Stereotype Threats - Blog Post #3

Stereotype threat is a phenomena that occurs when one individual gets in their own head because previous accusations have been made on them based on their race, ethnicity, gender, etc. The definition of what stereotype actually is derives from the core issue being that it can hinder an individual’s performance, whether that be mentally or physically. In my previous blog post on the topic of stereotype, I used the example of the black female doctor that worked in a facility of all white individuals. This put an extreme amount of pressure on this individual, causing her to be cautious yet over-thinking her every move. In the video, the black female doctor told herself she could never be late to work or her co-workers would categorize her actions has stereotypical black individuals - always being late. In this scenario, the individual resulted in poor performance both mentally and physically, because all she could think about was what her co-workers had falsely accused her of. This example is just one example of how the course work of a stereotype threat arises. Stereotypes happen by people being influenced in situations by a social norms. I think stereotypes are natural and it would be very difficult to get rid of them. Professor Rodolfo says it best. “One important reason may be that when we use stereotypes, we don’t ourselves experience their negative consequences. The indignity of having people make assumptions about you on the basis of surface characteristics, the discrimination that often follows from stereotypes” 

Every normal person will always have their own thoughts and will think whatever they want. So therefore that is why I think stereotypes will never go away. 

That is one thing, but if you are one of those people going out there and verbally telling someone they can’t do this or that because they are this race or that race is a different scenario. That topic should be addressed and hopefully one day people will figure it out and just keep their thoughts to themselves because it’s never a good idea to demoralize another person.

 http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2011/02/02/why-are-stereotypes-so-difficult-to-eradicate/

The example of the black female doctor and how an environment can influence feelings of a stereotype threat is a clear indicator that the environment has a huge impact on the degree of stereotype threat. The example of the black female doctor in a primarily white work environment is an extreme case because the individual is not only black, but also a female - double the stereotypes associated with this individual, in turn increasing the probability and degree of harshness of a stereotype threat arising. 

If every single one of the co-workers were white and one individual made a snarky stereotypical comment about the black, female doctor it is a no-brained that the other co-workers jump on the bandwagon and agree with the initial stereotypical comment. This is especially true in the case that the individual who made the initial stereotype association is someone who holds the power and authority of the work environment. Very solemnly is someone going to stand up to what the boss has an opinion on, especially in the work environment of a hospital or doctor’s office in the example used earlier. 

The environment is a huge factor for stereotypes. Say if you are on a job working within a group filled with all kinds of race and ethnicity. If everyone is discriminating one another than that person getting discriminated will definitely not perform at their best. And neither will the discriminator because they are to focused on that rather than the task at hand. This goes for all environments as well. 

So when the question of whether a stereotype threat is real, the answer is obvious to me. Of course this issue is real. People are not performing to the best of their abilities because of what other individuals are saying about them in reference to their race, ethnicity, gender, etc. Individuals no matter what the category they fall under in the social class should be not performing to the best of their ability based on the possible stereotypes associated with them. 

The threat is 100% real. I don’t see discrimination leaving anytime soon just because of the fact that I have stated before. A human will judge and observe everything that happens around them. And if they have never observed that action they will instantly discriminate and think it’s wrong just because that’s not how they were raised.

Stereotype Threats are Real

Stereotype threat is a threat to someones identity. This threat is not necessarily a direct or violent threat but typically a mental one. It is when a group feels at risk to conform to the stereotype associated with their group. For example shown by Claude Steele, author of "Whistline Vivaldi," women tend to perform academically lesser than their male counterparts when they think that the men always outperform them.

Stereotype threats happen in highly particular environments. Humans tend to naturally divide into groups and when one group feels or portrays to be superior, especially academically, stereotype threats occur. The inferior, afraid of living up to the negative stereotype, tends to disengage with the task at hand and tends to perform weaker than the superior group with higher expected performance.

The threat does appear to be real. The studies that were conducted by Steele and his partner, Aronson, proved this. Steele used race to test. He had a Black group of students and a White group of students take the same test. When the Black students knew the test had to do with race they performed worse than the White students. When the Black students did not know that race mattered they performed equally. As real as this threat is it is even more important that society finds ways to get rid of it. Everyone has the potential to achieve what they desire and they need to know that themselves rather than listen to a society who thinks otherwise for them.

