People Are Decidedly Stereotype Sensitive
Stereotypes hurt - and sometimes the damage is self-inflicted. In a series of remarkable experiments, psychologists have discovered how mere mention of certain stereotypes can stifle academic performance of white and black students.
In the most recent study, educational psychologist Joshua Aronson of the University of Texas gave two groups of white male college students the same standardized math test.
One group was told before the test that the purpose of the exam was to find out why Asians scored higher on math tests than whites. This group also was shown newspaper clippings with headlines such as: “The Asian Gap: Why white students are trailing behind in math and science.” The other group was not.
“We found that whites performed significantly worse when they were treated to the stereotype than when they were simply told that the test was evaluating their math ability,” Aronson said.
His most recent experiment “shows us the power of stereotypes is not limited to those with a chronic identity regarding abilities - these white students would probably never characterize themselves as belonging to a ‘low achieving’ or ‘at-risk’ group. So we learn that this type of underperformance does not necessarily stem from something special about blacks, or about women, in mathematics.”
Aronson’s latest findings build on a series of widely publicized experiments he conducted with leading psychologist Claude Steele of Stanford University. In one, mixed groups of black and white students were given difficult questions culled from past Graduate Record Exams. One group was told the purpose was to measure how smart they were. The other group was simply told the test was to measure their experience with problem solving. “Their ego was a lot less on the line,” he said.
Whites in both groups did the same. But blacks did “40 percent worse when they thought their mental ability was being evaluated” than in the nonthreatening situation.
In another study, students got one of two pretest questionnaires. One asked that a box identifying race be checked; the other version did not ask this. Steele and Aronson said blacks who had filled out the race question fared significantly worse than those who did not.
Why do subtle references to stereotypes drive down scores?
“When we are put in a stereotype-threat situation, what we are really faced with is the suggestion that in some important way we are limited,” Aronson said.
Staying and switching
About a quarter of all churchgoing Americans have switched religious faiths during their lives, according to a new study of who converts to another denomination and why.
Jews and Catholics have the smallest proportion of converts to lifelong members and disproportionately large numbers of these conversions are primarily due to spouses attempting to “harmonize their marriage,” report Duke University sociologists Marc Musick and John Wilson in the journal Sociology of Religion.
Religiously conservative or evangelical churches are home to the highest proportion of switchers, with the overwhelming majority of these converts attributing their switch to reasons other than marriage, according to a national survey of 8,027 randomly selected married adults.
xxxx Making the switch Here is the percentage of married members of each religious denomination who switched from another faith. Disciples of Christ 46% Pentecostals 42% United Church of Christ 37% Presbyterians 35% Episcopalians 33% Methodists 28% Lutherans 26% Mormons 17% Baptists 14% Catholics 8% Jews 5%