Claude Steele, in his book “Whistling Vivaldi,” sheds new light on how pervasive stereotypes can influence individual’s behavior and academic performance, and how they perpetuate in different social groups. Stereotype threat, as defined by Steele, is “being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about a social group one identifies with.” (Steele, 1997) It is a general phenomenon – standard predicament of life – that springs from intersubjectivity. (p.5) We tend to spontaneously categorize and label people according to their social groups. Whenever someone is placed in a situation where a certain stereotype can be applied to themselves, they can be judged and treated accordingly. When individuals are aware of this, they may become conscious of their identity and do not perform as well as they could. Research has clearly shown the consequences of stereotype threat on academic performance. Steele and other researchers presented studies testing the theory of stereotype threat by confirming its negative effect on African American students’ performance on verbal reasonings test. When told prior to the test that it measures intelligence, the students underperformed. When race was not emphasized, there was no discernible difference in performance compared to the white students. (p.50) The underperformance was caused by stigmatization; the students were pressured to disconfirm the negative stereotype because they felt that their abilities are under suspicion, (p.31) distracting them from focusing entirely on solving the given questions. One of the largest breakthroughs of his research was providing a better understanding of who is vulnerable to such threats. Experiences of T... ... middle of paper ... ... Steele has clearly shown that performance in academic circumstances can be impaired by sentience of one’s identity viewed through the social lens of stereotypes. Ju Hee Lee (20426432) PSYCH 253 Book Review March 24 th , 2014 References Esch, C. v. (2012). Weatherhead School of Management. Stereotype Threat: Implications for the Organizational Sciences. Retrieved March 21, 2014, from http://weatherhead.case.edu/departments/organizational-behavior/workingPapers/WP-12-04.pdf Steele, C. M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: and other clues to how stereotypes affect us. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Steele, C. M. (1997). A Threat In The Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity And Performance.. American Psychologist, 52(6), 613-629. Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2003). Stereotype Lift. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39(5), 456-467.
One of the problems with this argument is that not everyone in society identifies with these stereotypes. If the audience does not find the characteristics to be true they could shut off thought, thereby defeating his purpose for writing the article. There are no statistics presented in this article. The lack of statistics or other evidence, such as results of surveys, could lead Mr. Leo’s audience to believe that these are his own perceptions. In the seventh paragraph, Leo makes references to Catholics, Asians, Republicans, and Africans.
Stereotypes are everywhere and can often create problems for people, however they become even more detrimental to teens, especially at schools. Writer and science correspondent for the NRA, Shankar Vedantam, in his article, “How a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down Performance,” explains that stereotypes can hurt the performance of the person that it is associated with. He supports his claim by first explaining that how well people do on tests are determined by who administers the questions, then he explains that studies show that when people take tests and they are reminded of negative stereotypes that associate with them, then they don’t do as well, and finally he states that the studies are being widely ignored by all the people who should take heed of the findings, such as test makers and college acceptance people. Vedantam’s purpose is to tell you about the research conducted by Huang in order to inform you that stereotypes can affect performance on tests. In my 9th grade class at Point Loma High School, we were given questions about stereotypes from our teacher to interview two students.
Stephen Bonnycastle in his criticism, In Search of Authority, explains stereotypes as, "The system (sometimes known as “the patriarchal order”) that causes the majority of men and women to take on these different roles ... hidden, like the rules of grammar in a language."(10). When a stereotype is introduced into a situation for a extended period of time, it is psychologically proven that it will become an expectation. Stereotypes prove to act as an obscuring lens into which most people view the world. When a person is unaware of a culture, race, gender they mainly use the stereotypes to judge them against. Stereotypes are not just a generalization of a group of people, "stereotypes warrant a closer analysis, because they powerfully shape the reality of gender differences..."(Brody 396). The effects of stereotypes go deeper than just male and female, race against race, "everyone is vulnerable to stereotype threat, at least in some circumstances"(reducingstereotypethreat.org). Stereotypes overall cause negative side effects, some fatal. These side effects are psychological as well as physical. People who
"The Impact of Stereotyping on Young People." MediaSmarts. National Film Board of Canada, n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
"Stereotypes, Identity, & Belonging Lab." Stereotypes, Identity, & Belonging Lab (SIBL). n.d. n.p. Web. 04 Feb. 2014. .
The Web. 15 Jan. 2015. Izumi, Yutaka and Frank Hammonds. " Changing Ethnic/Racial Stereotypes: The Roles of Individuals and Groups."
