Joshua Aronson : The Fear Of Stereotype Can Affect 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).

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

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.

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.

In this essay I talk about three stereotypes that I feel are the most major ones. The three I talk about are gender, race, and what class or sport a student is associated with. These three are the most important because these are the ones that you can not control. You should not be stereotyped on who you are.

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

Stereotypes is one of the most common causes of racism. Through radio, through television, through the internet, through music, through books, and many alike, the real potential for stereo types to arise are an inevitable possibility. Parents, willingly or not, expose and teach their children, subconsciously, by saying statements and/or watching programs that involve racism. When there is a constant source of negativity towards a certain race, then it will eventually effect the overall opinions of the populous. (The 4)

The presences of stereotypes are overwhelming and are developed by both the environment a subject is raised in and their family. Stereotypes, which are pervasive throughout different societies, become intertwined in the collective values of the society as justification for all forms of social, economic, and political inequality among groups (Devine and Elliot 2000;Kaplan 2004; Operario and Fiske 2004). As people become more exposed to stereotypes they start to become a permanent part of a person’s life, they begin to stereotype themselves almost always involuntarily.

However, the effects of stereotype effect on learning relating to performance are not too clear. In a series of studies described in a paper by Ganley, Mingle, Ryan, Ryan, and Perry (2013), researchers examined gender stereotype threat effects on math ability between on grade school students by giving a math test. Consistent between the three studies performed, the results found that there was no significant difference between the groups exposed and not exposed to the stereotype effect but they did find a slight main effect for gender - male scoring higher than female on their math test in two out of three of the studies (Ganley et al, 2013). This leads to the conclusion that either there is no measurable performance effect due to stereotype effect, or that there already stereotype effect has already taken hold on some of the participants. In the second of a series of experiments by Rydell, Rydell, and Boucher (2010), the experimenters taught female participants a novel mathematical operation and manipulated exposure to a negative gender stereotype threat, difficulty of the test and time spent studying. The results of the study suggest when learning a novel task, exposure to stereotype threat may influence how quickly the task can be accurately performed (Rydell et al, 2010). However, the data suggested that stereotype threat depended on the difficulty of the problem itself (Rydell et al, 2010). This is consistent with what most people would think. It would be

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