Stanford Corrects Harvard Regarding Gender-Based Performance in Math, Science, Engineering

Stanford University psychologists Mary Murphy and Claude Steele have conducted a study to be published in a journal of the Association for Psychological Science that shows that the social and institutional organization of math, science and engineering environments play a significant role in contributing to gender ratio imbalance in maths, sciences and engineering performance and careers.

Harvard University President Larry Summers recently made a statement that has gotten a lot of attention from academia and the general public. Summers suggested that women may not possess the same "innate ability" or "natural ability" in the mathematic and scientific fields as do men. His surprising remark has resulted in many professional academicians, university presidents and scientists making public requests for more women to join the ranks of mathematicians, scientists and engineers.

Further Murphy, Steel and colleagues have conducted studies to test the hypothesis that it is environment and not innate traits that limit the numbers of women in these fields. Previous research into disparities between women's and men's academic choices have focused on biological and socialization explanations. The new study suggests that the environment and the situational cues of the environment are significantly important in the explanation for the differences between women and men in performance and representation in maths, sciences and engineering.

Situational awareness, the mental representation of events and people in situations that allows you to know what is going on so that you know what to do or so that you can avoid being surprised, is facilitated by situational cues: the things that alert you to the dynamics and complexities in situations requiring human performance. Murphy and colleagues present evidence for the hypothesis that both women's actual performance and expected performance in these fields are influenced by situational cues. One particular cue that they emphasize is the perception of "being outnumbered," which relates to identity safety and identity threat.

The study that Murphy, Steele and colleagues designed involved advanced Stanford University (SU) postgraduate students in the Math, Science and Engineering (MSE) program. These MSE postgraduates were shown videos of a hypothetical but possible MSE summer leadership conference. Some of the videos were gender balanced (equal numbers of women and men) and some were gender unbalanced (more men than women).

The gender unbalanced videos were designed to elicit possible perceptions of identity threat due to a preponderance of men or an equal presence of women. In the study, identity threat was assessed two ways: by measuring cognitive vigilance through recall of localized situational clues and physiological arousal while watching the video through monitoring vital signs. Assessment was also made of the participants' reported sense of belonging and desire to participate in the conference.

The results showed that women participants who watched the gender unbalanced videos that had a male-dominant ratio of 3 to 1could recall more details than men could recall about the situational clues relating to Math, Science and Engineering that had been planted throughout the testing room by Murphy in order to assess identity threat levels. Situational clues were things like magazines such as Science, Scientific American, and Nature laid on the tables and a poster of the periodic table and a portrait of Einstein on the walls.

This greater recall indicates that women who watched the gender unbalanced videos paid more attention to the identity-relevant items in order to assess the likelihood of encountering identity threat: women were more vigilant in attending to the details of the physical environment when they were watching the videos in which women were outnumber by men in a 3 to 1 ratio.

Hypervigilence and the attention allocation that it requires can interfere with performance. This attention allocation performance interference might help explain why women and men perform differently in the fields of math, science and engineering. The authors of the study report wrote, "It would not be surprising if the general cognitive functioning of women in the threatening setting was inhibited because of this allocation of attention toward MSE-related cues."

The physiological results were even more objectively indicative of identity threat arousal. The women who watched the gender unbalanced videos experienced faster heart rates and higher levels of sweating (skin conductance). They also reported a lower sense of belonging in relation to the hypothetical MSE conference and less desire to participate in the conference.

On the other hand, men who participated in the study showed no significant difference in physiological signs nor any lessening of feelings of belonging while watching either the gender balanced or gender unbalanced videos.

There is one result that Murphy calls "interesting". Both men and women expressed a stronger desire to attend the conference where men and women were in attendance in equal numbers: both men and women wanted to be where the women were. Murphy postulates that the reasons, the motivations, for wanting to attend a gender balanced conference might be different, though, for women and men.

Murphy explains: "Women probably feel more identity-safe in the environment where there are more women--they feel that they really could belong there--while men might simply be attracted by the unusual number of women in these settings. Men just aren't used to seeing that many women in these settings, because the numbers in real Math, Science, and Engineering settings are so unbalanced."

The study emphasizes the importance of situational cues. Murphy states that the study can "inspire greater motivation to attend to [situational] cues when creating and modifying environments so that they may foster perceptions of identity safety rather than [identity] threat."

These findings take research in a different direction from that behind President Summers' remark about lesser "innate ability" in women's MSE capacities. The study shows that identity threat is a significant factor in women's participation in MSE programs and careers. It further shows that identity threat is not due to gender, rather identity threat is attributable to the situation. Furthermore, the study strongly suggests that identity threat is a significant contributor to the differences between women's and men's performance and representation in Math, Science and Engineering.

This study appears in the October issue of Psychological Science, which is a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Catherine West, "Female Academic Performance Lies in the (Gender) Balance," Association for Psychological Science.