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Whistling Vivaldi Stereotypes

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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

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