Summary Of Stereotypes By Richard Steele

What difference does this make? Steele summarizes the social psychologists “reasoned that it had something to do with their being white...it had to do with a contingency of white identity that comes to bear in situations where natural athletic ability is being evaluated.” In short, white people are aware of the stereotype that they aren’t as naturally athletic, and therefore the pressure of being judged by that ability increases the awareness of fitting in the stereotype. In reaction, these people react worse due to the stress, pressure, and distraction.
Steele presents more evidence by continuing on with another study, in which black golfers were analyzed instead. In that study, they were told the same as the white golfers, and yet, it didn’t have an effect on their performance. Steele surmises that this is evidence as to how stereotype threat interfered with white golfers’ scores. “When it was seen to measure natural athletic ability, [there] was a distracting sense of threat arising from how whites are stereotyped in the larger society.”
This time, the threat is in the air for black students’ golf scores. The social psychologists first identified a “bad stereotype about their group.” They tested black Princeton students against white Princeton students and told them this was a measure of “sports strategic intelligence.” The simple change in wording quite literally altered the game as the black golfers were now put at risk of falling into the horrible stereotype of black people being less intelligent. With this pressure and distraction, the black golfers’ form suffered and they “golfed dramatically worse than the white