Claude Steele’s powerful book, Whistling Vivaldi analyzes how stereotypes affect human behavior and performance by bringing to light influences and conditioning that normally goes unnoticed by the average person. He not only presents numerous studies and experiments performed by himself, as well as other contemporary social psychologists, but he shows us the ways they interconnect and how the effects of one social phenomena amplify and reinforce the effects of other ones. A key to his thesis is the idea of stereotype contingencies, which are the conditions people have to face due to their social identity that comes from their race, gender, ethnicity, age, diseases, and so on. He also counteracts the problems that people face from stereotypes
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In chapter nine, he brought up the self-affirmation theory, which he describes as being “morally and adaptively adequate” (172). This is an idea that when somebody’s “perception is threatened-by events, by how others judge [them], or even by [their] own actions that fail to meet [their] standards” (172), the person will relax, rationalize, and uphold their larger, valued self worth. The theory is that identity threats harm a person’s self identity and integrity, and if a person does not have a strong enough self worth, it could damage their mentality. This compelled Geoff, Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, Nancy Apfel, and Allison Master to run an experiment on multiple highly integrated seventh-grade classes in Connecticut. The teachers were to give each student an envelope with their names on it, and on the inside were instructions which varied in two different ways. Half of the students were asked to write down their two or three most important values, and to explain why with a personal narrative. This was then given back to the teacher and repeated a few times throughout the school year to make it constant reminder. While the other half of the students, the control group, were asked to write about a few of their least important values, and to explain why they may be important to others. “These students got a chance to think about values, but no chance to affirm any self-narrative about them” (174). These social psychologists have continued to take notes on these students for years to come to find out how this would affect
In chapter nine, he brought up the self-affirmation theory, which he describes as being “morally and adaptively adequate” (172). This is an idea that when somebody’s “perception is threatened-by events, by how others judge [them], or even by [their] own actions that fail to meet [their] standards” (172), the person will relax, rationalize, and uphold their larger, valued self worth. The theory is that identity threats harm a person’s self identity and integrity, and if a person does not have a strong enough self worth, it could damage their mentality. This compelled Geoff, Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, Nancy Apfel, and Allison Master to run an experiment on multiple highly integrated seventh-grade classes in Connecticut. The teachers were to give each student an envelope with their names on it, and on the inside were instructions which varied in two different ways. Half of the students were asked to write down their two or three most important values, and to explain why with a personal narrative. This was then given back to the teacher and repeated a few times throughout the school year to make it constant reminder. While the other half of the students, the control group, were asked to write about a few of their least important values, and to explain why they may be important to others. “These students got a chance to think about values, but no chance to affirm any self-narrative about them” (174). These social psychologists have continued to take notes on these students for years to come to find out how this would affect