Stereotype Threat Pros And Cons

It’s instinct to make quick judgments on things that are unfamiliar and new, it helps make life easier which in turn helps us with survival and social aspects of our lives. We organize people into many groups and subgroups with things such as outward appearance, socioeconomic status, education, etc. At first glance, categorizing others into groups can seem beneficial but there are flaws, power struggles, oversimplified views, and gross judgments made on a certain person or that person’s group. Categorizing becomes harmful because by the simple act of separating we isolate others and ourselves into groups and within each group there are advantages and disadvantages that can affect lives negatively. Stereotype threat is when a person internalizes
If the person believes that effort makes a difference there is a greater chance that setbacks will be seen as challenges instead of failures, their motivation to succeed is not hindered. An entity mindset depresses motivation because failures are seen as a limitation to a person’s ability that cannot be overcome. With stereotype threat an individual is threatened to confirm a negative stereotype, but with an incremental mindset this threat can be diminished because there is a belief that even though that stereotype of performing badly exists, this performance can be improved by putting in the effort or extra practice. This effect was also seen in a study done by Cimpian & Erickson (2012) on generic language and children’s abilities to perform well on a novel game. If the child was exposed to generic language their performance decreased, due to the fact that “generic language implies that performance is due to stable traits rather than effort (Cimpian et al., 2012).” This pattern also shows that to decrease impacts of stereotype threat that teaching and implementing an incremental mindset is crucial. This mindset promotes the resilience needed when threat is in the