(SAT scores when students know their tested based on stereotype vs. when they do not)
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj9652VydLcAhUFwYMKHYNVCHsQjhx6BAgBEAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FStereotype_threat&psig=AOvVaw0OBogdxOAuphrNLNKdeQ8N&ust=1533443720585015

The Threat is Real...But there is Hope! Blog Post #3

Chloe Kenworthy
Bartley Meinke


How does stereotype threat happen? How does the environment influence feelings of stereotype threat? Is the threat real?

Stereotype threat is a concept explored by Dr. Claude M. Steele. It is the idea that people are influenced in certain situations by a societal stigma corresponding to their identity. Dr. Steele states researched this concept by testing white and black students some at the collegiate level and some form an inner city high school in Los Angeles administering a test and changing the statement regarding the reason for administration. Dr. Steele and his colleagues were sure to test a wide range of students, in another study making sure to test this theory in regards to women and mathematics.

Throughout the experiment the students were asked to take a test. Prior to the test taking, the researchers stated different reasons for which the test was being administered. The results varied depending on the group and the statement. In conclusion, Steele and his colleagues were able to state that, “These people know their group identity. They know how their society views it. They know they are doing something for which that view is relevant. They know, at some level, that they are in a predicament: their performance could confirm a bad view of their group and of themselves, as members of the group” (p.59). This is essentially what stereotype threat is. A person's performance can be affected by how they feel they or their group are perceived. This adds a level of pressure to the situation. Something that resonated with me while reading these chapters was a statement made on page 54, Steele states that, 

“They were taking this tests, and others like it, under the weight of history”. This is a heavy weight to bear each time you sit down to be assessed on your intellectual ability.  (This video, embedded below, shares a similar experiment discussed briefly in chapter one that displays similar results (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGEUVM6QuMg). I believe that the research speaks for itself to the matter of if stereotype threat is real. In my opinion it absolutely is real. I know at times I have felt a similar pressure, not knowing what it was or how to describe it, but it is somehow there. Steele states that, “...our research was revealing a profound importance of social identity: that the contingencies that go with them in specific places at specific times, while often subtle enough to be beneath our awareness, can nonetheless significantly affect things as important as our intellectual functioning” (p.61). The fact of the matter is that society and the environment around us places these stereotypes on specific groups and it results in a lack of adequate performance.

The threat is very real.  As mentioned above, Steele has shown empirically that stereotype threat affects the performance of a population.  He showed it with white Princeton students during a golf test, black students in academic settings, women in math, and the list goes on.  In all situations Steele was able to prove that “the weight of history” can negatively affect a group’s performance on a number of tasks when the individual fears that their performance can reinforce a held stereotype about a group they identify with.  These threats could also affect high ability and gifted students.  But Steele also shows us in the latter part of Whistling Vivaldi that all is not lost.  He presents very real methods and strategies that we can employ to minimize the negative effects of this threat.  As teachers, Steele gives two very practical strategies that we may be able to use to minimize this threat.

To present the first strategy, Steele recounts an experience presented by Tom Ostrom at Stanford University.  The experiment involved changing the way feedback was given to a group of black and white students.  The researchers had both groups of students write essays about their favorite professors, and then the researchers gave feedback in various ways.  Researchers found that two ways of giving feedback proved generally ineffective for black students: it didn’t work to try to be neutral when giving feedback, and it didn’t work to begin each critique with a positive statement.  Ostrom found that black students generally did not trust this type of feedback, fearing that racial bias by white professors might be incorporated into the feedback.  Ostrom saw that these kinds of feedback did not motivate students to make improvements.  But what did seem to be effective was to explain that he had used very high standards when evaluating the students’ work to be published in a teaching magazine, and to express the belief that all of the students were capable of meeting those high standards.  

How could this type of feedback be so effective?  Steele explains “it told them they weren’t being seen in terms of the bad stereotype about their group’s intellectual abilities, since the feedback giver used high intellectual standards and believed they could meet them.  They could feel less jeopardy.  The motivation they had always had was released” (163).   As a practical matter for us as teachers, why would we not want to use this strategy of feedback?  We should use high standards, not only for our gifted students, but for all students, and we should encourage students and let them know that they are all capable of meeting those high standards, and that we are there to help each and every student succeed.

