What is Stereotype Threat and Why is it Important?

Chloe Kenworthy and Bartley Meinke

What is stereotype threat and why is it important?

Stereotype threat is a concept that has been touched on in many of my College of Education
courses in the past. Claude M.Steele in Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we
can do has found the best way to explain the topic I have encountered thus far. He states. “ I
believe stereotype threat is a standard predicament of life. It springs from our human powers
of intersubjectivity--the fact that as members of society we have a pretty good idea of what other
members of our society think about lots of things, including major groups and identities in society”
(p.5). He goes on to explain that any experience in which stereotype may be present stereotype
threat can be found and it may follow around and affect individuals. This is why it is important
because whether subconscious or not, it can be present. Stereotype threat has a way of affecting
a person’s performance on a specific task. Steel explained this well in his examples of students
participating in a mini golf challenge. When white students were told it was to assess their athletic
ability they proved to perform more negatively. When African American students were told the game
was to assess their sports strategic intelligence they performed more negatively. It is clear that each
group was facing a different stereotype. The white students, that they typically are less athletic and
the African American students that they have more to prove in regards to their intelligence. Whatever
the threat may be to a specific person, it is clear that this threat has a negative impact on the rate at
which they perform the given task. Steele states that, “...stereotypes can really set up threats in the
air that are capable of interfering with actions” (p.10). This does not limit the potential interference in
the educational setting, if anything it enhances it.

Last week we discussed the idea of the excellence gap, touching on what students were
underrepresented and why we as teachers should care. Stereotype threat to me should be
among this discussion as well. There is a clear correlation between stereotype threat and
achievement gap. Due to the fact that stereotype threat can affect the way a student may perform
on a specific task, this can affect a student’s overall performance as well as a students social
experience in the classroom. Steele states that, “...despite the strong sense we have of ourselves
as autonomous individuals, evidence consistently shows that contingencies tied to our social
identities do make a difference in shaping our lives from the way we perform in certain situations
to the career and friends we choose” (p.14). As teachers we want our students to all be provided
equal opportunities, while knowing and understanding that they are welcome and able to anything
and anyone they choose to be. These stereotype threats are not necessarily something that one
may think is present in their classroom and yet research probably is showing it is. And these threats
are contributing to the ever present achievement gaps. Steele provides his reader with a bit of hope
among the facts and research he presented in chapter one stating that, “There is truly inspirational
news here: evidence that often small, feasible things done to reduce these threats in schools and
classrooms can dramatically reduce the racial and gender achievement gaps that so discouragingly
characterize our society” (p.7). It is reassuring to know that there are things we can do in order to
help reduce these threats. I feel that the first most important step to take is to recognize its existence.

In chapter 2 Steele introduces the reader to Jane Elliot and the experiment she conducted with her third grade classroom a day after the death of Martin Luther King.  In the experiment, the small classroom in Riceville, IA was divided into brown eyed and blue eyed students.  For the first day of the experiment, she expressed a belief that blue eyed students were much smarter than brown eyed students.  She put collars around the necks of the brown eyed students, identifying them as inferior in the classroom.  The youtube video posted here shows clips from the experiment, and some analysis from the experiments and recreations that were made afterwards.  It’s fascinating, if not horrifying, to watch what happens to students when they are identified and stigmatized.  For the first day of the experiment, the brown eyed students performed poorly.  They didn’t seem to pay attention, and seemed to fade into the background of the classroom.  You can see the dejected looks on the students’ faces.  The blue eyed students are vibrant.  They participate and have an energy that the brown eyed students lack.  On the next day of the experiment, the collars are switched to the blue eyed students, who in turn then lose all of the energy they had the day before, and show the same behaviors the brown eyed students displayed the previous day.  Steele states “the environment and their status in it, seemed to be an actual component of their ability” (28).

Steele’s discussion of Elliot’s experiment really helped me to understand the concepts Steele is presenting in the first two chapters of Whistling Vivaldi.  As a young student growing up in Iowa, I remember very well learning about this experiment as a seventh grade student.  While not actually being forced to “participate” in a similar experiment, we did watch clips and discuss these issues.  Re-examining this experiment years later especially helped me to understand Steele’s ideas about downwardly constituting pressures.  Steele points out that Mrs. Elliot purposefully set out to downwardly constitute her students, which had the effect of changing their performance in school.  He show us that although the school he was studying did not attempt to purposefully downwardly constitute his students, similar consequences were occurring.  He states “this school had inherited a social organization from the larger society and from its own history that might well place black students under downwardly constituting pressures—powerful pressures not well understood within the traditional frameworks of prejudice and racism...” (28).  The analogy of Mrs. Elliot’s experiment in this chapter is quite effective in introducing the reader to some of the concepts from the first few chapters that can seem difficult to grasp at first, and for me, they helped me form an understanding that aided my comprehension of the rest of the book.