[sheri]

In my Psych course in college we were told on how playing on gender roles can affect performance. Boys and girls were given a math test. On average they performed equally. However when they were given the test and told that the test was also to evaluate how girls do as compared to boys the results were interesting. Girls did worse then average on being told this and boys did better than average. This article seems to reinforce this point, as the expectation that boys would do better actually caused them to perform better than average. It also points out how corrosive stereotypes can be, as just the expectation that girls would not do well in math caused a drop in their performance. I don't have references for these studies unfortunately.

[diydsp]

In addition, there was a recent study that said when women write fake names on their test papers before they take math tests, they do better! [1] This suggests not only do gender expectations influence performance, but one's own assessment of one's identity has an influence on performance!

Maybe that's why some people have multiple personalities - one is good at math, one at geography, one at programming ;)

[1]http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/07/if-women-a...

[cLeEOGPw]

Boys were more motivated by competition, and girls were stressed by expectations that boys will be better.

Regarding the original article, people who were told the answer got flashed might simply doubted their intuition less.