Ameaça do estereótipo e Teoria das Molduras Relacionais: a influência de fatores situacionais no desempenho cognitivo de universitários cotistas

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of the context of evaluation over the cognitive performance in an experiment. Students on the verge of executing a cognitive task (Mental Rotation Task) were induced to consider their relation to a group negatively associated with the domain of the test. If their performance decreased in the face of this manipulation we could say that this situation is a “stereotype threat”. The possibility of plummeting this decrease in the performance of the students under stereotype threat was also investigated. The sample was composed of 97 university students, both those who benefitted from affirmative action program and the ones that did not. The start point of this research is the idea that at least part of the discrepancy that can be seen in the grades of these two groups when they are compared is due to situational factors and therefore is important to identify and quantify these factors in order to lessen this discrepancy. The concepts involved in the construct of stereotype threat were investigated with the use of the Overlap of Self, Ingroup, and Outgroup Scale. The idea behind this scale is to see how the subjects perceive the similarity and distance between the two groups. Another measure used in the experiment was a scale to see how anxious the individual usually feel in evaluation contexts. Both these measures are important because they are related to the validity of the construct of stereotype threat and can moderate both its effectiveness and susceptibility. Theoretically, a behavior analytic approach to study the phenomenon was proposed. The objective in doing so is to close a gap between social psychology, behavior analysis and educational evaluation. All these areas have many premises in common and the concept here in view show how an interdisciplinary approach can benefit all of them. The concepts used were stimulus equivalence, stimulus control and specially those coming from the relational frame theory. As for the experiment, it was composed of three blocks with 40 tasks each. Between the blocks 1 and 2 either a control text, a valorization text or a threat text was introduced. Then between the blocks 2 and 3 either a text aimed to reduce the threat, or to reduce the anxiety or a control text. The results have shown a statistically significant better performance of the “non affirmative action” in the first block. In the second block, the group of “stereotype threat affirmative action” was the one with the worst performance in contrast with the “stereotype threat control group” that were the ones who increased most theirs scores. The “valorization stimuli” did not show a clear result for any of the groups. In the third block, the “affirmative action group” as a whole decreased their scores, but the “non affirmative action” kept increasing theirs. Nevertheless, the “affirmative action” in the subgroup of “stereotype reduction” were the ones who increased most their performance, even more than the “non affirmative action” group. Group valorization and reduction in anxiety have shown ambiguous results even in the qualitative level of analysis. In the Anxiety Inventory of Taking Tests, there was not a significant difference between the groups (affirmative and non affirmative action groups). The Overlap of Self, Ingroup, and Outgroup Scale showed that the participants did not consider that there was a significant difference between their groups or that their identifications were mutually excludent or opposite.