Hacking the Stereotype: The Relationship Between Computer Science Identity Imbalance and Happiness in High School Girls

There is a prevailing strong social stereotype that men, not women, belong in computer science. These negative implicit associations between computer science and females may be enough to deter women from pursuing the field. Previous research has examined the impact of implicit (unconscious) and explicit associations and identity imbalance on interest in computer science careers in adult populations. Though, to date, none has examined this relationship in adolescents. The present study examined how implicit gender and computer science associations in adolescent girls related to subjective happiness, the gender-computer science stereotype, as well as the imbalance between them. Additionally, this study examined how implicit associations are related to interest in taking computer science classes (short-term interest) and pursuing a career in computer science (long-term interest). Using a new method, identity imbalance was measured based on scores from three implicit associations tests (IATs); gender identity, computer science identity, and implicit gender-computer science associations or stereotypes. Participants were 35 high school girls enrolled in an extended hackathon after-school program (CodeQueens) that took place over 16 weeks. This program was designed to teach the girls how to code as well as instilling a sense of self-efficacy in computer science, identity as computer scientists (Me = Computer Science), and interest in learning more about computer science and potentially pursuing a career in the field. The goal of this project was to examine if identity imbalance was related to happiness and if implicit computer science identity was related to an interest (short and long-term) in computer science. Specifically, it was found that both short-term and long-term interest in computer science were positively related to implicit computer science identity, r (29) = .37, p = .046 and r (24) = .43, p = .038, respectively. No evidence was found indicating that identity balance was related to happiness. This study found that interest in computer science is reflective of identifying as a computer scientist.