Stereotype
Stereotype affects the performance of different groups when they are put on a scale to measure their level of understanding. Most groups would perform in a way that justifies their inner feeling about how they are being perceived. The extract shows the social-psychological effects of stereotyping using different perspective and relating to the scholars’ studies of Steele and Aronson’s. This gives a true picture of how people behave to justify the stereotype attached to them (Conaway, 2005). The general feeling to be part of a group and having results that match a particular stereotype affects most of the people. To justify this, the literature shows that the threat which makes people to behave in that way comes from within. Thus, the threat is malevolent since it emerges in situations where people believe that a particular scale used to measure their negative stereotype of belonging to a particular group rather than their ability. Thus, the stress on individual perception on stereotype makes people to reduce their ability to perform leading to an outcome which they were striving to avoid (Conaway, 2005). For instance, women may make wrong decisions to justify the saying that they cannot make right decisions, thus leading to their failure. In that connection, women may be good decision makers, but due to the perception that they cannot make right judgment, they end up performing poorly.
The stereotype affects individuals and groups performance in many ways as justified by the literature. In that connection, people will always tend to be more susceptible when they are perceived to belong to a particular stereotype group (Conaway, 2005). However, individuals who do not care about the group which they belong to may not be susceptible to the effects of stereotype. Nevertheless, some individuals are affected by believing that their intelligence is affected and determined by birth rather than learning or through experience. Thus, such particular individual may not perform better in a test because of believing that his/her performance will be affected due to discrimination expected in a test or in an interview. From the literature, the author asserts that when an experiment was carried out by Steele and Aronson on verbal between whites and blacks, the blacks’ SAT scores were lower than the whites at Stanford University (Conaway, 2005). This was because they believed that the test was about their ability. However, when the blacks new that the test was about psychological factors on verbal problems, they performed ten times better. Thus, stereotype and being attached to a particular group which tends to believe that they will be affected leads to lower performance. Similarly, the literature shows how women in the society believe to be poor performers in different subjects. For instance challenging tests of science or mathematics makes them to think that the test is about gender differences in science or math (Conaway, 2005). Thus, the gap between gender can be broken if the women believe that the test is about gender-neutral. Similarly, if women are tested on a skill which they believe is not about ability on gender, they will perform well even in the workplace.
From stereotypic perspective of the literature, individual and groups of people will tend to perform in ways which justifies their association in a particular group. Similarly, some individuals who do not care about being a particular group will not perform like those who perceive to be discriminated (Conaway, 2005). Therefore, the performance of groups of people in the society are affected by their inner believe rather than the discrimination at the point of test or at the workplace. Thus, the stereotype can have a negative impact on performance and one needs to understand what triggers it to avoid the effects related to it.
Reference
Conaway, C. (2005). a psychological effect of stereotypes. Regional Review, 14(3), 40–41.