Stereotype Threat

Well it has come time to start working on my second experiment this year which is going to revolve around this idea of stereotype threat. It is actually really interesting how someones performance can be altered just from the mere mention of a stereotype that they would be affected by. For example, give a woman a math test without saying anything and she will perform as well as a man. Give her the same test and tell her that it has shown gender differences (which primes her to think about the general stereotype that men are better at math than women) and she will perform significantly worse.

Currently I am trying to figure out how I am going to measure this construct with my population. I have a few ideas which I have thrown out to my supervisor and he seems supportive - however it is up to me to put all these ideas together. I know that I am capable of doing such a thing, but I just don't want to get too ahead of myself. Supervisors are there to rein you in and make sure you aren't going after the big picture head first and instead are taking things one manageable step at a time... so I don't know. On Friday I was in the office for 10 hours or so working on this project and thinking in the back of my head that I hope when I show my work to my supervisor he doesn't shit all over it :P

Hmm.. lets see what else has been going on. Not too much I guess. Lisa is finally back from Manchester so that's good.. been hanging out with her and Jeff mostly :) It is going to be so horrible when Jeff goes back to Maryland in the summer... what am I going to do?! He's my rock here :( Guess I will have to manage somehow, especially considering he can't wait to get back home.. he is literally counting the days! Guess I am just lucky he didn't leave in December like he wanted to.

Alright, laundry time! Over and out!