recent study has shown that activating the stereotype of a soccer hooligan (which likewise includes the trait of lack of intelligence) outside of participants' ...
Automaticity in the Classroom: Unconscious Mental Processes and the Racial Achievement Gap Brian D. Earp Yale University Author’s personal copy. Published as: Earp, B. D. (2010). Automaticity in the classroom: Unconscious mental processes and the racial achievement gap. Journal of Multiculturalism in Education, 6(1), 1-22.
Abstract Unconscious mental processes (such as the automatic activation of racial stereotypes) can lead to such phenomena as negative pygmalion effects and stereotype threat, both of which directly interfere with black students' academic success, thus widening the racial achievement gap. Because stereotype activation occurs automatically and outside of conscious awareness, there is the disturbing possibility that nothing can be done to fully mitigate its harmful effects. It is proposed, however, on the basis of recent cross-disciplinary research, that by expending deliberate effort along the personal, instructional, and environmental dimensions, conscientious teachers can counteract these effects and help close the achievement gap.
No challenge has been more daunting than that of improving the academic achievement of African American students. Burdened with a history that includes the denial of education, separate and unequal education, and relegation to unsafe, substandard innercity schools, the quest for quality education remains an elusive dream for the African American community. —Ladson-Billings (1996, p. ix)
Introduction This essay seeks to examine the racial achievement gap in education in light of recent research on automaticity in cognition. The specific focus of exploration is the way in which unconscious mental processes—that is, "mental processes that are put into motion by features of the environment and that operate outside of conscious awareness and guidance" (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999)—may interfere with the successful education of African American students as compared to their white peers. This emphasis is justified because of the unique historical relationship between blacks and whites in the United States, although some of the conclusions suggested by the present research may generalize to other underperforming minority groups and/or different geographic and cultural regions. The achievement gap exists at least in part, it is argued, because stereotype-based interference is less potent for black students' white classmates, about whom there are fewer—if any—negative academic stereotypes to be activated in a classroom setting, automatically or otherwise. Two related areas of research form the pillars of this argument. First, work on the pygmalion effect, a type of self-fulfilling prophesy (see Rosenthal, 1965; Chen & Bargh, 1997). Second, and taken into account with greater emphasis: studies on stereotype threat (e.g. Steele & Aronson, 1995; Walton and Cohen 2003; Johns et al., 2005; Davis III et al., 2006; McGlone & Pfiester, 2007; Steele, 2008), a troubling phenomenon which can result in a self-fulfilling prophesy, specifically a negative one. It is claimed that each of these phenomena may be
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seriously implicated in the ongoing underperformance of black students in the United States, and that each relies at least in part on the automatic activation of stereotypes. The key word here is "automatic.” If the racial achievement gap is widened by the effects of these phenomena, and if the phenomena themselves depend on automatic processes—that is, processes whose coming into play is (in some sense) not fully under the control of any agent or actor—the disturbing implication is that there may be nothing anyone can do to eradicate the gap entirely. A central question addressed by this paper, then, is this: To what extent, and under what conditions, can a person who is invested in abolishing racial prejudice either preempt, control, or override (1) the initial activation of negative racial stereotypes, and (2) the application of those stereotypes (in judgment formation, behavior, etc.) once activated? The first part of this paper takes up the explanation of (and provision of evidence for) the pygmalion effect and stereotype threat, showing how each contributes to the racial achievement gap. The second part addresses the "disturbing implication" just mentioned by asking whether these phenomena—or at minimum, their harmful effects—can be reduced or eliminated by the deliberate efforts of conscientious teachers within the purview of their own classrooms. First is considered an argument against this possibility, based chiefly on the view put forward by John Bargh (1999). But Bargh’s view is countered with several lines of evidence and argumentation (e.g., Cohen & Steele, 2002; Cohen et al., 2006; Collins, 2008; Hillard, 2003; Johns et al., 2005; and Neuberg & Fiske, 1987) suggesting that teachers can mitigate these stereotype effects, and can do so specifically along three dimensions: (1) from the standpoint of the teacher's own psychology—the "personal" dimension; (2) by modifying teaching methods and classroom management—the "instructional" dimension; and (3) by the careful shaping and design of the classroom environment, both physical and emotional—the "environmental" dimension.
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Part I: Two Troubling Phenomena For each phenomenon below, to fulfill the promise of the introduction, three tasks must be fulfilled: (1) saying what it is and providing some evidence that it is real; (2) showing that it contributes to the widening of the racial achievement gap; and (3) showing that it relies at least in part on automatic mental processes. First, the pygmalion effect.
