Cytokine responses and math performance: The role of stereotype threat and anxiety reappraisals

• Female college students take a math exam described as gender-fair or gender-biased.
• In one condition, participants directed to reappraise physiological arousal.
• Performance on math exam and post-exam levels of the cytokine IL-6 were measured.
• Reappraisal of physiological arousal buffers inflammatory responses to exam across conditions.
• Reappraisal of arousal especially effective buffer of inflammatory responses in stereotype threat condition.

This research independently manipulated two potential attenuators of stereotype threat – reappraisal of anxiety and test framing – to explore their independent and combined effects. Female participants took a difficult math exam that was described as gender-biased or gender-fair and were told that anxious arousal could positively impact performance or were given no information regarding arousal. Levels of the cytokine Interleukin-6 (IL-6), an immune marker of inflammation, were measured in oral mucosal transudate (OMT) both before and after the exam. Our findings indicate that directing reappraisal of physiological arousal attenuated increases in IL-6 across test framing conditions, and was especially effective under stereotype threat (i.e., gender-biased test condition). Reappraisal also mapped onto better test performance in the threat condition. Together, these findings provide insight into the unique and interactive effects of two situational interventions meant to reduce stereotype threat, indexed here by both physiological and performance-based correlates of threat.