Lecture 17 Reading

Philip Uri Treisman

• mathematician who created workshops for teaching college students math to groups whose abilities are negatively stereotyped 

  • black students, women

He followed black students in their lives to understand grade disparities, what did he find

• notices Asian and white students more often studied in groups

• asain students made little distinction between academic and social lives

• black students put in more idnependant work

• separated academic and social lives

What are the impacts of black students studying alone

• shame kept them from getting help from others or TAs

• Discourages them and makes them want to leave

• Studying alone was setting them up for failure even tho they were working very hard

• working in groups is happier and more efficient 

Over-efforting

• persisting laboriously even when it doesnt make sense

• might be a general phenomena in black life

  • might cause underperformance 

when advice to drop a hard course or take it at another school is given Black students typically

• still try to take it at the school and sometimes end up getting a low grade in order to disprove stereotypes

David Nussbaum’s question

• does over efforitng relate to steroetypes threat or does it have to do with the way that black people are socialized

Anagram study on over-efforitng (design)

• very difficult anagrams given to black and white Stanford students, so they likely wouldnt perform well

• second task: pick as many anagrams as they wanted to include in analogy problems (measured how much they wanted to continue trying how difficult it is)

  • analogous to how much students having trouble with chemistry might want to stay in the course and risk failire

Anagram study on over-efforitng (results)

• originally, neither black nor white students agreed to do more, no over-efforting  in any participants 

• However, when participants were told that the anagram task measured cognitive abilities, black students picked double the amount of anagrams (exhibiting over-effoitng)

  • Shows that over efforting can be evoked among black student in the lab

What does over-efforting seem to be caused by

• seems to be caused by identity pressure of stereotype threat 

• tried much harder when tehre was a stereotype to disprove 

Using motivation to overcome stereotypes to fuel achievement is a central theme of black life, when is it effective and when is it not

• Negative effect of over-efforitng is mainly seen when tasks are very challenging and at the boundary of ones skills

• When stereotype threat is present

Math test study study: effect of stereotype threat (design)

• Administered one difficult and one easier math test to men and women

• one group took the tests under stereotype threat (previously told about gender differences on the test)

Math test study study: effect of stereotype threat (results)

• on the difficult test, women did worse under stereotype threat, but on the easy test stereotype threat made them do better (even than men)

• at the fronteir of skills, stereotype threat hurt performance, but in easier tasks, stereotype threat boosted performance

Can the drive to defeat stereotype threat can be harnessed for achievement?

Yes, when the work is more manageable

Valeria Jones findings

• women in more underrepresented workplaces felt more pressure to work harder

• pressure to disprove stereotypes gives you an additional cognitive task and can interfere with performance esp at the fornetier of your skills

How is disproving stereotypes a Sisyphean task

• something you have to do over and over again in domain where stereotype is applied

• “Ghost slaying”

Treisman’s workshops

• correcting a tendency for black students to protectively isolate and over commit to self-sufficency 

  • Maybe a way of avoiding ppl who stereotype them 

Stereotype threat and intergroup tension (Cashin: The failures of integration book)

• ppl don’t want to sit beside a black man on a plane bc of fear of saying the wrong thing, racial aversion, identity pressure

What does David Brooks argue, Americans are still very

• segrated into enclaves of simaler people

• Often, but not always along race lines

• Reinforced by socioeconomic status

______ in American life may be mroe important causes of inequality than direct discrmination 

Racially organized locations

• less access to resources and opportunities for networking

Dentist study on identity threat

• if ur in a dentist office and u hear 2 black people talking about racial issues, sitting beside them could put u under stereotype threat, you could say something causing you to be seen stereotypically 

• you may sit further away

Study about interracial conversation about racial profiling (design and results)

• when white participants asked to arrange chairs for 2 black ppl for them to talk about racial profiling

• they placed their chairs further away from black partners when they were talking about racial profiling vs a non-racialized issue

• when doing this with white partners, they put the chairs closer together

Study about interracial conversation about racial profiling (SECOND TASK)

• asked participants to complete a list of word fragments (rac-t, could be racket or racist)

  • when white participants were talking to back partners about racial profiling they put more stereotypes words and sat furtehr from partner

  • prospect of interracial conservation made whites mindful of the white-as-racist stereotype, distances themselves more from black ppl

  • Less likely to fill out racialized word completions → less likely to sit further away from black partenrs

When conscious (modern racism questionaire) and unconscious (IAT) prejduice were measured, was the distance they put between themselves and their black partners related?

No

• shows its likely bc of stereotype threat

It’s likely not prejudice but _____ thats causing them to sit further away

Stereotype threat

Great American racial discomfort

• stereotype threat seeps into all aspects of life

Study about interracial conversation about racial profiling (SECOND TASK)

• asked participants to complete a list of word fragments (rac-t, could be racket or racist)

  • when white participants were talking to back partners about racial profiling they put more stereotypes words and sat furtehr from partner