

How Stereotyping Yourself Contributes to Your Success (or Failure) - tarkin2
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-stereotyping-yourself-contributes-to-success

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walterk
Great find. This is part of what I was getting at in this comment:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144616>

Specifically, where I say that "Sometimes people manage to acquire the
necessary values and thus the skills necessary to do well, despite starting
off in adverse conditions. But they're the exceptions, and were
psychologically and sociologically positioned to be that way." When some folks
try to deny that there are any serious psychological and sociological barriers
to success by pointing to those rare individuals who overcome socioeconomic
adversity, they are ignoring the very phenomena these researchers are talking
about. Some individuals are simply better positioned than their peers when it
comes to dealing with the same conditions.

Thankfully, the research also has the effect of helping us to figure out how
to overcome debilitating stereotypes, but one can hardly expect someone who
grew up in the inner city to be reading SciAm.

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lutorm
Stereotype threat is such an interesting concept. It's closely connected to
the idea of malleability of intelligence as explained in e.g. this article:

[http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-
sm...](http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids)

It raises interesting issues of what people actually mean when they want
someone who "is smart and gets things done". Just the basic expression "smart
people" seems to imply that you have rejected the idea of malleability of
intelligence and think that people are either smart or not. I'm not really
arguing that there is not an innate random quality to "aptitude", but if you
believe that article you don't want someone who is smart, you want someone who
has worked hard to acquire important skills, since people who just think of
themselves as "smart" are more likely to cave when faced with difficulty.

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rkts
Stereotypes probably do reinforce themselves somewhat. But this doesn't change
my opinion that they are almost always true. Or at least, they are always
grounded in fact. They may be exaggerated, outdated or oversimplified, but
even so I think they are usually correct.

~~~
hugh
If by "stereotypes are usually correct" you mean that if there is a stereotype
that says "people of group G have property P" then people in group G are
statistically more likely than average to have property P than the general
population, then you may very well be right that stereotypes are correct more
often than they're incorrect, but it kinda misses the point of why
stereotyping is a bad idea.

~~~
rkts
What point am I missing? That we should ignore reality to avoid hurting
people?

I object to the article's claim that

> the roots of many handicaps actually lie in the stereotypes.... women’s
> performance on spatial and mathematical tasks is created by ... the
> stereotype of their spatial and mathematical inferiority

Stereotypes may contribute slightly to group differences, but they are not the
primary cause of them.

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yters
I voted you up not because I necessarily agree with you, but because you make
a good point. We do ignore the basis of stereotypes when we shouldn't. We need
to realize there is such a thing as natural and good elitism. This is an
important "thing that is not said."

That being said, while stereotypes do have some kind of basis in reality
(something has to perpetuate them) the problem comes when we say certain
people are inherently inferior and do not have a free, moral accountable will.

~~~
a-priori
The problem is that people are notoriously bad at inductive reasoning. They
routinely ignore cases that contradict their hypothesis.

If they see a woman who's bad at math, they think "aha! the stereotype is
right!". If they see a woman who's good at math, they think, "oh well, there's
bound to be exceptions" and promptly forget about her. They only remember the
ones that fit the stereotype, so the stereotype is reinforced.

You need to repeatedly hammer irrefutable evidence into people's heads before
they'll start to forget stereotypes.

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attack
> To be selected to participate in Beilock and her colleagues’ first study of
> mathematical performance, for example, women had to perform baseline tasks
> with greater than 75 percent accuracy, and they had to agree with the
> statements “I am good at math” and “It is important to me that I am good at
> math.” Why do these things matter?

So people give up a little when others tell them that they are bad at what
they've worked so hard to do well at, or do a little extra if superiority
appears to be within reach. Seems like a whole lot of fluff for such a simple
observation.

~~~
lutorm
I think you missed the point. It's not that "people give up a little when
others tell them that they are bad..." The effect is self-afflicted, you just
have to _think_ that there is a negative stereotype that affects you, and your
performance will suffer. Moreover, the effect is actually stronger if you
think that you are pretty good at whatever the stereotype says you should be
bad at.

The point is that, regardless of whether the stereotype is true or not, this
is a scientifically established psychological reaction that causes people to
perform below their capacity, and it only affects those that are from a
stereotyped group. This means that, in your example above, women will
constantly be at a disadvantage compared to men in math performance.

Does it matter? If you were a member of such a group, I'd wager you would
think it unfair, and doubly so since you are already trying to break a
negative stereotype.

~~~
attack
Giving up is not self-afflicted?

No causality relationship was proven. Much less I have no idea what was
actually established given a total lack of numbers. A 1% drop? A 15% drop? Big
difference.

~~~
lutorm
People afflicted by stereotype threat don't just give up. (If anything they
try harder.) It's a _physiologically_ _measurable_ _effect_. Think of it as an
added level of anxiety that non-afflicted people don't have to face. Studies
have shown that it for examples results in lowered short-term memory capacity.

No-one is immune to this effect. A study was done on white male engineering
students on a math test. The ones that were told that the purpose of the test
was to figure out why "Asian students are better at math" systematically
underperformed compared to those who were not.

Some people may want to brush this effect away and just claim that the
disadvantaged groups don't "have it" or that everyone has advantages and
disadvantages, but remember that this strikes disproportionately at members of
some groups of people, through no fault of their own.

Regarding research results, it was a popular article. The numbers exist and
are closer to 15% than 1%. If you want to learn more, check out
<http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/>, it has an extensive bibliography.

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wumi
my first thought (after reading the first page) for some reason was about
athletics. needless to say, there are some pretty big stereotypes specifically
regarding sports (in the US at least)

