Whistling Vivaldi And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us (Book Review)

BOOK REVIEW: Steele, C.M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us (Issues of Our Time). New York, W.W. Norton & Company.

By Coert Visser

This review was first published on Positive Psychology News Daily

This book by social psychologist and Columbia University provost, Claude Steele, is a splendid example of how psychologists can make valuable contributions to society. In the book, Steele writes about the work he and his colleagues have done on a phenomenon called stereotype threat, the tendency to expect, perceive, and be influenced by negative stereotypes about one’s social category, such as one’s age, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, profession, nationality, political affiliation, mental health status, and so on.

Experiments demonstrating the impact of stereotype threat

When trying to understand certain performance gaps between groups, Steele and his colleagues did not focus on internal psychological factors.. Instead, they tried to understand the possible causal role of identity contingencies, the things you have to deal with in a situation because you have a given social identity. Over the years they carried out a series of creative experiments* in which there was a control condition in which a task was given under normal life conditions. In the experimental condition, the identity contingency was either cleverly removed or it was deliberately induced. Here are three examples of experiments to clarify how they worked.

Experiment 1: Steele and Aronson (1995)

In this experiment the researchers had African American and white college students take a very challenging standardized test. In the control condition, the test was presented as these tests are always presented – as a measure of intellectual ability. This condition contained the stereotype that African Americans would be less intelligent. In the experimental condition the test was presented in a non-evaluative way. The test takers were told that the researchers were not interested in measuring their ability with the test but that they just wanted to use the test to examine the psychology of verbal problem solving. In the control condition, the African American test takers, on average, scored much lower than the white test takers. For the white test takers there was no difference in their scores between the control condition and the experimental condition. For the African American test takers there was a big difference between the control condition and the experimental condition. They solved about twice as many problems on the test in the experimental condition. Moreover, there was no difference between the performance of the black test takers and the white test takers.

Experiment 2: Aronson, Lustina, Good, Keough, Steele & Brown (1999)

In this experiment, the researchers asked highly competent white males to take a difficult math test. In the control condition the test was taken normally. In the experimental condition, the researchers told the test takers that one of their reasons for doing the research was to understand why Asians seemed to perform better on these tests. Thus, they artificially created a stereotype threat. In the experimental condition, the test takers solved significantly fewer of the problems on the test and felt less confident about their performance.

Experiment 3: Shih, Pittinsky & Ambady (1999)

In this experiment, a difficult math test was given to Asian women under three conditions. In condition one, they were subtly reminded of their Asian identity, in condition 2 they were subtly reminded of their female identity. In the control condition they were not reminded of their identity. The women reminded of their Asianness performed better than the control group, whereas those reminded of their female identity performed worse than the control group.

How does stereotype threat harm performance?

Today, research on stereotype threat effects is done throughout the world by many researchers. Much insight has been gained into what it is and how it works. Briefly, you know your group identity and you know how society views it. You are aware that you are doing a task for which that view is relevant. You know, at some level, that you are in a predicament: your performance could confirm a bad view of your group and of yourself as a member of that group. You may not consciously feel anxious but your blood pressure rises and you begin to sweat. Your thinking changes. Your mind starts to race: you become vigilant to all things relevant to the threat and to what your chances of avoiding it are. The book title comes from an observed behavior: an African American whistling Vivaldi to make clear that certain stereotypes attached to the group don’t apply. You get some self-doubts and start to worry about how warranted the stereotype may be. You start to constantly monitor how well you are doing. You try hard to suppress threatening thoughts about not doing well or about the negative consequences of possibly failing. While you are having all of these thoughts you are distracted from the task at hand and your concentration and working memory suffer.

Does it always happen? No. There is only one prerequisite for stereotype threat to happen: the person in question must care about the performance in question. The fear of confirming the negative stereotype then becomes upsetting enough to interfere with performance. It is now known that stereotype has the strongest negative impact when people are highly motivated and performing at the frontier of their skills.

Solutions: bridging performance gaps through small interventions

Can something be done about it? Yes. The promising news is that there are some rather small interventions which can help a lot. Experiments have shown that subtly removing or preventing stereotype threats can completely or largely eliminate performance gaps between stereotyped groups and non-stereotyped groups.

Examples of helpful interventions are:

1. Make it clear in the way you give critical feedback that you use high standards and let the person know that you expect him or her to be able to eventually succeed.
2. Improve the number of people from the social category in the setting so that a critical mass is reached.
3. Make it clear that you value diversity.
4. Foster inter-group conversations and frame these as a learning experience.
5. Allow the stereotyped individuals to use self-affirmations.
6. Help the stereotyped individuals to develop a narrative about the setting that explains their frustrations while projecting positive engagement and success in the setting.

Conclusion

The tone of the book is informal, friendly, and personal, and the content is profound. The topic is highly relevant both to the development of social psychology and to the development of our educational systems and societies at large. Of course it also can inspire positive psychology research: how have certain individuals managed to overcome stereotype threat, how do certain organizations manage to bridge performance gaps, how do societies manage to do the same?

References

• Steele, C.M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us (Issues of Our Time). New York, W.W. Norton & Company.
• Steele, C.M. & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69, 797-811

* I am especially in awe of the work Steele has done in collaboration with Joshua Aronson, who is now an eminent professor at New York University.

Effective Managers Pay Attention to Strengths

© 2002, Coert Visser and Maarten Thissen

Why are employees sent to training sessions? Why do they get coaching? What do 'areas of development' in appraisals usually refer to? Exactly, weaknesses and shortcomings! For much too long HR professionals, managers and employees have had an almost obsessive fixation on repairing weaknesses. What does this lead to? Insecurity, frustration, waste of time and feelings of being under-appreciated.