The Pygmalion Effect Rosenthal and Jacobson (1965) conducted an experiment at a public elementary school in which they told teachers that certain of their students were academic "growth spurters" (based on the results of a supposed diagnostic test) and could be expected to outperform their peers in school over the course of the year. In reality, the test was bogus and the children were assigned to the "spurter" condition randomly. Nevertheless, at the end of the year, those students whose teachers expected them to be high-achievers did in fact outperform their peers on several measures. Evidently the teachers' expectations helped bring about the anticipated results in a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy—dubbed the pygmalion effect by Rosenthal et al. According to this formulation, the effect results in high achievement by those students who are expected to perform well. But it can cut the other way, too. If a teacher expects certain of her students to perform poorly, her expectation may contribute to those students' actual low performance. This version of the effect—the "bad" version—poses a special threat to black students in virtue of the culturally salient stereotype that black students are not very good at school. That is, the expectation for low performance comes ready-made. As Bargh (1999) puts it: "activated stereotypes [may] generate negative expectancies concerning the behavior of the minority group member, causing the perceiver to behave toward [that member] in such a way as to produce the very stereotype-consistent behavior he or she expects." For example, "a teacher assuming a lack of intelligence or promise from a pupil may spend less time with him or her and
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in other ways communicate those assumptions, causing the pupil's performance to suffer" (p. 371). In the original Rosenthal and Jacobson study, the teachers formed their expectations on the basis of explicit information. They were told, directly, by putative experts on the matter, that certain of their students would be high achievers academically. But in the case of the "bad" pygmalion effect for black and other minority students, expectations of low performance may be formed implicitly (see, e.g., Banaji & Greenwald, 1994; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995)—that is, unconsciously, below the threshold of the teacher's awareness—on the basis of automatically activated stereotypes. This way of forming expectations is insidious. A teacher who is unaware of the basis for her judgments may conclude that they stem from the realities of her student's performance, rather than (directly or indirectly) from the activation of stereotypes about that student's racial group. Bargh (1999) cites work by multiple researchers to show that "the mere perception of easily discernible group features (e.g. skin color...) [is] sufficient ... to cause the activation of the stereotype associated with the group, which then [influences] judgments of a group member in an unintended fashion, outside of a perceiver's awareness" (p. 363). How might this work, exactly, to produce a "bad" pygmalion effect? Bargh and his colleague Mark Chen (1997) give a detailed account of the likely mechanisms involved, providing strong evidence for what they call in their title "the self-fulfilling consequences of automatic stereotype activation" (p. 541). In outline, here is their account: 1. A perceiver encounters a member of a stereotyped group (the "target") 2. Some superficial feature of the target (e.g. her dark skin color) automatically activates in the mind of the perceiver the culturally salient stereotypes about the target's group (e.g., "black people tend to be hostile")
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3. Because of the well-documented perception-behavior link1 studied by cognitive and social psychologists (see footnote), the perceiver automatically and without being aware of it begins to "leak" elements of the activated stereotype into her own behavior (i.e., by subtly acting more hostile herself) 4. The target perceives this hostility and responds in kind 5. The perceiver, unaware of her own role in provoking the target's behavior, sees only confirmatory evidence of the original stereotype (black people are hostile—just look at this person here!) 6.
Result: a stereotype prophesy is self-fulfilled on the basis of implicit expectations and driven by automatic stereotype activation
What are the implications of this paradigm for a classroom situation with respect to the racial achievement gap? One answer is obvious: if teachers chronically and unconsciously provoke stereotype-consistent behavior in their minority students—students for whom the relevant academic stereotypes are negative—then they directly contribute to those students' underperformance as compared to their non-minority peers. Thus they widen the achievement gap while at the same time reinforcing the negative stereotypes. But it may not be that simple. You will notice that the example just used involved the stereotype trait of hostility; after all, this was the trait measured by Bargh and Chen (1997) in their study. It is also the trait measured by Devine (1989) in her groundbreaking work on unconscious stereotyping (finding that subjects primed with—or unconsciously exposed to— pictures of black faces rated an unrelated ambiguous behavior as more hostile), as well as many
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Cf. Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996); Chartrand and Bargh (1999); Dijksterhuis and Bargh (2001). The perception-behavior link reflects our innate tendency to do as we see others doing, that is, to imitate. "Social perception...has a direct effect on social behavior. Perceptual inputs are translated automatically into corresponding behavioral outputs" (Dijksterhuis and Bargh, 2001, p. 1). There is an adaptive story to be told, but that is for another essay. The point here is that the direct link between perception and behavior has been demonstrated convincingly on multiple occasions, notably in the studies just cited.
