Stereotype threat is a psychological phenomenon that could affect everyone and influence people’s performance. Research in this felids shows that the fear of confirming the negative stereotype of people’s identity groups can affect how people think and act. Stereotype threat can also cause people to underperform when people try hard to disprove these negative stereotype. In the book “Whistling Vivaldi”, Claude Steele analysis how stereotypes affect our life and what we can do to reduce the effect on us. In our everyday lives, everyone experiences the negative stereotype about their groups. As a female scientist, I will face the negative stereotype that women are worse scientists than men, and female scientists are less capable than male scientists. …show more content…
Steele addresses that “identity threat made people anxious and that it was the anxiety it caused that directly impaired performance” (116). This means that anxiety is one of the reasons that causes people underperform. People feel nervous under the fear of confirming negative stereotype, and that anxiety makes people make mistake and the negative stereotype become self-fulfilling. For example, because I am afraid if I said something wrong while talking to my male colleagues, it makes me looks unprofessional, and I feel nervous while I am talking. It is that anxiety of making mistake in front of my male colleagues impaired my performance. This proves what Steele says about how our stereotype threat cause people feel anxious and that anxiety can further affect people’s performance, which makes negative stereotype …show more content…
As I mentioned above, the biggest problem that causes the negative stereotype of women are worse scientists than men is because comparing to the number of males working in the science field, the number of females working in the science field is relatively low. Therefore, the most effective strategies to decrease the negative stereotype on female scientist is to boost the number of women who work in those field. Lack of critical mass can be a threat scenarios to me as a female scientist, but if I have critical mass, which means there are enough female scientists working in the science field, then I will not be affect by the negative stereotype. This is important because as Steele concludes in the book, “it tells us whether there are enough identity mates around that we won’t be marginalized on the basis of that identity… a low count signals bad possibilities: that we might have trouble being accepted, that might lack associates who share our sensibilities, that we might lack status and influence in the setting” (140-141). This means that for people who are affected by their identity threat, people with the same identity in that setting is important to them because that means they are not the only one or two who need to face these stereotype threats, and they have the power and influence in that setting. Hence, if the percentage of women working in
Knowledge of negative stereotypes can influence people’s performance. Stereotype threat creates extra performance pressure through apprehensiveness about conforming to negative stereotypes (Woolfolk &
Author Shankar Vedantam in his science article “How a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down Performance” implies that if a person is subjected to stereotypes it can affect your performance. The author develops this idea by first introducing his theme with a question, then he tells of experiments others have made to support this idea, and finally he wraps it up by telling us that companies and schools are victim to stereotypes and needs to stop. The author’s purpose is to explain to us how stereotypes can affect our lives in order to call out to people so we can lower the rates of stereotyping. The author establishes a educated tone for people who are interested in research and global
Miller, Alice H. Eagly, and Marcia C. Linn, it measured gender-science stereotype, “” (2). which is defined as associations that connects science with men more than women. This is believed to come from a lack of representation of women in the relative field. The study notes that putting women in science related fields in media, or having more women in the field, lessons that stereotype. They conducted the experiment by measuring 66 nations, which consisted of 350,000 participants’ explicit and implicit gender-science stereotypes. They found a relationship “between women's representation in science and national gender-science stereotype” (Eagly, Linn, Miller 8). The results of the study concluded that “implicit and explicit measures indicated strong association of science with man” (Eagly, Linn, Miller
Throughout history stereotyping has been used to generalize a race class. Although when a race is being stereotyped it can be done in a positive way, in many cases it has also been done in order to keep a minority group inferior. In the article, “Thin Ice” by Claude M. Steele, Steele shows how African Americans who are stereotyped or have the mental image of being stereotyped negatively can affect their success in their academic success. In the other hand, in Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou’s “The Asian American Achievement Paradox” demonstrates when a stereotype is positive it can feed one’s ego and deliver better outcomes in a people’s academic achievements. Even though a large population of people can be stereotyped in a certain way through false concepts, it can affect the mindset of a single individual.
The book I chose to read was Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele. In the book he discusses the different types of stereotype threats that different gender, race, and different age groups experience. The book is mainly on his research to show that because of this stereotypes and identity contingencies, people experience stigmatism so strongly that it dramatically affects their academic abilities and other aspects of their lives. In his book he conducts different experiments to prove that theory.
