Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Issues of Our Time) Paperback – April 4, 2011
Author: Claude M. Steele | Language: English | ISBN: 0393339726 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do – April 4, 2011
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You can download Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Issues of Our Time) Paperback – April 4, 2011 for everyone book 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link Direct download links available for Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do – April 4, 2011
- Series: Issues of Our Time
- Paperback: 242 pages
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (April 4, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393339726
- ISBN-13: 978-0393339727
- Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
- Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #17 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Social Psychology & Interactions
- #29 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Social Psychology & Interactions
- #37 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology
This book by social psychologist and Columbia University provost, Claude Steele, is a splendid example of how psychologists can make valuable contributions to society. In the book, Steele writes about the work he and his colleagues have done on a phenomenon called stereotype threat, the tendency to expect, perceive, and be influenced by negative stereotypes about one's social category, such as one's age, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, profession, nationality, political affiliation, mental health status, and so on.
Experiments demonstrating the impact of stereotype threat
When trying to understand certain performance gaps between groups, Steele and his colleagues did not focus on internal psychological factors.. Instead, they tried to understand the possible causal role of identity contingencies, the things you have to deal with in a situation because you have a given social identity. Over the years they carried out a series of creative experiments* in which there was a control condition in which a task was given under normal conditions life. In the experimental condition, the identity contingency was either cleverly removed or it was deliberately induced. Here are three examples of experiments to clarify how they worked.
Experiment 1: Steele and Aronson (1995)
In this experiment the researchers had African American and white college students take a very challenging standardized test. In the control condition, the test was presented as these tests are always presented - as a measure of intellectual ability. This condition contained the stereotype that African Americans would be less intelligent. In the experimental condition the test was presented in a non-evaluative way.
As a white man working around Asia, places like China, Korea and Japan, and wishing to stay here, I absolutely have to deal with the issue of race and stereotype. What may seem trivial now, as a single caucasian man, may at some point (eg. getting married, raising biracial children) become an issue for me and my family. And for anyone not living in Asia, there are class and racial divisions all over the world, as students and co-workers form cliques along predictable lines.
I remember in University, taking an Intermediate Mandarin class, where all the different ethnic and social groups would-unknowingly- cluster together perfectly: there were the white kids, the Chinese born Canadians, the Hong Kong kids, the Bi-racial kids, the Koreans, and some Philippinos. It was only several weeks into the class that I noticed these convenient groupings (I had done the exact same with my white friends). Were we racist? Were we trying to reject the other classmembers (and the Chinese teacher!)? Not at all. We enjoyed the arrangement, subconscious though it may have been.
But I do remember another class I took (briefly). It was an Asian studies course. There was one other white person in the class (phew!), and the goal of the class was to research the rich Asian influences in our community. This was a heavy course, and considered high-end credit, meaning very intensive projects. I was almost certain to be working later in Asia (that's why I signed up in the first place), but I felt like I shouldn't be there, and I felt like a fraud, that my research would be scrutinized, and my `findings' would be immediately dismissed, as they were coming from a Caucasian student.
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