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others. But the discussion so far has centered on the trait of intellectual inferiority as especially salient in a classroom setting—not hostility. Two points arise from this observation. (1) Hostility is not the only component of the African American stereotype. Nor is it necessarily the most relevant to the question at hand. What about the negative stereotype concerning the intelligence of black people? Chen and Bargh's model seems to predict that teachers should themselves behave "less intelligently" upon the mere perception of a minority student. Indeed, consistent with this prediction, one recent study has shown that activating the stereotype of a soccer hooligan (which likewise includes the trait of lack of intelligence) outside of participants’ awareness causes them to perform less well on a test of general knowledge (Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998). Nevertheless, to fully understand the ways in which unconscious factors can contribute to negative self-fulfilling prophesies, further research must be done to identify perception-behavior links arising from African American stereotypetraits other than hostility. (2) But let us grant that teachers may be unconsciously provoking their black students to behave in a hostile manner as the Chen and Bargh model would suggest. At first this may seem unrelated to the academic achievement gap between blacks and whites— hostility has more to do with behavior problems, it seems, than with academic performance per se. But this is the wrong interpretation. The way a student's behavior is interpreted—and thus responded to—by her teacher is very closely tied to her long-term academic competence and achievement. A black student whose ambiguous behavior is reflexively seen as hostile (compared to a white student's similar behavior—see Devine, 1989; also Correll et al., 2002) is more likely to be pegged as a "troublemaker" and disciplined accordingly. And a student whose classroom identity includes "troublemaker" is clearly less able to reach her full
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academic potential. Thus self-fulfilling "hostility" effects may indeed have profound consequences for the racial achievement gap. Where does this leave us? At minimum we know that stereotypes are activated automatically upon the mere perception of members of a stereotyped group; and we know that, once activated, these stereotypes may (1) unconsciously feed teacher expectations regarding those members and (2) unconsciously alter teacher behavior towards those members, potentially opening the door for "bad" pygmalion effects. These effects constitute poorer academic performance by the stereotyped group in question, thus directly contributing to the widening of the racial achievement gap. Now let us turn to the second troubling phenomenon, a self-fulfilling prophesy like the pygmalion effect, but one which takes place not from the standpoint of the teacher's expectations, but from those of the student herself.
Stereotype Threat Simply stated, stereotype threat is "being at risk of confirming ... a negative stereotype about one's group" (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Claude Steele, who with his colleague Joshua Aronson initiated research on this phenomenon, provides this (elaborated) account in an article written with Geoffrey Cohen (2002): [M]inority students working on ... any demanding intellectual task, may worry about confirming a negative stereotype about their ethnic group. They must contend with the threatening possibility that, should their performance falter, it could substantiate the racial stereotype's allegation of limited ability. In the short term, stereotype threat can cause anxiety and distraction debilitating enough to undermine academic performance. In the long term, it can lead students to disidentify from scholastic pursuits, prompting them to invest their efforts and identity in areas where they are less subject to doubt. (p. 308)
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In the original 1995 study, Steele and Aronson (experiments 1, 2) gave a difficult verbal test to two groups of (mixed-race) participants, telling one group that the test was diagnostic of intellectual ability, and telling the other it was not. Compared to their white peers, the black students underperformed in the diagnostic-ability condition, but not in the non-diagnostic condition. Evidently they experienced the additional stress of stereotype threat in the former (when intellectual ability was on the line) and not in the latter. In a later study (experiment 4), Steele and Aronson pushed this finding further by demonstrating that "the mere salience of the stereotype [in the testing environment] could impair Blacks' performance even when the test was not ability diagnostic" (p. 797). Similar findings—namely, that the automatic activation of a negative stereotype about one's own group from cues in the environment can impair performance in a stereotype-confirming way—have been generated by over 200 published studies over the past dozen years, with counter-stereotypic circumstances ranging from women taking math tests to white men being tested on "natural" athletic ability (McGlone & Pfiester, 2007). If stereotype threat undermines testing performance, and if black students, and not their white peers, experience stereotype threat in scholastic settings, the implications for the racial achievement gap could not be more clear. To make matters worse, Walton and Cohen (2003) have shown that white students may actually experience what they call "stereotype lift"—that is, a relative boost in performance due to the salience of negative academic stereotypes about their black classmates. Finally, since stereotype threat is elicited automatically by cues suggesting an evaluation of academic ability is about to take place—and since such cues are intrinsic to most testing situations—the possibility of eliminating the threat seems almost definitionally out of reach. As McGlone and Pfiester (2007) lament, "these [racial achievement] gaps persist—and continue to puzzle those who study them—in part because of the difficulty in recognizing the forces [such as stereotype threat] that can make human competence more fragile than we normally think" (p. 186).
