2
" The experiments that my colleagues and I were doing showed that something generally thought to emanate from an internal capacity associated with social identity - as the level of women's math performance might emanate from women's math ability - could be changed dramatically by changing contingencies of that identity, by changing, in this research, the degree to which test takers were at risk of confirming bad stereotypes about their group. And the phenomena of identity change - "passing" and expatriation - suggested that what we were seeing in the lab was the tip of an iceberg...They suggested that the degree to which a given social identity had any presence in a person's life depended on contingencies, realities down on the ground that the person had to deal with because they had the identity. Take these contingencies away by allowing the person to "pass," or change these contingencies by allowing the person to expatriate out of them, and the whole identity could fall to irrelevance.
What did this say about social identity?...Two conclusions seemed unavoidable. First, our social identities are adaptations to the particular situations of our lives, what I am calling identity contingencies. If we didn't need them to help us cope with these circumstances, the perspectives, emotional tendencies, values, ambitions, and habits that make up the dispositional side of our social identities would just gradually leak out of our psyches and be gone. The second conclusion...If you want to change the behavior and outcomes associated with social identity...don't focus on changing the internal manifestations of the identity, such as values, and attitudes. Focus instead on changing the contingencies to which all of that internal stuff is an adaptation. "
― , Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us
3
" The problem is that the pressure to disprove a stereotype changes what you are about in a situation. It gives you an additional task. In addition to learning new skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking in a schooling situation, or in addition to trying to perform well in a workplace like the women in the high-tech firms, you are also trying to slay a ghost in the room, the negative stereotype and its allegation about you and your group. You are multitasking, and because the stakes involved are high--survival and success versus failure in an area that is important to you--this multitasking is stressful and distracting.
...And when you realize that this stressful experience is probably a chronic feature of the stetting for you, it can be difficult for you to stay in the setting, to sustain your motivation to succeed there. Disproving a stereotype is a Sisyphean task; something you have to do over and over again as long as your are in the domain where the stereotype applies. Jeff seemed to feel this way about Berkeley, that he couldn't find a place there where he could be seen as belonging. When men drop out of quantitative majors in college, it is usually because they have bad grades. But when women drop out of quantitative majors in college it usually has nothing to do with their grades. The culprit, in their case, is not their quantitative skills but, more likely, the prospect of living a significant portion of their lives in a domain where they may forever have to prove themselves--and with the chronic stress that goes with that.
This is not an argument against trying hard, or against choosing the stressful path. There is no development without effort; and there is seldom great achievement, or boundary breaking, without stress. And to the benefit of us all, many people have stood up to these pressures...The focus here, instead, is on what has to be gotten out of he way to make these playing fields mere level. People experiencing stereotype threat are already trying hard. They're identified with their performance. They have motivation. It's the extra ghost slaying that is in their way. "
― , Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us
4
" Some years ago, two social psychologists, Edward Jones and Richard Nisbett, argued that when it comes to explaining people's behavior-something like achievement problems, for example there is a big difference between the "observer's perspective"-the perspective of a person observing the behavior-and the "actor's perspective"-the perspective of a person doing the behavior. As observers, Jones and Nisbett said, we're looking at the actor, the person doing the behavior we are trying to explain. Thus the actor dominates our literal and mental visual field, which makes the circumstances to which he is responding less visible to us. In the resulting picture in our minds, the actor sticks out like a sore thumb and the circumstances to which he is responding are obscured from view. Jones and Nisbett held that this picture causes a bias when we try to explain the actor's behavior. We emphasize the things we can see. We emphasize things about the actor-characteristics, traits, and so on-that seem like plausible explanations for her behavior. And we deemphasize, as causes of her behavior, the things we can't see very well, namely, the circumstances to which she is adapting. "
― , Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us
7
" The effective, identity-safe practices "avoid cues that might instantiate a sense of stereotype threat in students and are, instead, aimed at making everyone in the class feel...as valued and contributive...regardless of their ethnic group or gender." [Dorothy Steele]
...The cohering principle is straightforward: they foster a threat-mitigating narrative about one's susceptibility to being stereotyped in the schooling context. And though no single, one-size-fits-all strategy has evolved, the research offers an expanding set of strategies for doing this: establishing trust through demanding but supportive relationships, fostering hopeful narratives about belonging in the setting, arranging informal cross-group conversations to reveal that one's identity is not the sole cause of one's negative experiences in the setting, representing critical abilities as learnable, and using child-centered teaching techniques. More will be known in the years ahead. But what we know now can make a life-affecting difference for many people in many important places. "
― , Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us
11
" Reducing identity threat is not sufficient to overcome real skill and knowledge deficits in school. To do that, students have to have the opportunity to acquire the relevant skills and knowledge. They need good instruction and the chance to apply themselves to critical material, sometimes for long periods of time. But it’s equally true that for ability-stereotyped students, reducing identity threat is just as important as skill and knowledge instruction. It may not be sufficient, but it is necessary. That is, no amount of instruction, no matter how good it is, can reduce these deficits if it doesn’t also keep identity threat low. Without that, threat will always have first claim on students’ attention and mental resources. So neither approach—providing instructional opportunities or reducing identity threat—is sufficient, by itself, to improve academic performance, especially for ability-stereotyped students. Both are necessary. "
― , Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us
12
" Stereotype threat, then, is one way our national history seeps into our daily lives. That history leaves us with stereotypes about groups in our society that can be used to judge us as individuals when we’re in situations where those stereotypes apply—in the seat next to a black person on an airplane or interacting with minority students, for example. The white person in that situation will not want to be seen in terms of the stereotype of whites as racially insensitive. And the black person, for his or her part, will not want to be seen in terms of the stereotypes about blacks as aggressive, or as too easily seeing prejudice, and so on. Fighting off these possible perceptions on a long airline flight—or more famously, perhaps, in a school cafeteria—could be more than either party wants to take on. They just want to have lunch or get to Cleveland. Avoidance becomes the simplest solution. "
― , Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us
13
" Negative stereotypes about our identities hover in the air around us. When we are in situations to which these stereotypes are relevant, we understand that we could be judged or treated in terms of them. If we are invested in what we’re doing, we get worried; we try to disprove the stereotype or avoid confirming it. We present ourselves in counter-stereotypical ways. We avoid situations where we have to contend with this pressure. It’s not all-determining, but it persistently, often beneath our awareness, organizes our actions and choices, our lives—like how far we walk down the aisle of an airplane to find a seat, or how well we do on a round of golf, or on an IQ test. We think of ourselves as autonomous individuals. After all, we make choices. But we often forget that we make choices within contexts, always. And pressure tied to our social identities is a component of these contexts. This is difficult to appreciate by reflecting on our experience. And yet, as I’ve have urged throughout this book, it is precisely these pressures that make a social identity real for us.
Stereotype threat is a broad fact of life. "
― , Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us
15
" By changing the way you give critical feedback, you can dramatically improve minority students' motivation and receptiveness. By improving a group's critical mass in a setting, you can improve its members' trust, comfort, and performance in the setting. By simply fostering intergroup conversations among students from different backgrounds, you can improve minority students' comforts and grades in a setting. By allowing students, especially minority students, to affirm their most valued sense of self, you can improve their grades, even for a long time. By helping students develop a narrative about the setting that explains their frustrations while projecting positive engagement and success in the setting, you can greatly improve their sense of belonging and achievement--which if done at a critical time could redirect the course of their lives. "
― , Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us
