Does Stereotype Threat Exist in Philosophy? An Examination of Women’s Performance on Philosophic Logic Tasks

Abstract

Women are highly underrepresented in the field of philosophy, but not much research has examined the mechanisms behind this gender disparity. In contrast, there is a rich wealth of research offering explanations for the underrepresentation of women in STEM. The field specific abilities hypothesis offers a potential link between STEM and philosophy. This suggests that the mechanisms for the gender gap in philosophy may be similar to those in STEM. This experiment tried to determine whether stereotype threat contributed to the underrepresentation of women in philosophy by activating stereotype threat before women performed a standard logic task. The hypothesis was that women would underperform in the stereotype threat condition. Furthermore, framing the question as a narrative as opposed to a pure logic problem would mitigate the effects of stereotype threat for women. The results did not support either hypothesis. There was no significant effect of stereotype threat for women, and women actually performed better in the pure logic condition than they did in the narrative condition. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.