Does gender stereotype threat in gamified educational environments cause anxiety? An experimental study

Gamification has been used by many researchers and practitioners in online education to increase students' motivation and engagement. However, studies showed that gamification elements also caused negative effects on learning. Moreover, recent investigations reported stereotype threat by gender had impacted students performance, in particular, the use of a male-dominant leaderboard affected women math performance. In this sense, we attained to conduct a hypothetical study to investigate whether gender stereotype threat in online gamified educational scenarios influences anxiety and performance. We conducted a three-stage survey where participants were asked indirectly about their anxiety, then they were redirected to a hypothetical online gamified system to solve a logic quiz. Afterward, their anxiety was assessed one more time in order to find out how much it had changed. We found evidence indicating the male-stereotyped environment affected participants' anxiety.