Again, no predicament. So it’s not the stereotype per se that impairs their performance. It’s the stereotype plus who they are, what’s important to them, the stiffness of the challenge they face, and whether they are in a setting that is diverse enough that the stereotype could be in play. It’s these elements together that make a performance-impairing predicament.

There is poignancy to stereotype threat: It’s felt most by those in the stereotyped group who are most identified with achieving in the area where the stereotype applies, and who are trying to do challenging or frustrating things in that area. It affects most the vanguard of the group— as in Mirna wanting to succeed as an ultrarunner; as in women trying to break glass ceilings in finance; as in highly invested African American law students taking challenging state bar exams; as in white American males trying to succeed in elite basketball. That’s when, in the heat of frustration, the stereotype’s dark message— “everybody knows that, because of who you are, you probably can't do well at this, and that you probably don’t belong”— becomes personally relevant. That’s when it can cause enough churn to interfere with performance.

But it’s a different story when the task is difficult enough to cause frustration— when it’s at the frontier of one’s skills, so to speak. The experience of frustration gives credence to the stereotype. It tells the person: “Given your frustration, maybe the stereotype is true, and true of you,” or “Given your frustration, maybe others will see the stereotype as true, and true of you.” For people who care about doing well on the task, both ideas are upsetting, threatening. They try to forget— they try to forget the stereotype and push on.

She keeps remembering. Identity threat, in this way, is more blanketing than the threat of interpersonal judgements. It’s there anywhere the stereotype applies, and in those settings, it can come from anybody, anytime.

Imagine this playing out in important settings like school, the workplace, or public spaces. Being haunted by a dehumanizing stereotype about your group’s humanity, intelligence, or goodness can keep one in remembering mode, as a painful condition of life.

The actor’s perspective is different. The actor— the person in the setting coping with, among other things, the possibility of being stereotyped— is not looking at himself. He’s looking out at the circumstances he’s dealing with. It’s those circumstances that stand out to him, not himself. He’s likely, then, at least in large part, to see the effects of stereotypes differently than an observer: not as an idea about his group that he comes to believe at the expense of his own confidence and life outcomes but more simply as a threat posed by other people in the setting. He sees their stereotype-driven judgments and treatment of him that could disadvantage him in important settings like school, a business situation, or a traffic stop.

So, to the question of how to build trust in diverse settings, Churn recommends taking the actor’s perspective. It’s a mindset that searches for what people in the setting are contending with, including what they are contending with because of their identities.