A Mind of Its Own

by Cordelia Fine

  Social psychologists have witnessed vicious circles of just this sort. For example, white people subliminally primed with black faces respond in a more hostile way to a request by the experimenter to redo a tedious computer task, compared with people primed with white faces.8 The researchers wondered whether this primed aggressiveness might, in turn, make anyone on the receiving end of it more antagonistic in return.9 One group of volunteers had the black stereotype subliminally primed using faces of black men, whereas the control group volunteers were primed with white faces. Then the volunteers were asked to play a quiz game with another (white) person. (The volunteers’ quiz partners had to be white because a black partner would also prime the black stereotype in the control group, and might arouse suspicions regarding the nature of the experiment.) Just as the researchers predicted, the black-primed volunteers behaved more aggressively than volunteers primed with white faces. But what’s more, this affected their quiz partner, who responded by getting bolshy right back. This didn’t go unnoticed by the volunteers, who rated their partners as more hostile than did the control group volunteers.

  What is most creepy about self-fulfilling stereotypes is that when you project your stereotypical beliefs onto someone, the image that gets bounced back is more a reflection of your own behaviour than of his or her true qualities. Yet your role in this horrible distortion goes undetected. The most well-meaning intention to be impartial when evaluating job applicants, for example, may be thoroughly undermined by your own behaviour. When white people were asked to interview a job applicant, they behaved very differently depending on whether the applicant was black or white.10 This was despite the fact that the applicants were actually stooges, carefully trained to perform in a standard manner during the interview. If the applicant was black, the inter viewers kept themselves more physically distant, made more speech errors during the interview and ended it more abruptly.

  A dispiriting follow-up study showed that being treated like a black person in this way could undermine anyone’s interview performance. White Princeton University students were interviewed for a job by trained stooges. Half were given the remote, inarticulate and terse style of interview that black applicants received in the first experiment. This ‘black treatment’ hampered the white Princeton students: judges watching the interviews rated them as significantly less competent for the job than students given the ‘white treatment’. This experiment shows that relatively subtle differences in the way that white people respond to black people compared to white people may undermine black job applicants’ true abilities, making them seem less competent than they really are. Then, not only does that black person not get the job, but the impression that black people tend not to be quite up to scratch becomes engrained a little more strongly in the interviewer’s mind.

  Even when a person from a disparaged group – despite the unfair odds set up by stereotyping – manages to clinch a job, the battle may have only just begun. The gates to traditionally masculine domains may have been grudgingly cracked open to women, for example, but it seems that men are still rather jittery about the ability of the ‘weaker sex’ to cope. Men and women volunteers were set up as the team leaders of a group of male and female subordinates.11 The task at hand was a portfolio of particularly traditionally ‘male’ maths and reasoning problems (war games and sports problems, for example). As the boss, the team leader’s responsibility was to choose who would, or would not, join the team, and to fill the various hierarchical positions in whatever way would enable them to best compete against other teams. Doing well on the task, they were told, would bring substantial monetary rewards. And, as in life, the bonuses received by their various team members would be commensurate with the seniority of their position in the team. The only information the team leader had to go on in the selection process was the input his or her underlings provided about their academic strengths or weaknesses and, seemingly incidentally, their gender. In fact, the information offered by the minions, who were supposedly in another room, was carefully made up by the experimenter and delivered to the unsuspecting team leader by email.

  The women team leaders, considering their pool of candidates for ways in which weaknesses in team members might drag down the team, recognised that there was no good reason to think that the men would perform any better than the women. They were completely even-handed in the way that they allocated team positions (and thus earning potential) to their fictional subordinates. But the men were clearly concerned that the stereotypical woolly and irrational ‘feminine’ qualities of the women might hamper their team’s chances for success. They showed blatant sex discrimination, with men disproportionately represented in the better spots in the team. But by way of compensation for the side-lined women, they lavished them with disingenuous compliments: ‘Your answers were excellent … wonderfully informative … if you were on the team, you’d be absolutely fabulous, I’m sure of it … you’re not on the team.’12 In the condescending environment of the male domain, if a man is in charge, a woman’s work may be greeted with much insincere praise, but little in the way of rewards where it really counts – in the paycheque and on the promotion ladder.

  Nor does a patronising pat on the back do much to motivate women devalued in this way by their superiors, further research showed. In a cunning reversal of the original experiment, male and female participants were put in the role of lowly team member, given feedback and allocated team positions by a (fictitious) male team leader. Then the participants worked their way through as many of the maths and reasoning problems as they could.

  The women were clearly just as able as the men at solving these problems. They scored every bit as well as the men regardless of whether the feedback given to them had been rather cool or pleasantly enthusiastic, and with no regard to where on the team totem pole they had been placed. There was only one exception to this equality of performance between the sexes. This was when the team leader didn’t match his magnanimous praise with a good spot on the team. In men, this had the effect of spurring them on to exceptional mental whizzery. The researchers suggest that, infuriated by the patronising injustice, the men directed their angry energy towards proving the team leader wrong. Curiously though, the same scenario of unfairly low placement had the opposite effect upon women. Although they were every bit as furious as the men about being condescended to, afterwards their performance on the problems was noticeably lacklustre. The researchers suggest that, having learnt the sad lesson that sexism is rife and unconquerable, the women’s anger left them feeling hopelessly ineffective.

