Stereotypes 'affect performance'

The power of stereotypes can lead to poor performance, the report says

The England football team's poor record in penalty shoot-outs could be due to historical stereotyping, according to researchers at St Andrews University.

The same applies to women tending to do badly at maths, psychologists said.

Along with Exeter University experts, they claimed that the roots of many handicaps could lie in preconceptions held by others about certain groups.

However, belonging to a group exposed to the message "we are the best" could promote achievement, they said.

The report argued that success or failure at work, school or in sport was not always down to lack of ability or incompetence.

Instead, it suggested that the power of stereotypes could cause poor performance when a person believed they should do badly.

Positive dimensions

The report argued that the roots of poor performance lies partly in the preconceptions of how well a certain group - usually relating to gender or race - should perform certain tasks.

For instance, a woman who knows that women as a group are believed to do worse than men in maths will tend to perform less well on tests as a result.

Researchers said it seemed plausible that England's poor performance on penalty shoot-outs in football competitions has something to do with a lack of self-belief associated with a team history of performing poorly in such contests.

Of seven shoot-outs in major tournaments, the team has won only one.

However, the researchers also point out that stereotypes could have positive dimensions that have the power to boost performance.

For example, research has shown that Asian women did better on maths tests if they identified themselves as Asian rather than as women.

At the same time, the researchers said that stereotypes were flexible and could be changed in order to influence external perceptions of the performer.

Prof Stephen Reicher, of the University of St Andrews, said: "In many ways our stereotype of the stereotype is wrong.

"Stereotypes are neither fixed, nor necessarily harmful. Indeed, in our own hands, they can be tools of progress.

"It was precisely by challenging stereotypes that activists like Steve Biko and Emmeline Pankhurst were able to achieve emancipation for black South Africans and British women," he said.

The report is published in the April/May edition of Scientific American Mind.