Throughout pregnancy and into the immediate postpartum period, women are generally perceived to be incompetent, stressed, and forgetful. However, the neuropsychological “baby brain” literature remains unclear and contradictory. Across two studies, we provide the first experimental tests of whether perceived cognitive impairment in pregnancy can be explained by stereotype threat theory, which proposes that awareness of negative stereotypes about one’s ingroup can harm performance. In Study 1 (N = 364), we tested stereotype threat effects in a 2 (stereotype threat versus no threat) × 3 (pregnant women versus new mothers versus never-pregnant female control) design. We observed a main effect of group on memory performance (pregnant women and new mothers performed worse than controls), but no other main or interactive effects. Study 2 (N = 409) aimed to extend these research questions with mathematics ability, memory, and attention as the dependent variables. Again, we found that a stereotype threat manipulation did not impair pregnant women and new mothers’ cognitive performance, nor was there any interactive effects. Groups also did not differ in their performance. We discuss these results in the context of stereotype threat mechanisms, calling into question whether a stereotype threat paradigm can be applied effectively to pregnancy-related stereotypes. This work has implications for the advancement of stereotype threat as a theory and contributes to the reappraisal of the utility of stereotype threat as a way of understanding how stereotypes affect performance.

中文翻译：

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激活“婴儿大脑”刻板印象对孕妇认知功能的影响

在整个怀孕期间和产后不久，女性通常被认为是无能、压力大和健忘的。然而，神经心理学“婴儿大脑”文献仍不清楚且相互矛盾。在两项研究中，我们提供了第一个实验测试，证明怀孕期间感知到的认知障碍是否可以用刻板印象威胁理论来解释，该理论提出，对内部群体的负面刻板印象的认识会损害表现。在研究 1 ( N = 364），我们在 2（刻板印象威胁与无威胁）×3（孕妇与新​​妈妈与未怀孕女性对照）设计中测试了刻板印象威胁效应。我们观察到组对记忆表现的主要影响（孕妇和新妈妈的表现比对照组差），但没有其他主要或交互影响。研究 2 ( N = 409) 旨在以数学能力、记忆力和注意力作为因变量来扩展这些研究问题。我们再次发现，刻板印象威胁操纵不会损害孕妇和新妈妈的认知能力，也没有任何交互作用。各组的表现也没有差异。我们在刻板印象威胁机制的背景下讨论这些结果，质疑刻板印象威胁范式是否可以有效地应用于与怀孕相关的刻板印象。这项工作对刻板印象威胁作为一种理论的发展具有影响，并有助于重新评估刻板印象威胁作为理解刻板印象如何影响绩效的一种方式的效用。