Prometheus 6

You know Claude Steele brought the "stereotype threat" theory to light (I'd give you a link to the excellent article he wrote on the topic for The Atlantic Monthly, but after all these years they've decided to disappear their archives behind a financial firewall). It's a useful explanatory tool, though some would like to discredit the idea. It has been found applicable to women and mathematics, men and athletics, everyone, it seems, has some area in which they can be vulnerable to stereotype threat.

I believe the National Institute of Mental Health just documented the physical mechanism by which stereotype threat operates.

First of all, let me show you an abstract from The Journal of Personality & Social Psychology (these damn journals cost too much for a human to subscribe too):

Converging Evidence That Stereotype Threat Reduces Working Memory Capacity.
by Schmader, Toni; Johns, Michael
from Journal of Personality & Social Psychology. 2003 Sep Vol 85(3) 440-452

Although research has shown that priming negative stereotypes leads to lower performance among stigmatized individuals, little is understood about the cognitive mechanism that accounts for these effects. Three experiments tested the hypothesis that stereotype threat interferes with test performance because it reduces individuals' working memory capacity. Results show that priming self-relevant negative stereotypes reduces women's (Experiment 1) and Latinos' (Experiment 2) working memory capacity. The final study revealed that a reduction in working memory capacity mediates the effect of stereotype threat on women's math performance (Experiment 3). Implications for future research on stereotype threat and working memory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)

And now from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Press Release

October 29, 2004

Stress Impairs Thinking Via Mania-Linked Enzyme

An errant enzyme linked to bipolar disorder, in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, impairs cognition under stress, an animal study shows. The disturbed thinking, impaired judgment, impulsivity, and distractibility seen in mania, a destructive phase of bipolar disorder, may be traceable to overactivity of protein kinase C (PKC), suggests the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Institute on Aging (NIA), and the Stanley Foundation. It explains how even mild stress can worsen cognitive symptoms, as occurs in bipolar disorder, which affects 2 million Americans.

Abnormalities in the cascade of events that trigger PKC have also been implicated in schizophrenia. Amy Arnsten, Ph.D., and Shari Birnbaum, Ph.D., of Yale University, and Husseini Manji, M.D., of NIMH, and colleagues, report on their discovery in the October 29, 2004 issue of Science.

“Either direct or indirect activation of PKC dramatically impaired the cognitive functions of the prefrontal cortex, a higher brain region that allows us to appropriately guide our behavior, thoughts and emotions,” explained Arnsten. “PKC activation led to a reduction in memory-related cell firing, the code cells use to hold information in mind from moment-to-moment. Exposure to mild stress activated PKC and resulted in prefrontal dysfunction, while inhibiting PKC protected cognitive function.”

This sort of results renders moot much yammering. A physical basis for stereotype threat should change the nature of the discussion considerably.