Stereotyping and Gender/Racial Diversity - Research Paper Example

? Stereotyping and Gender/Racial Diversity Stereotyping and Gender/Racial Diversity Introduction The stereotyping of people is a common practice in most societies around the world. We make judgments on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, and even a person’s height. If you are a certain color, people may believe you are more likely go commit a crime. If you are too short, well, you cannot play sports. Another stereotype involves gender. People have commonly held the opinion that one gender excels in academics, and the other in athletics. Overcoming such stereotypical thinking can be both exhausting and troubling. Stereotypes are harmful to all members of society because they create an uneven playing field. If a person falls victim to stereotypical behavior, they must work doubly hard into order to prove their worth and to eliminate that type of thinking. This is should not be occurring in a modern, forward thinking society, yet it does. Concerned members of the academic community must begin to look for ways to dispel these preconceived notions that manifest themselves in the form of a stereotype. If we tell a girl, for example, that she will not able to perform as well in math as the boys in her class, we risk a self-fulfilling prophecy occurring. Steele and Aronson (1995) make this point when the mention, “Stereotype threat is at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group” (p. 737). So, the perceived risk is real and must be considered as we attempt to understand the effects that such stereotypical thinking can have on a person’s development. Stereotypes, when they become activated in an individual’s psyche, can actually alter their normal behavior. You might have a child that is performing quite well in math or science, but if the stereotype that girls do not perform as well as boys becomes reinforced in the child’s often enough, activation can occur and academic progress can be stunted (Bargh, Chen, and Burrows, 1995, p. 232). This student proposes to study the effects of such stereotypical thinking and to propose ways to change societies way of thinking regarding the academic development of males and females. This problem stems from research that has already concluded that, “Gender stereotypes regarding academic domains contribute to gender differences in performance” (Steffens, 2011, p. 324). The constant reinforcement, for example, that a girl has more difficulty in math and science than a boy can easily affect the goals that women set for themselves, not only academically, but also throughout life in general. These self-fulfilling prophecies resulting as a result of gender stereotyping can follow a person and form their self-concepts and impact career choices for the duration of their life. Statistically, the facts do seem to point to a gender gap in certain academic disciplines as they relate to performance, but perception indicates otherwise. Steffens noted that, “When asked directly, male and female students in the U.S.A. sometimes disavow academic-gender stereotypes, claiming that men and women have similar abilities” (2011, p. 325). Some studies have identified that this gender identity, based on a stereotype, can become salient is girls as young as 5 years old (Tomasetto, 2011, p. 943). This means that that a girl can take these preconceived notions that society has about their abilities with them throughout their childhood and into the university life. The implications are far reaching, creating a further purpose for this particular study. The stereotype imposed on girls in grade school has been shown to affect their academic achievement. Similarly, males in college are stereotyped as not being as serious a student as their female counterparts. If this stereotype threat becomes activated, it can become salient in males as early as the senior year in high school and into the freshmen year at the university. In so doing, this could result in males lowering their own expectations, thereby creating a shadow effect that keeps them behind females academically. When examining stereotypes by gender, we have already mentioned that academic performance is the most commonly mentioned. Tomasetto states that, “One possible explanation for some persistence of the gender gap in academic in stressful environments is a phenomenon called stereotype threat” (2011, p. 944). This basically is the idea that one gender’s performance in school will be disrupted under tense situations because they feel threatened by the stereotype associated with their gender. They may cause individuals to begin to buy into the belief that the stereotype is correct. If so, then they either become too nervous or too stressed to perform at their very best, or they lower their own expectation in realization that the stereotype is true. This can particularly be true when young people enter the university. If such a threat does truly become activated, the effects can be far reaching as university students are so close to beginning careers of their own. Purpose of the Study This student wishes to focus on one type of stereotype. This involves the thinking that males and females attain different levels of academic achievement. The purpose of this study will be to look at the stereotype that men are not as good a student as women. The working hypothesis for this study will be that this stereotype is false. Men and women perform equally well in school. We know already that this stereotype exists and there is a great deal of literature to examine on the issue. It is also known that further study is needed and that data is currently available in order to prove or disprove the hypothesis in a controlled and limited setting. The purpose of this study can be explained by Chen and Bargh (1997) as they contend; “It is now well-established that stereotypes can become activated unintentionally and outside of awareness by the presence of the relevant group features” (p. 541). The further purpose of this study, then, is to make the public aware of such stereotypes and to keep them from becoming activated. University students will be the focus of this study in an effort to determine if such stereotypes current impact the ability of one gender over another to excel academically. Method Participants Sixty students from the University of Michigan will take part in this study. Students will only be targeted who are either classified as a senior or as a freshman, taking 15 males and 15 females from each grade level. Since students will be questioned directly, approval for this study will be sought from the University and participants will be asked whether or not they want to freely participate. There will be no financial compensation and no data will be collected that refers specifically to one individual student. All data collected, in addition in questionnaire responses, will be handled as