significantly worse than those in the low threat condition on the sample GRE questions indicating that Deaf individuals are susceptible to stereotype threat. Additionally, women rated their performance on the GRE sample questions significantly worse than men, despite actually performing at comparable levels.
Recommended Citation
Kales, Jessica, "The Impact of Stereotype Threat on Deaf Individuals" (2017). Undergraduate University Honors Capstones. 49.
https://ida.gallaudet.edu/honors_capstones/49
