No evidence for meaningful stereotype threat effects in tournament chess players

Past research has concluded that stereotype threat effects cause female chess players to underperform against male opponents. Here, we investigated whether this effect is large enough be practically meaningful, and whether it varies in line with the stereotype threat account. We analysed moves from 118,053 tournament chess games (N = 29,864 players), to test for a player × opponent gender interaction on performance, whether mixed-gender games were played more aggressively, and whether female players performed better in female-only tournaments. We also tested for moderation by the Gender Inequality Index of a player’s country, a player’s birth year, and the year in which a game was played. Equivalence testing (bounds: β = ± 0.10) found all effects to be unsubstantial. Results suggest that female tournament chess players do not experience stereotype threat effects, and that gender disparities in chess performance might be better explained by factors such as participation rates.