“Stereotype Threat” (Siobhan):
- Claude M. Steele, Steven J. Spencer, and Joshua Aronson. 2002. “Contending with Group Image: The Psychology of Stereotype and Social Identity Threat”. Advances in Experimental and Social Psychology
“Psychological Health” (Jessica):
- Charles S. Carver and Michael S. Scheier. 2000. “Optimism, Pessimism, and Self-Regulation” (chapter 2). Edward C. Chang, ed. Optimism and Pessimism: Implications for Theory, Research, and Practice. American Psychological Association.
Entries (RSS)
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:55 am
To me, it was interesting seeing the similarities between Jessica’s readings and the Steele reading that I assigned for this week. One interesting similarity was the concept of disengagement for self-esteem management. In order to maintain a positive self-image, the actor disengages with a task or in a domain in which there is little hope for success, in order to protect his/her ego in the long term. This may or may not have different impacts on the actor’s optimism vs. stereotype confirmation. For example, in a domain from which one cannot really disengage without serious negative implications–say academics–does this make a person a definite pessimist? Most stereotype threat research says no, although a person is likely to be critical of negative feedback–almost as if the person is optimistic about his/her abilities?
Likewise, just as with stereotype threat, one’s likelihood of optimism vs. pessimism depends on one’s identification with (the importance of) a certain domain. The more important an activity is to one’s self-concept, the more likely pessimism–and stereotype threat–are to impact one’s performance or attitudes about a task. Perhaps we discuss these and other similarities after both presentations tonight.
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
As I was reading Siobhan’s article, I realized that I tend to exhibit many of these behaviors. All of the observations rang true, especially variations on the second coping mechanism (which is to cite external causes, preemptively, to explain possibly poor performance). I think this type of behavior combined with variations on the third mechanism can be categorized generally under the mantra “Under promise; over deliver.”. I do this all the time. Sometimes I am operating under what Steele et al would characterize as stereotype threat, but oftentimes when I act this way I have no relevant stereotype. I mean, I’m a relatively sane, white, college-age, well educated, male. So oftentimes, in fact, I am operating under a very positive stereotype. But I often act very similarly to those coping with stereotype threats.
I also noticed the similarities that Siobhan already articulated, between her and Jessica’s article. This similarity, I think, shows how reactions to stereotype threat can be explained in large part as a more specific case of general motivation and performance behaviors. It suggests, I think, that stereotypes are one specific factor that can influence motivational and performance in this way.
In light of this similarity, I’d like to suggest that somewhere in the middle might lies a broader category of “underperformance threat”. This is a superset category of stereotype threat, but includes other circumstantial “pressures” that may lead to the same underperforming behavior. That is, the threat of underperformance, whether do to the awareness of a stereotype, or some other influence, is what leads to a performance drop. In my case, I think often cope with “underperformance threat” to varying degrees, although I think this is rarely the fault of my belonging to a stigmatized group. If not stereotypes, then what could these other social queues be?
I think this type of behavior — paralleling reactions to stereotype threat, but not necessarily in reaction to a stereotype — is prolific at Stanford. That’s a non-trivial statement to defend, so I wonder if you guys agree or disagree. One possible cause, out of a few that come to mind, I’ll base on a stereotype of Stanford’s culture:
You’ve all heard the anecdotal assurance that, “Every admit has a moment where they think their admission was a mistake, that they are they aren’t qualified to be here, … , it’s not true.”. This type of a worry could have the same effect as stereotype threat. It is the threat of underperformance due not to membership in a group, but to perceived exclusion from a group. This is very similar, but slightly different than the phenomena observed by Steele et al. Perhaps this phenomenon is one type of influence that can explain more general “underperformance threat”. I’m curious what you all think.
It will be fun to talk about this in class tonight.
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I think that stereotype threat applies not only to groups but can also apply to individuals. For example, a child whose parents tell her that she is absent-minded may face extra difficulty in situations where she has to remember things. So stereotype threat may reinforce individual personality traits or even help develop individual identities, along with reinforcing group stereotypes/identities.