sample numbers. No names are needed nor asked for, as this would require approval for an institutional review board. Materials The materials needed for this project will be limited to paper, pens, clipboards and ANOVA statistical analysis software. Since the procedure for collecting the data involves student questionnaires, this student will plan on making sufficient copies of the questionnaire and making sure a pen is available to assist students who are willing to participate in the study. In addition, clipboards will be used to make it easy for this student to record interview responses in a readable fashion. This will also enable the researcher to take notes during the interview in an effort to record interesting observations, without creating an undue time burden on participants who are gracious enough to give of their fime. Finally, data, such as grade point averages, will be analyzed using the ANOVA program. Procedure The best time to conduct this study will be during the first week of the spring semester. This is based on the fact that freshmen will have one term of grades on which to report their grade point average from the first semester. Freshmen participating in the study should have already completed at least one term and have a published grade point average that they are willing to report the researcher for use in the data analysis portion of the study. The researcher will first seek out 15 males and 15 females who are freshmen on campus and ask them if they would be willing to participate in a short interview of no more than ten Likert-Scale based questions and one closed ended (G.P.A) question designed to test the stereotype that one gender performs better in school than another. When a participant agrees, they will be asked a series of questions designed to gauge their perception of the stereotype being studied. A critical part of the interview will be to determine their grade point average for their coursework to this point. Once an interview is complete, they will be thanked for their time, and the researcher will begin looking for the next participant. After the thirty freshmen participants have been located and interviewed, the researcher will then seek to find 15 willing senior males and 15 senior females to participate in the same interview process. The questions will be the same and the critical grade point average information will be collected as well. The overall time burden for each interview should be no more than five minutes This researcher estimates that the entire process will take about one week on campus. At no time during the interview process will any personal information be collected, other than a student’s grade point average. Said grade point average, however, will not be attached to any student name. Rather, the researcher will simply label each interview with a number. There will be 15 numbers for each of the four classifications: 15 freshmen males, 15 freshmen females, 15 senior males, and 15 senior females. It is important that the researcher label the interviews correctly in order to not skew the results of the data collected by gender and grade level. At the conclusion of all 60 interviews, the process of analyzing the data will begin. Predicted Results This researcher predicts that more than 50% of the male freshmen participants in this study will agree with the stereotype that females are better students than males. This is based on the assumption that males will buy into the stereotype that guys tend to gravitate towards party scene and other distractions during their first year of college than females. This researcher further expects that to be supported by a statistically lower grade point average from freshmen males when compared to females. ANOVA statistical analysis software will be used to determine if there is a statistically significant difference in grade point average between the genders at both freshmen and senior grade levels. A further prediction is that freshmen females will tend to not agree with the stereotype that they perform better academically than males. This will be shown true by other responses as well. Females, more than males, have grown up as the victim of various stereotypes regarding academic performance, so this researcher feels that they will be less likely to support any stereotype on this topic, even if it paints them in a good light. This researcher still contends, however, that females who are freshmen will be shown to have a statistically higher grade point average than males at the same grade level. The predicted result, therefore, is that this stereotype will be the most salient during the freshmen year. Senior participants in this study will likely have a different perception about the stereotype being addressed in this paper. A prediction is that both males and females will reject the stereotype that one gender performs better in school than another. This will likely be attributed to their experience and the fact that they have a better basis in the way university life works. Subsequently, this researcher predicts that there will not be a statistically significant difference in grade point averages between senior males and senior females. The anticipated results for this study are demonstrated in Table 1 in Appendix A. Discussion The hypothesis for this proposed study is that there is not a difference in academic performance between genders, thereby debunking the stereotype that females are better students than males. The results of this study will likely provide a mixed result that will need to be verified by a further, more in-depth, qualitative study on the issue of stereotyping on the basis of gender and academic performance. Stereotypes are often reinforced in us from an early age. They become so commonplace to our way of thinking that we do not think of them as merely an opinion any longer; rather, at some point they become reality in our minds. It takes the power of a research study, such as this one, to disprove such stereotypical thinking and to begin changing a mindset that has been place for a long time. It is quite likely that the results from this study will show that male freshmen tend to have a lower grade point average than females. If that ends up being the case, however, there could be multiple reasons why this phenomenon occurs. To make the claim that this fact alone supports the stereotype in question would be, at best, a stretch in thinking. This becomes the first obstacle to this proposed study. Since the supposition of this stereotype involve college students, one must consider other social and environmental factors that may cause male students to do more poorly in school when compared to females. Further reviews of literature may reveal that females have an easier time adjusting to college life because they find it easier to establish a core group of friends that form the basis for their relationships for the next four