Steele further presents a strategy of developing a sense of belonging among minority and underrepresented students by fostering a narrative of belonging among students.  Greg Walton developed an experience in which black students where presented the results of survey that showed students in their shoes had experienced similar hardships as freshman, but that those fears diminished and that sense of belonging developed as they continued their studies at the university and made use of the resources and advantages that the school had to offer them.  The narrative also focused on the friendships they had made and relationships they had developed.  Steele tells us “Helping to shape the narratives that stereotyped students use to interpret their experience in a school may be a ‘high leverage’ strategy of intervening” (166).  Once again, as teachers, not only is this a practical strategy, but it should be one that we are implementing from the beginning of every school year, for every class.  We should foster a sense of belonging, and let students know that others have been in their shoes, and that success is possible.  We should present students with the knowledge about resources and supports that are available to them, and show them that these resources have worked for other students in the past.  So by simply creating a caring and safe learning environment, one in which we both ask students to meet high standards while encouraging them and letting them know that they possess the ability to meet these standards, and by creating a narrative of nurture and belonging in our class, we may be able to minimize the effects of this very real threat.

Marcy Weber and Katherine Sprengelmeyer Post #3

Cobras, Cat Folders, Contingencies, and Other Environmental Hazards

By . . . Marcy Weber (1st grade teacher) and

Katherine Sprengelmeyer (middle school teacher)

How Do Stereotypes Threats Happen?

Marcin. (2018). Science Session Pictograph [Image].
Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/session-
science-pictogram-fatigue-1989711/
Creative Commons CC0

Stereotype threat happens when an individual feels pressure not only to perform well, but to break the stigma of his/her social identity group when taking a test or performing a task.  A stereotype threat can occur in many different groups according to social psychologist Claude M. Steele (2010). In Steele’s book, Whistling Vivaldi, he found that a stereotype threat occurred in many of his test participants when they were told prior to taking a test that the test would be measuring something that reflected a stigma for the ethnic, cultural, or social group to which the individual belonged. For example, Steele explored the effects of the stereotype of black students that they are somehow lower achievers and/or have lower intelligence. Researchers told a group of black and white participants that the test they were taking would measure their verbal abilities. When given this information, black students did not perform as well as white students nor as well as black students who had not been given this information.  Steele believed the black students who had been told the test measured verbal ability had felt the stereotype threat and the pressure of disproving this stereotype. This pressure prevented these students from doing well on the test. When a different group of black and white students took the same test but were told it would measure general problem solving, the black and white students performed similarly. There was not a stigma addressed prior to the test.  The black students did not feel a stereotype threat and thus did not feel the pressure to defeat a stereotype when taking the test (Steele, 2010).

The Reality of Stereotype Threats for High Ability/Highly Invested Students

It is interesting to note that in Chapter 3 of Whistling Vivaldi, more testing was done comparing students who cared a lot about school to those that did not care that much about school.  Doing the same type of testing as before, it was found that students who cared more about school did worse on tests when given a stereotype threat than students who did not care that much about school (Steele, 2010).  This makes sense to me because I feel that students who really care about their education and how they are viewed want to fight off stereotypes and disprove them.  The stereotype threat is real in my opinion, and I feel it happens more often with students who care about their education than with those who are complacent.  Students who highly value education do not want to be a part of any stereotype that insinuates that they lack ability. They are trying to carve their own path and do it their way.  They want to be looked at as individuals and not lumped together in a stereotype. These are the students that have high ambitions and want to make a difference.

The Role of the Environment in Our Identity

Garter Snake Forest. (2018). [Image].
Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/garter-
snake-forest-macro-crawl-3546237
Creative Commons CC0

At about 18 months, my daughter fell in love with snakes.  Not the plush, cute, cuddly variety, but the realistic looking rubber snakes you find at museum gift shops.  Coral snakes, water moccasins, and cobras dangled out of her crib. It unnerved visitors. It repulsed the babysitter.  It concerned the grandparents.  You could say my daughter has her

own . . . style. I thought her first real identity issue, naturally, would be about something profound.  But no, it came at the back-to-school section of our local big box store . . . over a cat folder. My now eight-year-old wanted to sacrifice buying the cat folder she wanted for a dog folder that she felt would earn her the acceptance of her dog-loving elementary school peers.   “People judge, Mom!  People judge!”

