' T Let Stereotypes Warp Your Judgment By Claude M. Steele

The Downfall and Potential of Stereotyping At some point in our lives many of us have stereotyped or fallen victim to a stereotype threat. We categorize the complex world into sections that fit our schema. Often times these ‘categories’ we create are inaccurate and harmful to others, and affect our mental process. The articles “Don’t let stereotypes warp your judgment” by Robert Heilbroner and “The many experiences of stereotype threat” by Claude M. Steele analyze and examine the effects of stereotyping. In “Don’t let stereotypes warp your judgment”, Heilbroner covers the issue of stereotyping the origins of it and the negative effects of it on people. The author explains that stereotypes have negative effects on people because it sways
Steele believes that situational pressure feeds stereotype threat and that it might be possible to change performances on standardized tests depending on which stereotype participants are reminded of. To test his theory Steele asked undergraduate Asian women to participate in a math test. Steele picked this group because, “Members of this group have two math-relevant identities: their gender identity, which is negatively stereotyped in math, and their ethnic identity, which is positively stereotyped in math” (Steele 253). The results found supported Steele’s theory; Asian women whose background questionnaire reminded them of their gender identity got 43 percent of questions attempted correct whereas those who filled questionnaires that didn’t remind them of their gender identity got 49 percent of questions correct. However, when the background questionnaires reminded the participants of their ethnic background, performance improved drastically and got 54 percent of the items they attempted correct. Steele claims that “These findings suggest a possible remedy for stereotyping threat effects: remind test takers of identities that counter the relevant stereotype” (Steele 254). Steele analyzes that negative stereotypes affects peoples’
Heilbroner believes that people stereotype to conserve the confusion of the world. It saves people the trouble of finding out what the world and people are really like, and as a result make people mentally lazy. Stereotypes can become for some people all the time, and this substitutes for observation, Heilbroner explains, “Someone who has formed rigid preconceptions of all teenagers as “wild,” doesn’t alter his point of view when he meets a calm and serious-minded high school student. He brushes them aside as “exceptions that prove the rule.” And, of course, if he meets someone true to type, he stands triumphantly vindicated. “They’re all like that,” he proclaims, having, an ill-behaved adolescent” (Heilbroner 244). In addition to making us mentally lazy and destroying our ability to observe, Heilbroner believes that stereotyping degrade ourselves because a person who divides the world into simple categories such as “snobs”, “lazy”, and “sexy” is apt to becoming a stereotype themselves and loses the capability to be oneself. While negatively affecting ourselves, stereotyping harms others and is often the source of racism and prejudice, For example, in a study, a number of Columbia and Barnard students were shown 30 photographs of pretty but unidentified girls, and asked to