years. Males, on the hand, may be found to rely more on the party scene and outside activities to bide their time and to make new friends. When this happens, they may quickly lose their focus during that initial year of study, thereby causing an initial drop in academic performance. Males tend to have a weaker support system to deal with difficulty than females, which could justify this point of view. This is just one possible explanation for the predicted decrease in grade point average on the part of freshmen males when compared to females at the same academic level. Another problem that will need to be examined during the course of this study is why there is a difference between academic performances by gender from the freshmen year to the senior year. This scope of this study is limited, so only one possible reason will be presented: Either the stereotype discussed in this project is true or false. There is much more at stake here, however, as sociologists and psychologists alike try to examine various reasons why one gender may perform better than another. A dissection of these reasons could be useful in a further study as, perhaps, participants submit to in-depth interviews to determine the effects of stereotypical thinking on their academic performance at the academic level. One possible reason could be the very stereotype mentioned here. There could be other possible reasons at play, however, that this researcher cannot uncover through a simple 10-question interview of 60 participants. There could be institutional implications. Perhaps the university is biased in some way towards one gender or another. There could be discrepancies in the way females and males are judged for their academic achievement. In other words, any proven discrepancies of grade point averages by gender at the University of Michigan could be the result of any number of factors. This researcher is encouraged by this proposed study, however, because it will serve to determine whether people are buying into the stereotype that females are better students than males. As long as the scope of this issue is made clear in the report, then any other assumptions will not matter, as they will simply be fuel for future research. The grade point average analysis will demonstrate, one way or the other, whether or not females perform better academically than males at the university. Yes, the sample size is small, but this is a start in a process to determine the effects of stereotypical thinking. Perhaps future studies can be used to gauge the effects of gender stereotyping in all undergraduate levels, including sophomores and juniors, and spread to other academic institutions as well. Furthermore, let us not forget that the interview questions are vitally important as well. They will form the basis for the qualitative report to determine whether or not students have bought into the notion that this particular stereotype is valid. If it is shown that they have, then stereotype activation may very well have already occurred. We know that once such a stereotype is activated, it is quite difficult to overcome and reverse (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996, p. 238). By closely examining these responses, the researcher can capture a picture of the degree to which gender stereotyping is taking place on campus. Conclusion Stereotyping holds us back a society. It is sobering to consider how many people have been held back on the ladder to success on the basis of gender, racial, or sexual stereotyping. It is not just society that holds us back, but when a stereotype becomes self-actualized in the eyes of an individual, he or she may truly believe that they cannot overcome that way of thinking. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is important, therefore, to determine first if a disparity in academic achievement is evident at the university based on gender. If this were to be apparent, then it would be productive to determine whether or not gender stereotyping has a role to play in that fact. We cannot alter the innate ability of an individual to be motivated to succeed in school or in life, but we can work to dispel any existent stereotypes that may be in play that limit possibilities and keep people from performing their very best. In conclusion, it is important to note that current research points to a trend in statistically significant higher graduation rates among females as opposed to males, possibly hovering at around 5-10%. Ewert points out that, “Although a five to ten percentage point difference in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded to men and women may sound small, there are no indications that [trend] is slowing or reversing” (2012, p. 843). With this being the case, it is vitally important research be conducted to determine any possible cause for this academic discrepancy. Issues for future study can revolve around discovering reasons why females are more likely to finish college than males. Another possible study revolves around reasons for any academic discrepancy that is evident between the genders. This research would great benefit society as we strive to create communities that truly are equal for all genders and races, and one in which stereotypes become an idea of the past. By conducting further research, academic institutions can learn how to identify groups that may be threatened by stereotypes, learn to overcome them, and keep them from becoming activated or salient. The aim of this study will be to begin this process and hope that future studies are conducted to further the work. References Bargh, J., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(2), 230-244. Chen, M., & Bargh, J. (1997). Nonconscious behavioral confirmation processes: The self- fullfilling consequences of automatic stereotype activation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33(1), 541-560. Ewert, S. (2012). Fewer diplomas for men: The influence of college experiences on the gender gap in college graduation. The Journal of Higher Education, 83(6), 824-844. Steele, C. & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797-811. Steffens, M. (2011). Separating implicit gender stereotypes regarding math and language: Implicit ability stereotypes are self-serving for boys and men, but not for girls and women. Sex Roles, 64(5), 324-335. Tomasetto, C. (2011). Girls’ math performance under stereotype threat: The moderating role of mothers’ gender stereotypes. Developmental Psychology, 47(4), 943-949. Appendix A Freshmen Senior Men Avg. GPA: 2.25 Stereotype Perception: Men perform more poorly academically in college than women. Avg. GPA: 2.75 Stereotype Perception: Men and women perform the same academically in college. Women Avg. GPA: 2.75 Stereotype Perception: Men and women perform the same academically in college. Avg. GPA: 2.75 Stereotype Perception: Men and women perform the same academically in college. Table 1 Read More