What had changed about my daughter? Was it her personality, her inner qualities, or her values? No, what had changed was her awareness of and response to her environment.

Our environments and the negative identity contingencies they generate can cause us more strongly to adhere to a particular identity while letting other identities subside, particularly when an identity is threatened.  As social psychologist Claude M. Steele states, “This threat makes the identity to which it is directed, of all the person’s social identities, the one that dominates emotion, thinking, the one that, for that time ‘invades the person’s whole identity’” (2010). Imagine, then, that you are the one black child in the classroom during a discussion of the Civil Rights Movement.  The teacher makes a point, and the class turns to you to see if you agree. You might be the most intelligent, eloquent student in the classroom, but in that moment, you may think only about how you are the only black student in the classroom. No one verbally said anything overtly racist, but your environment just unfairly made you the unofficial spokesperson of your race, and the pressure is on!

In Whistling Vivaldi, Steele uses the example of “passing,” presenting oneself as belonging to another racial or ethnic group that differs from one’s actual group, to show how environment influences our response to stereotype threats.  Using the example of black author Anatole Broyard, Steele describes how Broyard changed his opportunities for literary, financial, and social success by manipulating the contingencies of his environment. By passing as white, Broyard changed where he could live, the resources he had access to, and the people he interacted with each day (Steele, 2010).  By manipulating how his environment affected him, Broyard changed the trajectory of his life albeit at a heavy price.

Where Do We Go from Here?  A First Grade Teacher’s Perspective

Altmann, G. (2018). Town Sign [Image].
Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/town-sign-place-name-sign-success-1148092/
Creative Commons CC0

What we can do as educators to help decrease stereotype threats is to get to know our students and their families.  We have students coming to us with different backgrounds, income levels, and home lives. As teachers, we need to be sensitive to stereotypes and do our best to treat each student with respect.  We are role models for our students, and it is vital for us to teach our students how to interact appropriately with one another. Educators need to create a safe, welcoming learning environment where all students feel accepted and cared for.

Where Do We Go from Here?  A Middle School Teacher’s Perspective

So, what can I do as a middle school teacher to protect our students from stereotype threats and from an environment that threatens their identity? I think one essential quality of any teacher is the ability to make a classroom feel safe. Students need the opportunity to discuss issues that affect their identity. As an English teacher, I need to remember to give students time to make connections between literature and their lives and take time for teachable moments rather than simply focus on the skill-driven standards of the Common Core. In Whistling Vivaldi (2010), Steele discusses the need to foster group conversations among diverse groups of students and the need to be careful about the ways that we give feedback to minority students.  As teachers, we must foster students’ identities so that they are comfortable expressing themselves in our classrooms. Steele also warns that many of us may feel tempted to avoid discussing issues like race because we feel we should be moving into a “postracial society” where race is no longer an issue, but one look at recent headlines should tell us that we are not there yet and that critical conversations about how we handle diversity are desperately needed.

References

Southern Poverty Law Center. (1991-2018). Diversity, Equity And Justice. Retrieved July 31, 2018, from https://www.tolerance.org/

Steele, C. (2011). Whistling Vivaldi: And other clues to how stereotypes affect us. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.

 

A couple of students were not able to post to this blog site so they made up their own. I am sharing the link here so you can see their work. If you have personal blogs please feel free to link any of the work here in them.

Melanie & Kim's blog

Stereotype Threat and the Importance of it

The Importance of Stereotype Threat 

Stereotype threats/stigmas are predicaments where one would conform to stereotypes about their particular group. I also believe this occurs when other individuals succumb to stereotypes about one's particular group based on being placed in situations/events/experiences that have a predetermined outcome defined by society.  For example, the education system. I have found that a teacher’s implicit bias based on stereotypes can either make or break a student. There is a School-to-Prison pipeline. This is an institutionalized system where a disproportionate amount of minority students with nonconventional backgrounds become incarcerated due to harsh reprimanding policies. When a teacher has to make a decision of “who gets in trouble” based on a situation of two students, one white privileged student and one underprivileged minority student, without witnessing the situation first hand, the sad truth is that the underprivileged student will most likely suffer from the situation.

