The Obama Effect, Perhaps.

Stereotype threat creates significant performance gaps by introducing distracting mental chatter during challenging tasks. Research into the "Obama effect" demonstrates that performance disparities between black and white students on standardized tests diminished following Barack Obama's political success, suggesting that social context directly influences cognitive outcomes. Psychologist Claude Steele’s experiments reveal that when individuals are reminded of negative stereotypes—whether regarding gender in math or race in academic testing—they experience elevated blood pressure and impaired short-term memory. These performance deficits arise not from a lack of ability, but from the cognitive load of internalizing or resisting these stereotypes. Reframing tasks to remove diagnostic labels, such as characterizing an IQ test as a simple puzzle or emphasizing that a test is not diagnostic of intelligence, effectively neutralizes this threat and allows individuals to perform at their true skill level.