  As if all this weren’t bad enough, stereotypes don’t even need other people to do their dirty work for them. The grubby finger-printing can be found directly on the members of stereotyped groups. A woman in a maths class, or a black student in an exam, must both perform under the threatening shadow of the stereotype of inferiority. The anxiety that this stereotype threat generates hampers their natural ability, and the stereotype is confirmed.13 Rather surprisingly, the burden that stereotype threat brings to its bearer is remarkably easy to uncover. For instance, men sometimes outperform women at maths, particularly at very advanced levels. This has, of course, led to all sorts of claims about genetic differences in maths ability between men and women. Yet researchers interested in stereotype threat were able to magically close this gender gap (and no genetic modification required).14 One group of university maths students was given a hard maths test. The men outperformed the women. But hold your smirks, fellas, and don’t be too quick to draw conclusions. A second group of students was given exactly the same test, but the participants were told beforehand that gender differences had never been found in how men and women scored on this particular test. When the cloud of stereotype threat was dispersed in this way, the women did every bit as well as the men.

  Indeed, offering a rare ray of hope in this field of research, it seems that revealing the truth about stereotype threat to vulnerable students can set them free of its foreboding presence. Wo
men statistics students showed the usual below-par performance on a maths test, in comparison with men, when it was threateningly presented as a part of a study of gender differences in mathematical ability.15 But another group of students was told beforehand about stereotype threat and its effects. The women were advised that, ‘It’s important to keep in mind that, if you are feeling anxious while taking this test, this anxiety could be the result of these negative stereotypes that are widely known in society and have nothing to do with your actual ability to do well on the test.’ Teachers, take note. Enlightened in this way, the women did every bit as well as the men. Ongoing research suggests that the performance of black students, too, may be able to be bolstered in just the same way.16

  And there is yet another way to level the playing field. It is not only the case that stereotypes about maths are damaging to women. Men normally benefit slightly from the culturally ingrained assumption that they are naturally superior to women, an effect called stereotype lift.17 Men don’t perform quite as well if you whip this booster seat out from under them by informing them that, on this occasion, their possession of certain masculine physical attributes won’t help their performance.

  By now, you should be developing a certain grudging awe for the number of ways in which stereotypes further themselves: the bigot goggles, the self-fulfilling prophecy, stereotype threat and stereotype lift. Yet, you may furtively wonder, is this enough to explain why stereotypes live on, if there really is no truth to them? I will leave discussion of the ‘kernel of truth’ hypothesis to more courageous writers.18 However, bear in mind that so far we have seen only the stereotype’s arsenal of attack: the ways in which it distorts our judgments and behaviour. The stereotype also enjoys a strong line of defence against people inconsiderate enough to challenge our bigoted expectations. As revealed in ‘The Deluded Brain’, we’re rather prone to fiddling the statistics to fit our beliefs. We fall prey to illusory correlation, seeing links between groups of people and traits that fit a stereotype, but don’t actually exist. Are menopausal women really bad-tempered grumps, for example? According to their stereotype they are but, as one study showed, illusory correlation has much to answer for in perpetuating this moody image.19 People hugely overestimate how often they have seen menopausal women in a stink.

  Another clever way to discount people who don’t fit in with your stereotyped beliefs is to pop them into a little category all of their own. As we saw in ‘The Pigheaded Brain’, we have a remarkable capacity to make up explanations to back up anything we happen to believe. In just the same way, we seize on handy little details to explain away the generous Jew, or the assertive woman. We will claim, ‘Oh, but she went to such a posh girls’ school’ (or, ‘Oh, but she went to such a rough comprehensive’), to account conveniently for what seems to us to be unusual assertiveness in a woman, leaving us with no urge to update our stereotype.20 In fact, if the person deviates enough from her stereotype, we don’t even feel the need to justify ignoring the challenge that her existence presents. Her freakishness, in our eyes, is seen as grounds enough for dismissing her as a counter-example.21

  This is all dispiriting enough. But there is even more depressing news for those who do not fit the stereotypical mould of their sex. Gender ‘deviants’ are at risk of far worse treatment than merely being rejected as irrelevant. For instance, women who venture outside the acceptable limits set by gender stereotypes invite backlash against themselves. Research suggests that there are very good reasons why a woman can’t ‘be more like a man’. In the psychology laboratory, women who do unusually well on a ‘masculine’ test have been shown to have their chance of winning a prize in a quiz sabotaged by others.22 In a business setting, women who behave ‘like men’ by promoting a highly confident and competent image of themselves in an interview are judged to be less socially skilled than are men who behave just the same.23 (Regrettably, there are also good reasons for a woman not to behave like a woman. Women who are more ‘femininely’ modest about their skills are seen as less competent.)24 These backlash effects may well play an important part in encouraging women to toe the line. And so the oppressive stereotype marches on.

