Stereotypes and Stereotype Threat (Essay Sample)

Stereotypes and Stereotype Threat
Name
Institution
Part A: Stereotypes and Stereotype Threats
Stereotypes are stubborn pseudo-facts about society, personal identities, ethnicities and cultures which influence behaviour or dispositions while they are not substantially concrete. Stereotypes are threats because they guide our perceptions and sometime form the sole elements of the interpretation of identities and ethnicities. Stereotypes generally affect both children and adults because they demean their mental and cognitive preparedness to perform given tasks. They also demean personal intrinsic motivation for a given task expectation and eventual performance (Cvencek, Meltzoff & Greenwald, 2011). Stereotypes encompass a group characteristic and paint the vanguard characteristic in a given popular pedigree regarding their veracity. It is important to study stereotypes and stereotype threats because they have far reaching effects on individuals and leave discord among people in a society. Stereotypes operate on a basis of individual cognitive schemas in regard to given tasks and expectations. For instance, since math is perceived to be a mal dominated field in the higher specialities, many ladies might find the stereotype definitive and might entirely influence their actual performance of math tasks. This paper seeks to trace the schemas of personality and efficacy factors in reproducing their predominance over individual’s behavioural aptitudes.
Efficacy factors associated with individual performance on given tasks determine their degree of resilience to negative expectations and personal pressure or intimidation achieved as a result of having to undertake difficult task. Sometime tasks might be perceived as difficult but eventually prove easy when faced by various individuals. Stereotypes affect individual preparedness and performance on a cognitive task. Nonetheless, efficacy factors are useful to ensuring that past failures can be traversed by the individual and that that their future performances produce progressive outcomes. The influence of stereotypes become more pronounced when there exists endorsing factors which facilitate their expression and authenticity in terms of the magnitudes of their influence on the individual. For instance, whenever a child exhibits stereotypes about their performances in a given task, there could be reinforcing stereotypes from parents about the ability of the daughter. In the event that such stereotypes achieve a compound effect, their influences become more paramount upon the individual.
Stereotype threat emanates from the condition of self identification being justified or manifested to construe a plausible stereotype in the individual circumstances that exhibit underachievement or under performance or failure to produce excellent of performance. Such a resident threat has the capacity to actually distort belief, conviction and drive to achieve a given credential of performance. Whenever an individual has belief profiles that a given task is best represented or tackled by a separate social class, their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to handle such a task is adversely reduced. Such is the manifestation of stereotypical discord which make individuals grossly isolated form partaking a given challenge According to Steele’s theory (1997), many adults believe they may not fare well in athletic tasks while in actual experience, a lot of adults can performance great athletic exploits. A good example is the famous Wrester ‘Hulk Hogan’ who despite his age, seem to portray a very impressive performance in the bouts.
In Tomasetto et al.’s (2011) study on the performance of math among young learners, many factors converge to exhibit the stereotype environment and these factors are varied and diverse. Within the very individual showing acknowledgement of stereotypical orientation, their challenge is formed from varied experiences and conditions in the school. They may have their parents showing stereotypes while at home and they may have classmates or teachers who depict them stereotypically and such depiction are allowed to overwhelm the individual from a considerable profile of interactions. In addition, according to Cvencek et al.’s study (2011), there are several mechanisms through which much of the daily stereotypes can be understood and addressed. These methods are inexpensive but mean so much to the progress of the learners whether they are children or adults. Stereotypes should be addressed in society particularly as we progress to an age of multi-ethnicity and cosmopolitanism across the globe. Many neighbourhoods across the globe and cosmopolitan and for the sake of cohesion, there need to be extensive interaction and lesser biases among people.
Part B: Experiment on Stereotypes and Stereotype Threats
Hypothetically, stereotypes and stereotype threats are rampant in American society and in personal schemes of ideation or personal identification. In this proposed study, I will analyse to what extent factors of personal efficacy can yield in reverting stereotypes and learning math for elementary school female students.
Literature Review
Most elementary students in America exhibit gendered stereotypes about performance in math. Elementary school mathematics is not ideally very challenging and with proper guidance and intervention to dispel stereotypic orientations, a great improvement can be noted among both male and female students alike. Moreover, there are stereotypes about students of African American origin with general performance. Various studied have shown that stereotypes can be rectified through effective interventions in the form of affirmative action or special school programs modulated to the contending stereotypical issues in the school or among a select class of students.
Method of Study
This study will involve ordinary learning encounters among students enrolled in an elementary class comprising both female and male students. The sampling technique involved in this process shall entail cluster sampling approach. Clusters of female students with average performance in math shall be selected for the study. A control group of the same category of male students will be selected for the control study. This experiment shall run a complete term course and various tests of these participants shall be analysed against those of the control group. A similar sample of girls in another stream with the same average performance will be selected also to verify the validity of the findings on the comparative study.
The experimental groups of students will be assessed on the basis of their stereotypes and stereotype threats about performance in math. After the experimental group is taken through a program of sensitization and affirmative action, they will be taught together with those other groups that have not been taken through sensitization. Progressive assessments of their performances will be undertaken and a database constr...