Assume you’re walking down a street and everywhere you turn you encounter pitch black darkness. You reach a point where you only have two choices; either you go left where there is a group of tattooed muscular black men or you go right where you find a group of well dressed white men. What would you do? Your immediate choice would be to stay clear from the group of black men and that you’d be better off going to the right. What just happened here was that you assumed a certain group of human beings is more likely to cause you harm than the other. From a very young age we start to categorize things in to different groups. We see pencils, pens, erasers and we categorize them in a group and call them ‘stationery’. Similarly we tend to categorize human beings in to different groups and associate certain behaviors or traits with these groups. We have this urge to categorize because it makes us ‘cognitively effective’. When we categorize, we no longer need to consider information about each member of the group; we assume that what holds true for some members must also be true for other members of the group. The act of categorizing human beings is known as stereotyping. The word stereotype has Greek roots; ‘stereos’ meaning firm and ‘typos’ meaning impression hence, ‘Firm Impression’. The word itself implies that we associate certain ‘impressions’ with a group and hold these impressions to be true for most if not each member of the group. Although many leading sociologists and psychologists will have us believe that stereotypes are firmly grounded in reality, the truth is stereotypes exist only because we allow them to; we cause their existence and ultimately perpetuate them because in reality stereotypes are nothing but mere logical fal...
Stereotypes are influence by the prejudice or “evaluation and/or feelings towards a group” (lecture, 6/3) that you hold, and they lead to discrimination, which is “differential treatement due to group membership” (lecture, 6/3). Although some stereotypes have been proven to be correct and positive, most are false and are extremely negative. Stereotypes are extremely hard to fight in our society because they can be both implicit and explicit. Explicit stereotypes are those that are more recent and controlled (lecture, 6/3). People who are openly racist towards African Americans have explicit stereotypes. Implicit stereotypes are those that are based off of emotion, early experience and emotion (lecture 6/3). These are especially tricky because we may not be completely aware that they exist in our minds, which means they are extra difficult to change. Stereotypes can also be dangerous because they affect the way we think and behave. For example, they affect our attributions or our “explanations for behavior” (lecture 10/15/14). There are many errors associated with attributions, the ultimate of these errors being stereotype driven attributions. This error involves being “particularly likely to ignore situational information when thinking about negative behaviors from outgroup members” (lecture 10/15/14). This means that when faced with a problem
Stereotype is a sweeping statement standardized image about a person or group with little or no evidence. The primary purpose is to hurt one’s feelings or to attack one’s character. Have you ever stereotyped someone or felt like you were being stereotyped against? How did being stereotyped affect you, or how did it make you feel once you got to know the person or persons? All kind of people make up our society. Within society, there are a massive amount of groups, most of which have been stereotyped in one way or another. We develop stereotypes when we are reluctant or incapable to obtain all information needed to make fair judgments about people or situations. In the absence of the unknown statistics, stereotyping allow us to “bridge the gaps.” Four of many different groups of people are the prime sources of stereotypes in our society are politicians, tattooed persons, feminists and senior citizens. If the thought of these groups of people mentioned directed some sort of negative icon within you then you are a protagonist of stereotype.
Fred Edmund Jandt (2003), the word “stereotype” was first used to show the judgments made about individuals on the origin of their racial background. Today the expression is more commonly used to pass on to events made on the basis of a groups association. Psychologists have attempted to give explanations of stereotyping as errors that our brains make in the judgment of other people that are related to those mistakes our brains make in the view of illustration illusions. When information is blurred, the brain frequently reaches the incorrect conclusion. (p.77)
Nittle, Nadra. "What Is a Stereotype – Examples and Definition of Stereotypes." 2014. Web. 19 Feb 2014.
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 automatic, and have claimed, after observation, that it depends on the individual.
In many circles of the world, various groups of people distinguish themselves from one another through religion, language, culture, and sometimes gender. People also develop stereotypes about a particular group of people in order to identify them. However, most of the time, these stereotypes hold true for only some members of a group. Sometimes, these stereotypes are just plain misconceptions that do not even apply to the group they claim to be. Stereotypes are placed on people because it is a way to easily identify what type of person or ethnicity an individual is.
Stereotype threat is present in our everyday lives and it prevents people from doing things to their fullest abilities. It is the fear of confirming a negative stereotype about you resulting in weaker performance. An example where stereotype threat exists is in the case where African Americans do poorly on tests compared to Caucasian individuals. This occurs because the stereotype is that African Americans are intellectually inferior to Caucasian people. In a setting where the negative stereotype is brought to mind, African Americans will perform poorly on tests when in fact they are able to perform equally as well if not better than Caucasian individuals. (Article 1) Stereotype threat limits individuals in their performance in academics, sports or even something like driving. By reducing stereotype threat, performance in many areas can improve and people can perform tasks to their fullest potentials. Stereotype threat leads to underachievement in academic and work related situations. People may feel they cannot rise above the stereotype and become limited in their successes. (article 1 I think) The purpose of this paper is to inform on stereotype threat and how to reduce it, as well as to introduce my own investigation aimed at reducing stereotype threat.
Stereotypes help us to confer order on our complex society. A stereotype provides a mentally simplified picture of a specific group of people, this lets us standardize our beliefs and avoid having to deal with the complexity that in fact each person is an individual. Stereotypes predict behavior of members of a group where one does not know the member. Stereotypes are just basically a simplified standardized conception about the characteristics or expected behaviors of an identifiable group. A misconception is a conclusion that’s wrong because it is based on erroneous thinking or facts that are wrong. A mi...