The traits of stereotype threat is only solidified through situational happenings  and shouldn’t be confused with an individual's traits. Delving into this aspect of student life as it pertains to the impact on minority groups is an interesting and effective method in understanding the life they live. The situation of conforming to stereotype threat is useful and sometimes necessary when moving throughout life for certain minority groups. While it creates misperceived notions for some people  because they are saving face in their social circles and specifically social situations. Situational occurrences give weight to the understanding that keeping a facade for certain stereotypes for individuals is more comfortable than producing to the best of that person's abilities and putting forth the necessary effort. 

The best way to breakdown stereotype threat and its dynamic involvement that it plays in everyday lives is to take in the limiting factors that it presents in conforming and to look at the options of going against the norm and performing to maximum potential. This understanding of stereotype threat  or the stigma associated with this concept is that it provides minority groups with negatively associated stereotypes to conform to, in a sense. Then these negatively implicated mannerisms get associated to the actual groups. It is also looked at as a contributing factor to gaps that are racially prompted when looking into academic proficiencies and academic competency among students.

For example, I went to the Dominican Republic with some peers for a class about ecotourism within the country and ended up learning more about stereotype threats/stigmas between Dominicans and Haitians. The Dominican Republic and Haiti are two bordering countries that make up an island of what was known as Hispaniola. Historically, these countries have not gotten along but have relied on each other in some events. Mainly, the Dominicans have not had the best relations with Haitians due to their dark complexion. That’s a big component of why they are two countries. The Dominicans wanted to keep their lighter complexions and thought this would be a good way to ensure that. The progressives in the Dominican look past all of that and welcome all, but there is still a big cloud of comfortability between the two groups. The Haitians that live in the Dominican Republic stay off in their own area due to not being able to thrive in the country. There are laws and ordinances in place that keep Haitians from having the same privileges and rights as Dominicans. The stereotype about Hatians are that, to be blunt, they are cannibalistic savages who will never be on the same “level” as the Dominicans. As a Dominican child, you were told that if you didn’t eat all of your food that a Haitian would come and eat you. When you instill this kind of rhetoric in an impressionable child, it stays with them. Now, because of these stereotypes, Hatians don’t actually act upon them because of a stereotype threat, but it creates a huge divide between the two groups, making it really hard to work together and prosper.

"The Effects of Stereotype Threat on the Standardized Test Performance
 of College Students (adjusted for group differences on SAT)".
From J. Aronson, C.M. Steele, M.F. Salinas, M.J. Lustina,
Readings About the Social Animal, 8th edition, ed. E. Aronson

The complexion issue between the two groups is confusing because the Dominican Republic is composed of a lot of dark skinned individuals. Myself being a darker skinned individual, I was expecting to come across some discrimination, but I was loved. The hierarchical rank was baffling. Me being an American trumped the fact that I was black, so I was treated very well. There is this notion that in the Dominican, the darker you are, the more adored you were, which is a huge juxtaposition of them having an issue with Haitians dark complexion. But, as long as you were Dominican, it did not matter. Which brought up the question of: how was one able to differentiate between a dark skinned Dominican and a Hatian? The answer to that was the dialect of Spanish they spoke, crazy.

Along the way I had visited an elementary school. There were about 20 kids and three of them were born Dominicans with Haitian parents. You could obviously tell the children weren’t as included in their class as they would have liked. They were made to go to the back of the line and receive their lunch last, and kids wouldn’t play with them. It was pitiful.

On a side note, they don’t like white people, not just Americans but Europeans. The Dominican Republic is a huge prostitution hub with a majority of recipients being white individuals. Dominicans believe that they are taken advantage of because of their economic instability. The money is good but the people giving it are not. There were four white individuals on the trip and they had very interesting experiences, some leaving them feeling uncomfortable and some feeling welcomed.

I hope to go back some day and learn more about the history and culture of the Dominican.

Reference: 

Steele, C. M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: how stereotypes affect us and what we can do.