Analysis Of Claude Steele 's Influence On Academic Performance

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.

Knowledge of negative stereotypes can influence people’s performance. Stereotype threat creates extra performance pressure through apprehensiveness about conforming to negative stereotypes (Woolfolk &

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).

We often make guesses about the people by knowing their looks and name. He claimed that most of the time those guesses are right and without those guesses we can’t survive. But the stereotyping often encourages prejudiced nature and biasing at workplace. Many male candidates are rejected for front office interviews at service industries. For example in airline industry the women are preferred over men for front office responsibilities. Similarly the ‘window workers’ at McDonald are often females (Gustavsson, 2005). Similarly the males are preferred over females in sales job because people think that more physical stamina are required in the sales job. Paul was in favor of stereotyping but in my opinion the stereotyping at workplace promotes prejudice behavior. Paul didn’t highlight the stereotyping at workplace and its effect on different genders. Paul tried to look the stereotyping from social prospective but the stereotyping at workplace has set certain different standards for males and females. In his persuasive speech Paul has presented his views that stereotyping necessary to deal with daily encounters but he didn’t give any example how stereotyping promotes biasing at workplace. It is true that stereotyping helps in categorization in social life and categorization can be the quickest and most efficient way of processing the information. Categorization also help in understanding the social world and predict the behaviors of group members (Araya, 2003). Stereotyping can help in categorization but it can’t be beneficial in this modern

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

Our class was inspired by Shankar Vedantam’s piece to conduct research on stereotypes at Point Loma High School. We were provided questions by Ms. Roberts and asked one person in class and another outside of class. The ages of those interviewed ranged from freshmen to seniors in highschool. Later, we input our data in a Google form and later converted it into a summary data chart and spreadsheet. The results were sorted by ethnicity and gender. Using our results we were able to find trends/similarities of the impact/aftermath and responses of those who were interviewed

Clark’s work on identity and stereotyping has continued and has extended to not only minority groups, but to white-Americans and women as well. Research on prejudices and stereotyping has continued in the area of education. According to Steele (2004), the framework of one’s life can be controlled by their social identity and that individuals must contend to the prejudices and stereotypes that they socially must identify with. Further research suggests that those who are exposed to negative stereotypes are influenced either by believing or mimicking the stereotype or, both (Steele, 2004). Steele (2004) found that stereotypes have contributed to the underperformance of minority groups in the school setting. As suggested by Clark, Steele (2004) also believes that conforming to suggested stereotypes weakens the social identity and brings severe deficits to the ability of student to excel in the classroom. Clark’s ideas on stereotyping were elaborated in the notion that stereotype threat does not only affect minority groups, but can exhibit deficits in any group of individuals. For instance, Steele (2004) offers the example of white vs. black athletes and how in many sports (e.g. basketball or football) white athletes have shown to feel less competent in comparison to black athletes because of

O’Brien, L.T., & Crandall, C.S. (2003) Stereotype threat and arousal: effects on women’s math performance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 782-789.

What really shocked me in this book, was how stereotyping can affect academic performance. Just by saying, "women don't usually do as well as men on math tests" can make a huge impact on whether or not women actually preform on the math test because of that stereotype. It makes me wonder why stereotyping isn't taken more seriously, and especially teachers being more aware of what it can do to their students performance and coming up with ways to

An example of this is when a psychological study asked the participants to play mini golf and the test would measure natural athletic ability. The test group was all white. The study found that the white people who thought it was testing natural athletic ability did worse than the ones who didn’t. After hearing the game was going to determine, the players performance was impaired by the awareness of the stereotype that white people aren’t naturally athletic.

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.

The first experiment conducted by Devine and colleagues conducted a well thought out experiment in terms of their technique. In all three studies the authors’ randomly assigned the participants to the experiments increasing the ability to generalize this sample to a larger population. In addition, the participants were asked to freely respond to the question, providing a more accurate knowledge of stereotypes because no cues were provided to influence the subjects’ knowledge. The anonymity of the participants also allows subjects to freely provide information without being judged resulting in an easier access to their private thoughts. Alternatively, in all three studies the authors recruited a number of white participants. This may produce bias in their results as stereotypes and prejudice towards blacks have historical roots in their culture. In the first study, the list of traits do not completely capture

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

There have been many studies on stereotype threat and self-esteem and their negative effects on task performance. These studies have focused primarily on minorities such as women, blacks, Latinos and Asians and have found that stereotype threat and self-esteem have influenced negatively in task performance. Steele (1997) investigated how self-esteem and stereotype threat affects task performance and has found that most of task failures have to do with the individual social environment. For instance, a study was conducted in which black students completed a difficult task with either a black or white experimenter. The task was described as intelligent test (Steele & Aronson, 1995). When the experimenter was white, the student performed more

The first effect of stereotyping is a phenomenon known as “stereotype threat” that occurs in a situation where a person is in fear of unintentionally confirming a negative stereotype. Several studies have been conducted to discover the effects of stereotype threats. For example, I discovered that Toni Schmader, an assistant professor of the UA psychology department, and Michael Johns, a UA graduate (ethos), conducted studies that showed, “college women score lower on tests of mathematical ability, and Hispanic students might score lower on tests of intelligence, not because they have less ability, but because reminders of negative stereotypes temporarily decrease their ‘working memory capacity’ (UA News Services, “Exploring the Negative Consequences of Stereotyping”, UANews.Arizona.edu).” This demonstrates that the students did not do worse on the test due to their lack of skills, but rather due to negative stereotypes. In a similar study by professors Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson, African American and White college students took the same intelligence test under two conditions. In the stereotype threat condition the students were told the test would evaluate their intelligence, and in the