ARTICLE REVIEW
Introduction
The main research questions posed by the authors in the research paper are whether there is age difference in susceptibility to stereotypes, how positive and negative stereotyping affects academic performance in children and whether children become susceptible to stereotypes at some certain age.
In his paper, the authors describe a work by Aronson, Quinn, and Spencer (1998) claiming that if a person experiences negative stereotyping based on a social group, where he or she belongs, such person will show much worse performance results than the control group. Another mentioned work conducted by Shih and his colleagues in 1999 proves that Asian-American adult women showed better math test results after having been positively stereotyped on the basis of their ethnic identity, while showing worse results when being reminded of their gender. A study by Huston (1987) has shown that 2-year-olds already have understanding of genders and their differences. Finally, a study by Lummis and Stevenson (1990) that researched stereotypes in different cultures found out that the first graders already discriminate girls, believing that boys show better performance results in math than girls.
The current study recognizes that previous studies have researched the influence of stereotyping on adults and on their academic performance, in particular. However, no previous study has researched the difference in susceptibility to both positive and negative stereotypes in people of various ages and, particularly, in children. Thus, the authors want to find out how stereotyping affects children’s academic performance and how it is different from stereotyping effects on adults. Also, the authors want to find out the age, at which children become affected by stereotypes, as well as whether open stereotyping is needed to affect children’s performance.
The first study is an experiment, which tested the hypothesis that the quantitative performance of Asian-American girls would start getting affected by positive and negative stereotyping during middle school, and that ethnic-identity stereotypes would boost girls’ performance, while gender-identity stereotypes would worsen it. The experiment had two researched groups (one for gender stereotyping and one for ethnic stereotyping) and one control group. Thus, this experiment had control; its participants were assigned to the three groups randomly, and the researchers conducted the manipulation check. The dependent variable of this experiment was the quantitative performance, and it was measured by the correlation between the correct answers and all attempted answers on the mathematical test on the basis of a standardized math test, i.e., by accuracy. 81 Asian-American girls, from kindergarten to grade 8, participated in the experiment. All participants resided in the Greater Boston Area and were recruited through advertisements in local Asian newspapers and a summer program at Chinatown. 71% of the girls were American-born.
The second study was the same experiment with same variables, but with 70 Asian-American boys that resided in the same area and were recruited the same way as girls. 79% were American-born. In this experiment, the authors hypothesized that boys would show better math test results when stereotyped based on both gender and ethnic identity.
Discussion
The results of the first study showed that when ethnic-identity stereotypes were activated, girls in this group performed better than in two other groups. Girls in the youngest and oldest groups showed much better results than the control group when they were stereotyped on ethnic grounds and much worse results when the gender identity was mentioned. What amazed the authors is the difference of the results of the upper elementary schoolgirls, who performed best in the gender-identity stereotyped group. Also, when their stereotype awareness was measured, most girls showed that although they did not explicitly support stereotypes, the latter affected them implicitly. The only difference was in the upper elementary schoolgirls, who believed that girls were better than boys in math. The second group results supported the hypotheses, as all boys showed the predicted performance. Here too, upper elementary schoolboys, who were influenced by gender-identity stereotypes, performed the best. These results show that at this age both girls and boys believe in superiority of their own gender. The lower performance of the ethnic-identity stereotyped group of this age can be explained by the children’s attempts to fit in. Stereotype awareness results were the same as for the girls. Overall, the results of the experiment showed that the academic performance of children as young as 5 years old can be affected by stereotyping. The results of this study are especially important in the real world because exact sciences, especially mathematics and physics are still widely considered as male sciences, and this stereotype becomes stronger with age. But when positive stereotyping is activated in this domain, people show much better results regardless of the age. These results may help researchers develop mechanisms of alleviating the negative results of gender-stereotyping and improving performance by positive stereotyping techniques.
This paper helped me realize that gender and ethnicity stereotyping are not just popular myths, but are a reality. Indeed, many Asian children are often expected to excel in math regardless of their abilities, while girls are often expected to perform worth than boys, which poses pressure on both genders. The results of the experiment can help alleviate such pressure and improve performance of any gender and ethnicity by positive stereotyping and by the reduction negative stereotyping. I would suggest the longitudinal study of this phenomenon, since the initial research is 15 years old, and it would be interesting and important to know how the current wave of feminism and women empowerment has affected the results of the study.
