Stereotypes, Role Models, and the Formation of Beliefs Alex Eble and Feng Hu⇤ September 2017 Abstract Stereotypes can erroneously reduce children’s beliefs about their own ability, negatively affect- ing effort in school and investment in skills. Because of dynamic complementarity in the formation of human capital, this may lead to large negative effects on later life outcomes. In this paper, we show evidence that role models, in the form of female math teachers, can counter the negative effects of gender-based stereotypes on girls’ perceptions of their math ability. A simple model of investment in human capital under uncertainty predicts the greatest effects of role models ac- cruing to girls who perceive themselves to be of low ability. We exploit random assignment of students to classes in Chinese middle schools to test this prediction, examining the effects of teacher-student gender match on students’ perceived ability, aspirations, investment, and aca- demic performance. We find that, for girls who perceive themselves to be of low ability, being assigned a female math teacher causes large gains in all of these outcomes. We see no effects of teacher-student gender match on children who do not perceive themselves to be of low math ability. We show evidence against the potential alternative explanations that differential teacher effort, skill, teaching methods, or differential attention to girls drive these effects. ⇤Eble: Teachers College, Columbia University. Email:
[email protected] Hu: School of Economics and Manage- ment, University of Science and Technology Beijing
[email protected]. The authors are grateful to Joe Cummins, John Friedman, Morgan Hardy, Asim Khwaja, Ilyana Kuziemko, Bentley MacCleod, Randy Reback, Jonah Rockoff, Judy Scott- Clayton, and Felipe Valencia for generous input, as well as seminar audiences at Columbia, Fordham, the 2017 IZA transat- lantic meeting, and PacDev.