Question

At the age of 66, Hilda is worried when researchers ask her to take an IQ test. She knows that older people are assumed to have failing cognitive abilities. Which term is used to describe Hilda’s anxiety? How could Hilda’s test performance be affected by her worries?

Answer 1

Answer:

The answer to the two questions here would be thus:

1. Which term is used to describe Hilda´s anxiety? would be: stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is a situation in which a person may feel threatened by a certain circumstance, or condition which will make evident the differences to which that person has become accustomed due to their race, gender, or age group.

Hilda is a 66-year-old woman who has become accustomed to believing that she will not perform well on an IQ test, because stereotypically, society, and Hilda herself as part of that society, believes that people her age are less skilled at such tests than younger ones. So her body responds through anxiety, which is a form of stress, to the threat, which is the IQ test.

2. Hilda´s test performance will be affected because her own mind and her body are in "fight or flight" mode, which means that the sense of threat will hinder the true capacity that her brain has, despite any differences, to sift through a problem, and find a solution to it. Hilda is ignoring the fact that her brain´s capacity will not necessarily be affected by age, and therefore she will not give it a chance to exert its full capacity to solve the issue.