Also, I think that while anxiety about stereotypes certainly will impede one’s abilities, perhaps stereotyping causes a drop in ability due to another factor as well — namely, a woman might come to believe that she is actually less good at math, and acting on this belief, would then try less hard. In this case the stereotype is not so much a “threat” but something one comes to believe in and then acts accordingly. At the individual level, this behavior might even be rational — we never have entirely accurate pictures of ourselves and so it makes sense to give some credence to others’ beliefs about ourselves. In any case, if this is a part of stereotype threat, it would tie it closely to the Pygmalion effect or any other phenomenon where people come to believe things about themselves that others tell them and then adjust behavior accordingly.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:37 pm
On the Carver/Scheier article, I found the math somewhat hard to follow, but I think that’s partially because they did a rather poor job expressing it. Instead of expressing x,y,z as an implicit equation, they should have expressed it in terms of a recursion (if at all possible), since that gets the path dependent (or, as they say, local history) aspect down. That is, make y_t a function of x,z, and y_i, for i
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:38 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:38 pm
wordpress hates me
hold on…
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
i
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
On the Carver/Scheier article, I found the math somewhat hard to follow, but I think that’s partially because they did a rather poor job expressing it. Instead of expressing x,y,z as an implicit equation, they should have expressed it in terms of a recursion (if at all possible), since that gets the path dependent (or, as they say, local history) aspect down. That is, make y_t a function of x,z, and y_i, for i > t. Then the correlation would be much more understandable, and the “hysterisis” wouldn’t be so much of problem for them to explain. And, more importantly, local history wouldn’t be a hard concept to explain if you actually had the history explicit in your explanation in the first place.
Enough with the rant. That reading also reminded me of an AI thing from 221, which describes a clever means to do planning for a computer called a Markov Decision Process. Essentially, you assign goals a positive weight, depending on how awesome they are, and antigoals a negative weight. Then, for each state touching a goal, you set the value of that state to be the expectation of moving from the state. (That is, if you have a .5 chance to get -1 and a.5 chance to get a 2, you end up with a 1.) You keep recursing until you get the start state’s value. The similarity I think is clear: anti-goals are just goals with negative value, and you don’t need to distinguish between them at all in this model.
Things actually get a lot more complicated: you might not even know how far you are from your goal, and you have to figure it out yourself! Here, the more you act, the more you learn about where you are, and thus about how to get to where you want to be and avoid where you don’t want to be. Thus, you get the same sort of feedback loop that they’re describing, since disturbances and actions affect your internal state, as well as your plans for attaining your goals (and the value of those goals!).
Under this model, though, you don’t need to have their weird assertion that an anti-goal will usually end up giving rise to a goal. They gave the example of a rebellious adolescent who avoids his parents and finds a group of like minded friends. To my estimation, that’s two disjoint goals that don’t need to be related: one can want friends, and one can want to avoid one’s parents. Add some homophily (Erich’s and my topic!) and you get the expected behavior: avoid parents and run to a group of friends who also hate their parents.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
I am consistently surprised by the magnitude of the effect of stereotype threat, especially among groups who are not characteristically discriminated against. For example, I was fascinated by the idea that white males, a typically dominant group in terms of mathematical ability, underperformed when they were informed that they were being compared to Asians. It’s also interesting that stereotype threat does not take effect until age 5 or 6. Last quarter I wrote a paper on stereotype threat based on gender and mathematics, and many people tried to argue that mathematical ability is intrinsically different between the sexes. If stereotype threat does exist in very young children, this is at least moderately compelling evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, the modulating influence of an abstract sense of importance is very important to my article as well. Perhaps, as Siobhan mentioned, we will be able to discuss the commonalities between the two ideas in class tonight.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Don’t use >’s in your post… use >’s…
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:09 pm
I too was impressed by the links between the two readings. In the reading on stereotype threat, when confronted with such a threat, all identity groups perform worse. It is exactly when the stakes appear to be higher that people underperform. In the reading on optimism and pessimism, when something is very important, pessimists need even more confidence to put in a lot of effort, and optimists need to lose even more confidence before they give up. Both seem to suggest that high-stakes situations make human behavior less rational. This is a strong criticism of our high-stakes test-obsessed culture. High-stakes situations will make pessimists remain pessimistic even long; high-stakes situations will also make the crash of confidence for an optimist even worse, when it does occur.
Given the recent concerns on campus about mental health, I wonder what the implications of these theories are for treatment. A place like Stanford is perceived by students as a very high-stakes game. Placing a lot of intelligent people into a competitive environment is bound to produce threat, not just for people who identify as members of groups with negative stereotypes about their performance, but for anyone who might identify as possibly “not good enough” for Stanford. Performing well in school, graduating, getting a good job… all of these things are imbued with such importance by the pervading culture on campus that even an optimistic student will have a crash of confidence if they perceive enough setbacks. And setbacks are almost destined to occur in a situation where there is stereotype threat.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:20 pm
test
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:22 pm
testtesttesttesttesttesttesttesttest