French-Arab students and verbal intellectual performance:Do they really suffer from a negative intellectual stereotype?

Stigmatized group membership leads to deleterious consequences for individuals. More specifically, according to stereotype threat literature, the awareness of negative intellectual stereotypes can impair stereotyped group members’ performance. Based on this framework, two studies were designed to explain the lower grades obtained by French-Arab students, compared to French students. An Implicit Association Test (Study 1) revealed that native French students automatically expressed a negative stereotype regarding French-Arab students’ intellectual abilities. The second study (Study 2) examined whether this negative stereotype could alter French-Arab students’ intellectual performance in a threatening context. As expected, French-Arab students underperformed when the verbal task was presented as a measure of intellectual ability, compared to French students. When the task was presented as non-diagnostic, their performance equaled that of French students. The discussion herein addressed implications of these results in terms of discrimination against the French-Arab population.

Résumé

Etre membre d’un groupe stigmatisé et avoir connaissance des traits stéréotypiques associés à ce groupe peut se révéler lourd de conséquences pour l’individu. L’effet délétère de cette situation sur les performances des individus a été mis en évidence à de nombreuses reprises, et est connu sous le terme d’effet de menace du stéréotype. L’objectif des recherches présentées ici est de montrer que les faibles performances académiques observées chez les jeunes français d’origine maghrébine pourraient découler d’un tel processus. Deux études allant dans ce sens sont proposées. L’Etude 1 met en évidence, au moyen d’un test d’association implicite, l’existence d’un stéréotype d’infériorité intellectuelle associé à la population des immigrés d’origine maghrébine en France. L’Etude 2 révèle que ce stéréotype est non seulement connu de cette population, mais qu’il a des conséquences délétères sur les performances à une tâche présentée comme étant diagnostique des aptitudes intellectuelles. Lorsque cette tâche est présentée de la sorte, les performances d’étudiants français d’origine maghrébine sont significativement diminuées comparativement à la même tâche présentée comme non diagnostique de l’intelligence, révélant ainsi un effet de menace du stéréotype. L’implication de la stigmatisation des français d’origine maghrébine dans ces résultats est discutée.

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Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale des Comportements et Cognitions, Département de Psychologie, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre-La Défense, 200 Avenue de la République, 92000, Nanterre Cedex, France

Cindy Chateignier

Université de Genève, Switzerland

Marion Dutrévis

F.P.S.E., Sciences de l’Education, Unimail, 40 bd. Du Pont d’Arve, CH-1211, Genève 4, Suisse

Marion Dutrévis

Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale et Cognitive (LAPSCO), Université Blaise Pascal, 34, av. Carnot, 63037, Clermont-Ferrand, France

Armelle Nugier

Département de Psychologie, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale des Comportements et des Cognitions, Université Paris Ouest, UFR S.P.S.E., 200 a venue de la République, 92001, Nanterre cedex, France

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Chateignier, C., Dutrévis, M., Nugier, A. et al. French-Arab students and verbal intellectual performance: Do they really suffer from a negative intellectual stereotype?. Eur J Psychol Educ 24, 219 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173013

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Received: 15 February 2008

Revised: 15 November 2008

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173013