1. Pedagogical Hurdles: Implicit Bias & Stereotype threat Carole Lee
Workshop on Teaching and Learning 05/28/2013

2. Bias research in social psychology
Old model of discrimination focused on Explicit Discrimination, i.e., conscious actions directed against members of a group.
New model: Implicit bias.
Schemas: Non-conscious expectations or stereotypes associated with a group that guide expectations, perceptions, and behaviors.
Action based on schemas is pervasive, valuable and inevitable. But schemas can be distorting and result in poor judgment.
Valian (1998) Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women. Cambridge: MIT Press, p. 280

3. Schemas are widely shared
Research shows that we all – regardless of gender or race – perceive and treat people based on schemas associated with social group membership.
Even those who consciously reject the schemas may respond and act in ways that conform to them.
In fact, many people who take themselves to be objective rely more heavily on schemas.
People are typically not aware of them, but with effort can become aware of them and change them.
Fiske (2002). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11,

4. Schemas and Evaluation
Applicants with African American-sounding names had to send 15 resumes to get a callback, compared to 10 for applicants with white-sounding names.
Jamal
Greg
White names counted as an additional 8 years of experience.
Bertrand & Mullainathan (2004) Poverty Action Lab, 3, 1-27.
When evaluating identical application packages, male and female university psychology professors preferred 2:1 to hire “Brian” over “Karen.”
Steinpreis, Anders, & Ritzke (1999) Sex Roles, 41, 509.

5. Evaluation of Fellowship Applications
“…the success rate of female scientists applying for postdoctoral fellowships at the [Swedish Medical Research Council] during the 1990s has been less than half that of male applicants.”
Results of study: Women applying for a post- doctoral fellowship had to be 2.5 times more productive to receive the same reviewer rating as the average male applicant.
Similar findings:
USA/GAO report on Peer Review in Federal Agency Grant Selection (1994)
European Molecular Biology Organization Reports (2001)
NIH Pioneer Awards: Journal of Women’s Health (2005) & Nature (August 2006)
Wenneras & Wold (1997) Nature, 387, 341.

6. Gender Schemas in Recommendations for Successful Medical School Faculty Applicants
Letters for men:
Longer
More references to CV, Publications, Patients, Colleagues
Letters for women:
Shorter
More references to personal life
More “doubt raisers,” including hedges, faint praise, and irrelevancies (e.g., “It’s amazing how much she’s accomplished.” “It appears her health is stable.” “She is close to my wife.”)
Trix & Psenka (2003) Discourse & Society, 14(2): , 2003.

7. More evidence of evaluation bias
Race and gender stereotypes often lead to different standards of assessment.
Women and minorities are more easily judged competent, but standards for excellence are set higher than for men and whites. (Biernat & Kobrynowicz 1997)
High prestige jobs are coded masculine (requiring competence, ambition, competitiveness), but women who are “masculine” in this way are judged to be cold, aggressive, haughty, so not a good “fit” for the workplace. (Fine 2010, Ch. 5)

8. Accumulation of disadvantage feedback loop
Lowered success in class/major
Student comments and written work not taken as seriously or evaluated as being as insightful as others’.
Lack of critical mass
“Confirms” schema
Talk about students being evaluated. Then talk about teachers being evaluated.
Performance is underestimated for classroom discussion and written work
Evaluation Bias

9. Thwarting implicit bias
Schemas play a significant role when there is:
Ambiguity, lack of information
Stress from competing tasks, time pressure
Under-representation of the group in question
Lack of accountability
Schemas can be overridden when:
We are highly motivated to override them
Are reminded of counter-stereotypic exemplars
Form concrete intentions that help override bias (e.g., if I’m in this situation, I will do x).

10. Stereotype threat
Stereotype threat occurs when your group is stereotyped as performing poorly in a domain and your performance may be perceived as confirming the negative stereotype.
Performance decreases on computational and recall tasks.
Conscious awareness of the threat is not necessary for the effects.
Stereotype threat is situational: performance decreases only in settings where the stereotype is activated.
Threat can be activated with little or no explicit mention of stereotyped group.
If the stereotype is culturally ubiquitous.
If there are implicit cues (e.g., micromessages).
Solo status.

11. Micro-messaging
Implicit attitudes (biases) are more often expressed in body language than in speech, even by those who do not consciously endorse the bias.
Micro-messages can imply that “you don’t belong here.”
Micro-inequities can be countered by micro-affirmations.

12. Solo Status
Solo status occurs when one is the only member of one’s social group in a setting.
Solo status increases the risk of stereotype threat; public settings also exacerbate the effects.
Both stereotype threat and solo status are plausibly the result of intrusive metacognition.
Addressing solo status can reduce stereotype threat – critical mass matters.

13. Stereotype threat: Who and When?
Women → math tests
Latinos → verbal tests
Elderly → short-term memory tests
Low SES → verbal tests
White male engineers → test assessing why Asians are good at math
When?
When the material is especially challenging
When students care deeply about performing well

14. Stereotype threat feedback loop
decreased and more variable academic performance
Higher anxiety.
Less stable academic self-esteem.
Lack of critical mass
“Confirms” membership in stereotype
Less stable self-assessments of academic efficacy.
Miscalibrated self-knowledge.
Triggered social identity and anxiety
(Aronson & Inzlicht 2004)

15. Thwarting stereotype threat (for students)
Remove cues that trigger worries about stereotypes
Sexist men in engineering
Demographic queries immediately before tests
Ambient cues that equate a performance domain with one group
Create fair tests and communicate that they are fair and serve a learning purpose
Do not present tests--explicitly or implicitly--as measuring innate ability or as expected to reify stereotypes
Convey that students are viewed as individuals, not as token members of a group
Present positive role models from diverse groups

16. Thwarting stereotype threat can uncover latent ability
Negatively stereotyped students have enormous, unrealized academic potential hidden by bias in common academic environments.
Study found quantitative SAT scores improved for women and ethnic-minorities (non-Asian) when took test in “safe” environments where:
validity of the stereotype was refuted
test’s relevance to evaluating stereotyped ability was denied, or
identity-relevant antidote to stereotype threat was provided (e.g., a value affirmation)
(Walton & Spencer, 2009)

17. Thwarting stereotype threat (for teachers)
Reframe the task
Does the task have to be viewed as diagnostic of your abilities? Is it really a “test”?
Explain your anxiety in ways that don’t validate the stereotype
Attribute struggle to “an external, temporary cause.”
Treat anxiety as a potential performance enhancer.
Interact regularly with counter-stereotypical exemplars
Develop a homophilous network of friends and mentors (divided by race/ethnicity/gender). USE GO-MAP!!!

18. Thank you!
Thanks also to Sally Haslanger.