Stanford pychologist Claude Steele delivers the Flemmie Kittrell Lecture in Uris Auditorium April 29. Adriana Rovers/University Photography
By Dennis Shin '96
According to Claude Steele, socialized stereotypes pose a "predicament" in academics for minorities. The Stanford psychologist provided explanations for group differences in achievement patterns while delivering the 1995-1996 Flemmie Kittrell Lecture April 29 in Uris Auditorium.
Titled "A Burden of Suspicion: How Stereotypes Shape the Intellectual Identities and Performance of Women and African Americans," Steele's lecture highlighted results from his recent research on the academic performance of women in mathematics and African Americans in general studies.
According to Steele, his experiments reveal that the structure of negative stereotypes within American society effectively undermines the self-identification process of such groups as women and African Americans.
"In order to do well in school and to sustain success in school, one needs to take on a personal identification that harnesses emotion, motivation and self-regulation," Steele said.
Stereotypes obstruct healthy identity formation, in Steele's opinion. As a result, he argued, students who are prejudged and categorized unfairly develop a negative self-regard that limits their intellectual ability.
"Stereotype threats become relevant in any instance when one might be perceived and treated stereotypically," he explained. "Merely being apprehensive about confirming stereotypes will make you the target end of them."
Adding that a student doesn't have to believe in a stereotype to be affected by it, Steele mentioned that everybody is a member of some group or another that is negatively stereotyped.
In the case of women, his experiments showed that when given a challenging math test, women scored about four times lower than men. According to Steele, he designed the exam to elicit frustration and, therefore, activate a stereotype about gender differences in math ability.
"Women, when they take a difficult math test, have a special burden in the room with them -- and that is the negative stereotype," Steele said.
When assured that the test would not show gender differences, however, women performed just as well as men. Steele believes this resulted because they were not at risk of confirming the stereotype threat.
The experience of African Americans proves more complex to Steele, because he claims, while women are free of negative stereotypes in such fields as literature, black students are typecast as poor achievers in general.
He proposed that the pressure of social stereotypes partially explains why blacks suffer a 30 percent higher college drop-out rate than the national average. In a study of Stanford University students, Steele noted that when given a test that measures "diagnostic ability," blacks tended to underperform. On the other hand, when given a test that measures "general problem-solving," black students were on par with their white counterparts.
"These are not internalized self-doubts," he pointed out. "They are strategic adaptations to situations."
Steele also noted that the experiment showed the blood pressure of black students was higher than white students when taking the test. He asserted that this is because black students are working under higher levels of stress due to the threat of negative stereotypes.
"If there is one thing I want to do," said Steele, "it is to change the impression of what minority and women students are like."
As a partial remedy to the problem of skewed performance levels, Steele proposed reforming the education system.
"For schooling to be effective with our heterogeneous populations, we have to have a more flexible approach to disarm negative stereotypes," he said.
Among his suggestions, Steele advocated eliminating remediation classes because he believes the stigma attached to such classes reaffirms negative stereotypes.
"I agree that stereotypes are implicit in everyone's subconscious," said Jarvis Sulcer '97, a Ph.D. student in nuclear science engineering. "It was interesting how he showed that they have a powerful influence on how you perform, whether you're black, white, male or female."
The annual Flemmie Kittrell Lecture, established in 1991, is named for the woman who in 1936, at Cornell, became the first African American in the United States to receive a Ph.D. in home economics. Kittrell later taught at Howard and Hampton universities. An expert in nutrition, child development and consumer behavior and education, she directed a U.S. State Department nutrition survey in Liberia and organized a College of Home Economics at Baroda University, India.