Katherine Johnson Hidden Figure Essay

Hidden Figures is a biography film about an African American women mathematician Katherine Johnson, and her colleagues Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. It is about the challenges they faced while working at NASA during the time of the space race. Katherine Johnson was a widowed mother of three who works most of her time and struggles to be the first African American in her department at NASA. Dorothy Vaughan is a wife and mother who does supervisor work but does not get promoted to supervisor or get supervisor pay. Mary Jackson is a wife and mother who aspire to be the first African-American engineer at NASA. In this paper, we will focus on the main character Katherine Johnson and discuss the cognitive development, social psychology, and stress and health in the film. At the beginning of the film, it showed Katherine Johnson and her development over time. Katherine was cognitively at a different stage than her peers. The administrators at Katherine’s school and Katherine’s parents decided to switch her to a school for the gifted and talented. Katherine’s IQ level was most likely …show more content…
Katherine experienced social psychology issues of stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination. A Stereotype is the attributes that people is associated with a certain group or person. Katherine experienced stereotype when while working at NASA around the other staff by them thinking that she did not know how to do a lot of things since she is a black female. Prejudice is a preconceived judgment about a person, group, or issue. Katherine experienced prejudice when her supervisor thought that she was just going missing all the time, but she was traveling across NASA campus to use the only colored women’s bathroom. Discrimination is the biased treatment of individuals based on their membership. Katherine experienced discrimination when she had to use the colored people