The book Pitch Like Hollywood provides many examples from psychology experiments to show how a psychological state can affect both the presenter (the “pitcher”) and the audience. Some of these experiments used entrance exams and Advanced Placement tests. Test takers can learn from these.

On page 121 the book notes this about admissions tests and how similar they are to a sales pitch:

Gateway evaluations are stressful. These are tests that determine whether or not you gain admission to something. Ask any student who has her heart set on getting into Stanford how nervous she feels preparing for the SAT. Ask an applicant for a managerial position at a Fortune 500 company how he feels before going into that final interview. (121)

Ironically, this may demonstrate the law of unintended consequences. When I took the SAT, the College Board had never published any of its tests. Students were told that there was no way they could study for it, just do your best. Sure, we were nervous, but we did not worry about what we knew or did not know, we just “did our best.”

In the early 1980s New York State passed a law requiring that all gateway examinations including psychological tests and entrance exams had to be made public after they were conducted so that the test takers could see how they did and perhaps understand why they were or were not hired for a job or admitted to a school program.

This law went through the courts and finally, around 1985, the College Board was told by the New York Supreme Court that they had to start releasing their exams if they wanted to continue to conduct them in the state. They started publishing past SAT exams. People started examining the exams and soon there were all kinds of test preparation programs like Kaplan’s and the Princeton Review. The Princeton Review, Amsco, Barron’s, and others began publishing test review books.

I believe that, compared to when I took the SAT, students are much more nervous about these tests. Now they know what they are like. If someone says to them “Just do your best,” they are likely to reply, “But what if there are questions about something I haven’t studied or vocabulary I don’t understand?” Even before they take the test, they are already talking themselves out of doing well. Many studies have shown that if someone thinks they will not do well on something they are going to have to do, they really will not do as well. Pitch Like Hollywood reminds us of this a lot—if you think you are going to fail, you probably will.

It is easier said than done, but telling a student who is taking the SAT to do their best and not worry about it, really is not such a terrible idea. At best, realize there is nothing you can do about the “what ifs.”

A major factor in taking standardized tests is how you perceive yourself in your group identity. Yes, this is stereotyping, but we often stereotype ourselves.

We are all members of several demographic groups. Just about all of us have an age, an ethnicity, and a gender. All of these can be a source of negative predictions. (136)

One study done with Stanford undergraduate students had a group take a portion of the GRE, the Graduate Record Examination used by many graduate schools as part of their admissions process. Half the students were asked a series of background questions on their ethnicity, half were not. The African American students in the half that were asked about their ethnicity did not do as well as the African American students who were not asked questions about their ethnicity. Just this past week there was an article in the Wall Street Journal on beliefs about ethnic groups in school admissions.

Similarly, in another study, a two groups of Asian and White students were given the SAT. Before taking the test, one group was told that Asians do better than white students on the test, one group was not. The white students did not do as well as Asian students on the test, but only with the group who was told that there was a difference in outcomes according to ethnicity.

According to the authors of Pitch Like Hollywood, predictive stereotypes can be “fear-provoking albatrosses” that really are superficial if we can get beyond them. In fact, fear can work in your favor, just as “stage fright” can.

One study done with students taking a practice GRE divided students into two groups. One group was told that if they felt afraid about the test, they would do better. The other group was told nothing. “The group that was told anxiety symptoms would lead to better scores on the GRE practice test scored 50 points higher [out of 800] on the math section…They ended up scoring 65 points higher on the actual test they took several months later.” (178) The Educational Testing Service considers any score difference of more than 35 on one of their 800-based tests to be statistically significant.

Gender and racial stereotyping tell us that Asian students are good at math and that girls are not as good at math as boys. A group of Asian women were selected to take a math test. Before the test, half the group had to fill out a questionnaire on questions having to do with being a woman or a female. The other half had a questionnaire that asked them about being Asian. When the women took the test, the “women in the group who were surveyed about being female did worse than the other group of women who were surveyed about being Asian” (181).

In another study, girls did significantly better on the Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus test when they were asked about their gender after taking the test rather than before taking the test.

These results all speak for themselves. Avoid stereotyping yourself—or stereotyping others. If you are black and taking one of those tests, don’t worry about “acting white,” just do your best. If you are female, ditto when taking a math or science test. For everyone, understand how people can talk themselves out of doing well for superficial reasons or personal things over which they have no control, and use any nervousness to your advantage.