An Example
A CEO of a small company visited a management coach and told him that he seriously thought of quitting his job. The coach, who knew the director as a competent person, asked why. The CEO explained he had lately gotten the idea that a good CEO is always sociable and extraverted. And he wasn’t, no matter how much he tried. The management coach asked if he did his did job well, if he achieved good results and if others appreciated him. The wholehearted answer to each of these questions the answer was ‘yes’. After an hour of talking the director came to the view that he did perform well as a CEO and that many people appreciated his qualities. They thought he had an excellent overview over his company, and managers. Employees and customers thought highly of him. They saw him as someone with dedication, intelligence and courage. He had always invested in the qualities that made him special, not in his weaknesses. At this moment, about one and a half years later, the CEO and his company are still doing fine.

Fixation on deficits
Most managers seem to take strengths of employees for granted and concentrate on identifying and eliminating weaknesses and shortcomings. They euphemistically talk about skill gaps and areas of improvement, and then send their people on a course to get these defects fixed. Also, the now so popular competency management systems are often used at identifying performance gaps and finding ways to bridge them. Often, employees get sent off to training programs and targets are agreed on eliminating these shortcomings. It can be done differently…

Effective managers pay attention to strengthsBased on a large study from the Gallup organization, Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton in their book Now, discover your strengths, say this kind of thinking is misguided. Buckingham and Clifton say that to excel in your chosen field and to find lasting satisfaction in doing so, you need to know and understand your strengths. The authors envisage an organization that is built around the strengths of each person. This theory is in accordance with Peter Drucker, who once said that in the organization of the future, people's strengths will be so well-aligned that weaknesses won't matter.

Buckingham and Clifton call this practice 'damage control'. From their research it appears that effective managers do it differently. These managers are guided by the following beliefs: each person's talents are lasting and unique, and for anyone, the greatest opportunities for development lie in the area of their greatest strength.

Strength is talent completed with skills and knowledge
By the way, what is a strength? Buckingham and Clifton define a strength as a talent completed with skills and knowledge. They consider talents to be more important than skills and knowledge because skills and knowledge can be learned relatively easily but a talent can't. Discovering your talents is therefore of great importance.

80% focus on strengths, 20% on weaknesses
The above pleads for a strategy of maximizing and developing your strengths and strengthening your weaknesses until they have reached an acceptable level. This seems to be yet another case where the 80/20 rule applies. Spend approximately 80% of your attention to strengths and about 20% to your weaknesses. To be sure, attention to weaknesses remains important.

A racing cyclist who gets a flat tire will have to change or repair the tire. But this won’t be enough to win the race. No. In order to be able to do that, he will have to know and use his strengths. Does he think he can win on the basis of his sprinting power? Or does he have to escape early from the main body of cyclists? Or will it be a matter of clever co-operation and tactics? In short, in addition to eliminating blocking weaknesses or circumstances he, more than anything else, has to know and utilize his strengths in order to excel.

Identifying strengths is not that easyThe lesson of the above for managers and employees is: if you want to retain or improve the performance of your employees (or yourself!) you have to pay a lot of attention to moments of good performance and try to identify strengths. This is not so easy as it might seem, by the way. In the words of Buckinham and Clifton: "talents are so interwoven in the fabric of your life, that the pattern of each one is hard to discern. Hiding in plain sight, they defy description." But it is definitely possible to identify strengths.

Suggestions for managers
Below you find a number of questions that you can ask yourself to help you identify an employee’s strengths.

• When does the employee perform exceptionally well? (Even if the employee’s overall performance is below expectation, still look for moments of functioning well – situations in which performance was at or above expectation.
• Which tasks activities does the employee enjoy and give him or her gratification? Things we like to do and feel good about often indicate a talent.
• What new knowledge and skills does the employee acquire quicker than average? This too, often indicates a talent.
• When does the employee talk with pride and enthusiasm about his/her work or performance? What made this performance so special? What were the circumstances? How can they be recreated?
• Which other strengths that the employee seems to have might the employee use in his or her work?

And once you have identified strengths ask the following questions:

• Which strengths could the employee use even more often? For what other tasks are these strengths relevant?
• Which other tasks and challenges does the employee (considering his strengths) take on?
• Of what colleague(s) could this employee be a good partner? How would their different strengths complement each other?
• How can this employee further develop his main strengths?

Next, you can dedicate 20% of your attention to what does not seem to go right:

• What would the employee want to or have to change that does not go well? How could it be, or would it have to be, different? How would this help? How could this be achieved?
• With respect to the improvement area: was there a time or occasion when his performance already seemed to be better (or even slightly better?). In what sense was it better? Hoe did s/he do it? How could this occasion be recreated?
• What would have to be changed in the tasks or work context of the employee? How would this help? What would be needed to make this possible?

Conclusion
Paying ample attention to personal strengths can feel a little awkward at first but is extremely important. Excellent performance is based on discerning, using and developing strengths. Weaknesses and limitations play a role too, but a less important one. When employees are challenged and evaluated on their strengths they feel much more appreciated and they will do their work with more pleasure and gratification. After all, what is more fun than doing something you are really good at?

Coert Visser (coert.visser@planet.nl) is a consultant, coach and trainer using a positive change approach. This approach is focused on simply helping individuals, teams and organizations to make progress in the direction of their own choice. Coert wrote many articles and a few books. More information: www.m-cc.nl / www.m-cc.nl/solutionfocusedchange.htm / Dutch network / Dutch blog