Methods
Each participant in the study was asked to come to a classroom in the computer science building on campus for a study in partnership with the Career Center about interest in STEM majors. The classroom contained either the stereotypical or non-stereotypical items and participants were told to ignore those items because the room was being used by another group of people. The researcher then left the room to get the materials and the participant was alone in the room for a minute before the researcher came back and had them fill out a questionnaire about their interest in computer science, how important they considered the field, and their confidence in their abilities. When they were finished, they were taken to the lobby and asked to try to recall the objects in the room and asked if they had guessed that the objects were part of the study. No one did.
So let’s pause for a moment and digest this. A single student sat in a room for one minute and filled out an inventory about their abilities and interests. Could random background items really influence their responses?
Results
In short, yes. The researchers weren’t surprised to find that women in the stereotypical classroom were less interested in computer science. There is plenty of research showing that women are less interested in STEM fields than men (CITE). But what they found was that women in the non-stereotypical room were much more interested in computer science… even more so than the men! For men, the background items made no difference, but for women, sitting in a room where the objects signaled that they didn’t belong. Women in the study rated themselves as less “like a computer science major” than men.
