September
10, 2004
Influential
Scholar to Speak at
MHC on “Stereotype Threat”
Professor
Claude M. Steele |
Professor
Claude M. Steele, an internationally recognized authority on
how group stereotypes affect self-image, academic performance,
and individual behavior, will speak at Mount Holyoke Tuesday,
September 21. Steele has written extensively on a range of issues,
including challenges faced by students of color and women at
American institutions of higher education and in other settings.
Steele will speak at 7 pm in Gamble Auditorium. The event is
free, open to the public, and accessible to all.
Steele’s visit is sponsored by the Office of the President and tied to
the work of the Presidential Commission on Diverse Community, a committee of
faculty members, students, and staff appointed by President Joanne V. Creighton
last year and charged with assessing and enhancing the role diversity plays in
the school’s work environment, community, and especially in the curricular
and cocurricular dimensions of Mount Holyoke students’ education. Last
year, members of the Commission, as well as more than 50 faculty members and
administrators, met with two of Steele’s colleagues—Geoffrey Cohen
of Yale University and Josh Aronson of New York University—to discuss ensuring
the effectiveness of the school as a learning environment for all students.
“Professor Steele is at the forefront of scholars examining how race and
gender can interact with societal stereotypes to negatively affect high-achieving
students of color and women in their academic performance,” Creighton said. “His
work has great relevance as educational institutions—and our society as
a whole—face issues ranging from affirmative action and diversity to questions
of how standardized tests measure student abilities.”
A significant focus of Steele’s work has been on how explicit or implicit
societal attitudes regarding race, ethnicity, and gender can affect the academic
performance of students of color and women, as well as the expectations of faculty
members, while often bolstering the performance of majority students. For example,
as part of his work Steele and his colleagues have looked at reasons why the
abilities of high-achieving African Americans and women are underrepresented
on standardized tests such as the SAT. According to material posted on the Web
as part of “Secrets of the SAT,” a 1999 documentary by the PBS investigative
magazine Frontline:
“Recent studies have shown that later in life, when those students who
make it to college and post-graduate studies are faced with standardized tests
such as the SAT and the GRE, new factors come into play which might contribute
to the gap. Stanford psychology professor Claude Steele and his colleagues have
described what they call ‘stereotype threat.’ According to their
research, a student who feels he is part of a group that has been negatively
stereotyped is likely to perform less well in a situation in which he thinks
that people might evaluate him through that stereotype than in a situation in
which he feels no such pressure.
“Steele has conducted experiments in which he brings in black students
and white students to take a standardized test. The first time, he tells the
students that they will be taking a test to measure their verbal and reasoning
ability. The second time, he tells them the test is an unimportant research tool.
Steele has found that the black students do less well when they are told that
the test measures their abilities. He also believes that the effects of stereotype
threat are strongest for students who are high-achievers and care very much about
doing well. They care so much about doing well, Steele says, that they feel that
if they don’t they will be confirming the negative stereotypes associated
with black students.” (Frontline has published an interview with Steele
at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/interviews/steele.html.)
Interestingly, Steele has also found, in the test situations comparing white
students and students of color, that the performance of white students is enhanced
by the same conditions under which the performance of minority students is diminished.
In fact, this “stereotype lift” may be a factor in the persistence
of racism among members of the majority, who benefit from situations where expectations,
both positive and negative, are keyed to race.
Steele is the Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences at Stanford University,
where he has taught since 1991. He has also been a faculty member at the Universities
of Michigan, Washington, and Utah. Throughout his career he has been interested
in how people cope with self-image threat. His theory of “self-affirmation” describes
processes for coping with this threat, and his theory of “stereotype threat” describes
how negative group stereotypes—through the self-evaluative and belongingness
threats they pose—can affect important behaviors like intellectual performance
and intergroup relations. He has also studied addictive behaviors.
Steele received his B.A. degree from Hiram College and his Ph.D. from Ohio State
University. He is past president of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology
and the Western Psychological Association. He has served as chair of the executive
committee of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, as a member of the
board of directors of the American Psychological Society (APS), and on numerous
editorial boards and grant study sections. He is past chair of the psychology
department at Stanford, a fellow of the APS and the American Psychological Association
(APA), and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National
Academy of Education. He is the recipient of a Cattell Fellowship, the Gordon
Allport Prize, the William James Fellow Award from the APS, the Kurt Lewin Prize
from the Society for the Scientific Study of Social Issues, honorary doctorates
from the University of Chicago and Yale University, the Distinguished Scientific
Career Awards from both the APA and APS, and the Senior Award for Distinguished
Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest, he was elected to
the National Academy of Sciences
in 2003.
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