  While women who break the rules get the stick, those who conform get the carrot. A kinder, gentler form of prejudice, benevolent sexism, eulogises the warm, caring, nurturing virtues of ‘wonderful women’ (without whom men would not be complete). The enticing charm of benevolent sexism is certainly preferable to the hostile variety, so it is perhaps not surprising that women across the world subscribe to this flattering image of their gender to almost the same extent as men do.25 Yet its appeal is perilous, for the honeyed stereotype of empathic woman serves to psychologically offset the fact that men have most of the political and economic power. The message that men and women are ‘complementary but equal’, and that we all benefit from fulfilling our natural role in society, lends an ‘equalitarian veneer’ to an age-old prejudice.26 This is why, perhaps, in the most sexist countries of the world, women cling even more desperately to the second-rate compensations of benevolent sexism.27

  Unfortunately, of course, women do not even have to personally endorse this old-fashioned ‘women are from Venus’ ideology in order for it to affect them. Researchers asked men and women to rate how much certain qualities apply to men and to women, as a way of priming gender stereotypes.28 Some had the benevolent stereotype of women primed. They were asked about stereotypically feminine positive qualities – being considerate, warm and moral, for example. Others judged men as opposed to women on supposedly male qualities (being assertive, competitive and ambitious, for instance).

  The researchers then looked to see what effect the stereotype priming had had in terms of stifling or fanning fires in bellies regarding gender inequalities. The volunteers were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as, ‘In general, relations between men and women are fair’ and ‘The division of labour in families generally operates as it should’. The findings exposed the dangerously co-opting effects of the wonderful women stereotype. Women who had not been exposed to this stereotype were quite adamant that women don’t get a fair shot, that men don’t pull their weight at home and that a radical restructuring of society was called for. (And this was despite the fact that the heroic stereotype of man as the go-get-em hunter of society had just been primed.) But women who, beforehand, had been reminded that stereotypical womanhood brings its own sweet compensations, were just as complacently accepting of the status quo as were men. Charmed into unwitting submission, women become complicit in their own subordination.

  Stereotypes, as you will have gathered from this chapter so far, are powerful enemies of equality. But, surprising though it may now seem, we do have some control over their influence on our bigoted brains. We are actually quite capable of resisting their use. Unfortunately, however, we appear to switch our stereotypes on and off in whatever way best suits our egos. For example, if we are criticised by a woman or a black person, we use our negative stereotype of them to cast aspersions on their judgment. By disparaging them in this way, we protect our vain brains from the hurtful effects of negative feedback.29 If, however, it is praise rather than criticism issuing forth from a female or black mouth, we miraculously manage to inhibit our negative stereotypes, and consider our evaluators to be as able as any white man at their job. As the researchers of these studies succinctly put it, ‘She’s fine if she praised me but incompetent if she criticised me.’

  Worse still, there is evidence that we will use stereotypes to disparage anyone we can in order to make ourselves feel better, even if it was not the slandered person who made us feel bad in the first place. Researchers cast a blow to the self-esteem of half of a group of students by telling them that they had scored lower than average on an intelligence test.30 The other students were told that they had done extremely well. Some of the ego-bruised students were then given an opportunity to jolly themselves up at someone else’s expense, using a negative stereotype. All the s
tudents were asked to evaluate a job candidate. Each of them considered the very same woman, and she appeared identical in each of her interviews, in all respects but one. For some of the students she was ‘Julie Goldberg’, volunteer for a Jewish organisation, member of a Jewish sorority and wearer of a Star of David necklace. To the other students she was presented as ‘Maria D’Agostino’, volunteer for a Catholic organisation, member of a European sorority, who bore a cross around her neck. This probably requires no further spelling out, except to say that the researchers reported that the unflattering stereotype of the ‘Jewish American Princess’ was well known and widely discussed on the campus at which they ran this experiment. The students were, however, good enough not to hold anything in particular against Italian women.

  The researchers were most interested in the students who, still reeling from their supposed inferiority on the intelligence test, were given the opportunity to perform the psychological equivalent of kicking the cat by being given a Jewish woman job applic ant to evaluate. Could they be so ignoble as to deprecate this innocent woman, simply because their own noses had been put out of joint? They certainly could. Their ratings of the interviewee’s personality and qualifications were far lower than everyone else’s. But as cat-kickers everywhere will know, it certainly had the desired effect: their self-esteem went shooting up afterwards.

  To be fair to our bigoted brains, people who want to avoid prejudiced thoughts can, and do, quash the activity of their stereotypes. However, this requires no small amount of mental effort. This means that if you are tired, distracted or under pressure, the stereotype can shake free of this restraint, returning to freedom to wreak its malignant influence.31 When American researchers asked students to rate racist jokes using a Ha!Ha!-ometer, the students were suitably grudging with their Ha!Ha!’s. Yet students who were distracted while they rated the jokes (they had to do a demanding counting and memory task at the same time) found the racist jokes much funnier.32 We lower our guard, too, if we feel that we have already established our egalitarian credentials. For example, people who are given the chance to flaunt their feminist stripes by rejecting blatantly sexist statements will then sit back and rest on their laurels. These quietly complacent people are subsequently more likely to agree with subtly sexist statements.33