Karin and her mother live on welfare in a poor, inner-city neighborhood in Detroit. Karin is quite bright and highly motivated, and she really wants to get a college education. However, she knows that, on average, students from low-income homes perform more poorly on the SAT Reasoning Test than students from wealthier homes. When she takes the SAT, she is so nervous that she has trouble concentrating on the test items, and so her scores are disappointingly low. Which one of the following concepts best explains what has happened to Karin?

Stereotype threat

Explanation:

Stereotype threat is a situation where people are or feel at risk of conforming to their social group's stereotypes. It is an assertive assumption that one can be judged on the basis of a negative stereotype.

Karin was scared and nervous about her environment and stereotypes involved, this made her fail her exams. Karin was reminded of negative stereotypes about her poor background before taking a test and this made her perform worse on those exams, particularly because the negative stereotypes make her feel less academically.

Stereotype hazard is a reminder of how the social factors, like intelligence levels, can affect test scores.