Stereotypes are unescapable. No matter what part of the world you are at or who you are talking to, everyone has some bias. Claude Steele say’s exactly this in his book “Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do” when he states “ We could all take out a piece of paper, write down the major stereotypes of these identities, and show a high degree of agreement in what we wrote.” His piece addresses the effects of stereotypes, which result in what Steele calls “stereotype threat”. Stereotype threat is being aware that there is an expected behavior or response to a certain part of your identity and being afraid to carry out this expected behavior or response. The threat of proving this stereotype can cause you to lose
Stereotyping is a normal part of every one’s life. Humans, by nature, classify things. We name animals and classify them by common characteristics but stereotyping can have negative repercussions, and everyone does it. In a recent study it was proven that everyone has an unconscious need to stereotype (Paul). In Junteenth and The Invisible man, Ralph Ellison argues that stereotyping can cause mayhem by making the people become something they are not.
Furthermore, stereotypes are used to increase an individual’s self-esteem and strengthen their social identity. Social identity theory contributes largely to the formation of stereotypes, as it states that a person’s social identity is formed from being part of a group. To justify one’s own group, they often pick out real or imaginary differences and flaws in other groups and compare those to their own group (Ford & Tonander, 1998). This led Ford
Stereotype threat inclusion/omission: whether including or omitting information that could potentially indicate gender bias would affect performance.
Stereotypes are socially constructed, over-generalized views regarding a particular group of persons with certain characteristics that are widely accepted, and usually expected, in a society. The dominant group of a certain society, which in this case is probably Caucasians and men, usually creates these social constructions. Claude M. Steele, a researcher from Stanford University, performed multiple research studies on the idea and psychological effects of stereotypes on its victims. In his studies, he coins the term “stereotype threat” as the “social-psychological predicament that can arise from widely-known negative stereotypes about one's group,” which implies that “the existence of such a stereotype means that anything one does or any of one's features that conform to it make the stereotype more plausible as a self-characterization in the eyes of others, and perhaps even in one's own eyes” (Steele 797).
Devine (1989) argues that stereotypes are inevitable on the basis that stereotypes and prejudice coexist and that stereotyping occurs automatically. Devine attempts to prove this hypothesis in three experiments. Devine reasons that “as long as stereotypes exist, prejudice will follow.” This hypothesis is rooted in a correlation. Prejudice and stereotypes are related, however there is no clear evidence of causality; Knowledge of a stereotype does not mean an individual agrees with it.
In general terms, stereotype threat is being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group (Steele, 1997). “The existence of such a stereotype means that anything that one does or any of one’s features that conform to it make the stereotype more reasonable as a self- characterization in the eyes of others, and perhaps even in one’s own eyes” (Steele, 1992). People are stereotyped according to their group. A group can be identified by race, gender, ethnicity, age, religion among others. Stereotypes
In this world there are many things people are guilty of, one of those guilt’s is stereotyping others , even if it wasn’t meant in a harmful are negative way we all have been a victim or the aggressor . This paper will discuses what stereotypes are, how they affect people and how stereotypes can affect society. However, the common factor in either situation is that no good comes from stereotyping others.
Prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping are important topics at the cause of debating within social psychology. A stereotype is a generalization about a group of people, in which certain traits cling to all members, regardless of actual individual variation (Akert, Aronson, & Wilson, 2010). As humans, people assign objects and individuals into categories to organize the environment. Individuals do this for not only organization, but also survival. Is stereotyping inevitable? That is the question; according to Devine (2007), it is, but Lepore and Brown (2007) have to disagree. Devine believes that “stereotyping is automatic, which makes it inevitable.” On the other hand, Lepore and Brown are not convinced that stereotyping is
When social psychologist Claude Steele began writing about the problem of stereotype threats in the 1990s, many other researchers began to do the same thing. Steele offered that when members of certain groups can be stereotyped in a negative way, they will be seen “through the lens of diminishing stereotypes and low expectations” (1999, p.44). According to Kassin, Fein, and Markus, stereotype threat is defined as “The experience of concern about being evaluated based on negative stereotypes about one’s group.” Steele concluded that stereotype threat can be achieved in two ways: reactions to “threat in the