When stereotype threat makes me more or less intelligent: The informative role of emotions in effort mobilization and task performance

Studies have shown that affective states could be used as diagnostic information for the assessment of situational demands and that, as such, they can regulate resource mobilization. Accordingly, it was found that negative feelings cause overestimation of situational demands, which, in turn, leads to effort mobilization during performance on easy tasks but disengagement on difficult tasks. The present research investigated whether this emotion-motivation link could explain the usual differences in achievement on easy and difficult tasks under stereotype threat (ST). In Study 1, participants in ST, no-ST and no-ST with fear induction conditions had to resolve a series of easy logical problems. As expected, ST and no-ST-fear groups reported higher effort investment and achieved better performance than the no-ST group. In the following two studies, the no-ST-fear condition was replaced by an ST condition in which the informative potential of threat-related feelings was prevented before the task performance. Although participants under ST reported a similar elevation in anxiety, the expected increase in easy task performance (Study 2) and decrease in difficult task performance (Study 3) was observed only in the standard ST groups. Taken together, our findings suggest that threat-related feelings could govern motivational processes and account for the effect of ST.