When older adults were told they were going to take a memory test they performed more poorly than younger adults on a task.However,when they were told the task emphasized learning about new information they performed similarly to younger adults.This provides and example of

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This situation demonstrates stereotype threat, which is a phenomenon where people who are aware of negative stereotypes about their group perform more poorly on tasks related to that stereotype. In this case, the older adults were primed with the stereotype that they would perform poorly on a memory test, and this led to worse performance. However, when they were given a different task that emphasized learning new information (which did not have a negative stereotype associated with it), they performed similarly to younger adults.

When Older Adults Were Told They Were Going to Take