I read about a similar study involving male and female asian-americans. When questioned about their race prior to the test, women and men performed equally well, but when questioned about gender, the women significantly lagged behind the men.
I had a seen a previous study a while back where under normal conditions, women did worse than men on a standardized math test. Same test, different group, but told that the test was designed to be gender-neutral, and the gender gap vanished. But this is the first study I've seen where they managed to actively eliminate the gender gap.
I've heard about this effect, but not that you can erase it by having people think about their strengths. The fact that the performance of men or white students did not improve when triggered to think about their strengths seems to suggest that this technique primarily overcomes subconscious mental blocks to success. So I guess we should all be thinking "Is there some aspect of my life or achievement that I might underperforming" and then figuring out affirmations to get over it...
So interesting ... so as I read it, if a person thinks poorly of themselves in a stereotypical way, they can be intentionally triggered and made to perform badly on tests.
It seems to be even more insidious than that. All you need to do is ask the test-takers to think about their gender or race, without even stressing the negative aspects of it, and suddenly they perform worse. I think it's also interesting that there seems to be no effect on white males at all -- it shows just how privileged they really are.
Even worse, you don't even have to explicitly ask the women about their gender. Asking them whether they live in co-ed or gendered housing causes the same effect! It's really frightening how conditioned we are to think about femaleness as a handicap.
Wonder if I can help students overcome test anxiety by having the first question be something that primes them to think well of themselves. But it's hard for me to think of a question that would be likely to work for everyone. (You can ask college students "hey, how do you feel about this tremendous privilege you have in attending an awesome school?" but it doesn't work so well for 13-year-olds who have neither the choice nor the perspective.)
My first impulse is to respond to you, "but you're teaching privileged white males anyway! They don't need any leg up!"
But then, you have talked about teaching minorities, too, so that isn't exactly true. And really, everyone should be given the opportunity to raise themselves to the highest level, regardless.
Maybe something like, "think of moment in the last year that made you feel accomplished," or "what's your favorite extracurricular activity?" or even "what do you want to be when you grow up?"
And yeah, (a) not everyone I'm teaching is a privileged white male (I mean, they are all privileged to some extent because they are going to my school, but they are not all rich and they are not all white, though I plead guilty on the male thing ;), and (b) some of them really do have horrible test anxiety and they shouldn't have to feel that way or be held back from their potential.
There was an interesting moment when we were commenting on white male privilege -- the health class has a panel of us female faculty in to talk about Woman Stuff and answer their questions on stuff like that, and somehow the good ol' boys' network came up, and people were talking about it without ever saying the obvious thing (which eventually I just had to point out) -- "we are talking about YOU here".
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-08-31 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-09-01 01:32 pm (UTC)But then, you have talked about teaching minorities, too, so that isn't exactly true. And really, everyone should be given the opportunity to raise themselves to the highest level, regardless.
Maybe something like, "think of moment in the last year that made you feel accomplished," or "what's your favorite extracurricular activity?" or even "what do you want to be when you grow up?"
no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 06:54 pm (UTC)And yeah, (a) not everyone I'm teaching is a privileged white male (I mean, they are all privileged to some extent because they are going to my school, but they are not all rich and they are not all white, though I plead guilty on the male thing ;), and (b) some of them really do have horrible test anxiety and they shouldn't have to feel that way or be held back from their potential.
There was an interesting moment when we were commenting on white male privilege -- the health class has a panel of us female faculty in to talk about Woman Stuff and answer their questions on stuff like that, and somehow the good ol' boys' network came up, and people were talking about it without ever saying the obvious thing (which eventually I just had to point out) -- "we are talking about YOU here".
Good questions.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-13 03:07 pm (UTC)