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One of Walton's colleagues at Stanford, psychology professor Geoffrey Cohen, devised an intervention aimed at reducing stereotype threat. Like Beilock and Ramirez's exercise, it asks students to write briefly, but in this case participants are instructed to choose something they value and describe why it matters to them. "Music is important to me because it gives me a way to express myself when I'm mad, happy, or sad," one participant wrote. One study showed that this values-affirmation exercise shrank the performance gap between white and black students by 40%. In another, it erased the gender gap in test scores in a challenging college physics course, raising the women's average grade from a C to a B--higher than the average male student's grade.
Embracing a positive stereotype can also help, a phenomenon psychologists call stereotype lift. Kaitlin Pethtel, a 17-year-old senior at the Laurel School in Ohio, often gets nervous before tests. But she tells herself that there are plenty of reasons for her to feel confident, with the help of a special test-day pencil handed out by her school. Wrapped around the pencil is a small piece of paper that lists some encouraging facts: "Girls get higher grades than boys," for example, and "Girls from single-sex schools outperform boys and girls from coed schools on standardized tests." "Reading over those statements is reassuring," Kaitlin says, "because it reminds me that if I've studied hard for the test, there's no reason I can't do well."
These measures may not be enough for everyone. Students who have taken steps to psychologically prepare for tests but still suffer severe anxiety at the prospect of them should consult a mental-health professional.
One step all students can take to improve their performance on tests is to change how they study for them. "Many students have every reason to be nervous before an exam, because they haven't prepared adequately and don't know how to do so," notes Damour, the psychologist at Laurel. "Then they sit down to take the test, and they freak out because they've never practiced doing what the test is asking them to do." Reviewing class notes and textbooks can familiarize students with the material on a test, but it doesn't help them take the exam. Damour suggests viewing a test more like a play, with the preparation as a dress rehearsal that replicates the format and time limit of the exam. "You would never just read over your lines and then show up on the opening night of the school play, right?" she says. "It's the same thing with a test. To be ready for it, practice doing what you'll have to do in the test-taking situation."
STARTING YOUNG
Even little kids aren't immune to test anxiety. Researchers have seen evidence of it in students as young as first- and second-graders. Their worries tend to manifest in nonverbal signs that adults may miss, says psychologist Heidi Larson: stomachaches, difficulty sleeping and a persistent urge to leave the classroom to go to the bathroom. "I had one mother tell me that her son had no problem with tests," recalls Larson, a professor of counseling and student development at Eastern Illinois University. "Then a week later she came back and said that her son had burst into tears the night before the big end-of-year exam, saying that he was afraid he wouldn't be promoted to the next grade."