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What, if anything, can be done about these troubling phenomena? As promised, the second part of this essay considers first a pessimistic answer (Bargh, 1999), followed by a more optimistic one based recent cross-disciplinary evidence. While the basic premise of Bargh's motivating thesis is correct, namely that social agendas ("prejudice is bad") should not dictate scientific conclusions unsupported by data ("prejudice can be completely eradicated"), it can be argued that he overstates his self-described "case against the controllability of automatic stereotype effects" (p. 361). Specifically, it is suggested that the harmful effects of stereotypebased automaticity in cognition—in particular as they are manifested in the context of the racial achievement gap via the pygmalion effect and stereotype threat—can be significantly reduced or even eliminated. But we begin with the argument put forward by Bargh.
Part II: Towards a Solution—First a Roadblock In his essay "The Cognitive Monster: the Case Against the Controllability of Automatic Stereotype Effects,” John Bargh (1999) puts a hefty roadblock in the way of those who would argue for a quick and happy solution to the problems outlined in Part I. He writes: It would be nice if stereotypes were found not to be activated automatically. [...] It would be nice if, even if automatic activation could not be shown to be prevented, [...] individuals were found to be indeed cognizant of the possibility of being nonconsciously influenced, and when aware of that influence, to have the motivation and the time to effortfully control it. And it would be nice if, even if all these propositions failed and stereotypes were shown to be automatically activated and to affect perceptions of and behavior toward a member of a minority group, this influence was still found to be benign. [...] All this would indeed be nice—if it were true. But the relevant research evidence largely contradicts this rosy picture. (p. 366)
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The passage above can usefully be broken down into some of its component parts. In this way, it will be easier to distinguish between those features of Bargh's argument that are essentially sound, and those that are potentially more problematic. Are stereotypes always activated? Bargh's analysis of the relevant studies here is convincing. He writes that "as long as a perceiver is dealing with a target individual as a social being—that is, whenever the perceiver is making judgments about or forming impressions of the target—trait concepts and stereotypes relevant to that target individual will become active automatically" (p. 367). It would be imprudent to challenge this claim; the overwhelming body of evidence suggests that it is right. But, crucially, it doesn't entail that it is specifically negative stereotypes which must always be activated in the perceiver. Perhaps a person could train herself to associate positive traits with minority individuals (whose relevant stereotype is negative in the culture at large) by "repeatedly pursuing egalitarian goals and thoughts when interacting with" them (p. 377). Bargh himself entertains this very idea, calling it "fighting automatic fire with automatic fire" (p. 377). But he quickly dismisses it as "too good to be true" (p.377): How ... does the egalitarian motive or goal become automated if not by the individual's chronically pursuing it over time, consciously and intentionally? But doing so ... requires the awareness of possible (nonconscious) bias; knowledge of the effect of the bias on judgments (many of them quite subtle, implicit, and tacit); ability to engage in ... effortful processing at the time; and the good intention to be egalitarian—all of which are problematic conditions in real life. (p. 377) Bargh's conclusion here is appropriate for the scope of his argument. It is true that in most contexts of real life, the confluence of all these "requirements" of an egalitarian goal's becoming automatized in some agent is unlikely to occur. But our present concern is narrower in scope. We want to know not whether it is possible to eradicate all prejudice (by training a mass army of automatic stereotype-busters), but whether the harmful effects of automatic stereotyping
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can be alleviated in the school setting, specifically as a means to reduce factors which exacerbate the problem of the racial achievement gap. To this (more limited) end, it can be argued that there is indeed a special class of agents who may be uncommonly well poised to meet the "problematic conditions" above: teachers. Teachers are just the sort of people who are in a position to automate egalitarian motives by "chronically pursuing [them] over time, consciously and intentionally" in accordance with Bargh's recipe. (At least one recent study shows that such an outcome is indeed possible, given enough time and effort. Deutsch, Gawronski, and Strack [2006] used an evaluative priming task to show that a fully automatized positive stereotype in place of an original negative one was attainable through repeated affirmations of the counterstereotype.) A further sketch of a program by which teachers might reach toward the goal of automatizing positive stereotypes will be given shortly. But first, let us turn to a second component of the "rosy picture" passage quoted before. Given the automatic activation of stereotypes, can an agent nevertheless control the application or "leakage" of those stereotypes in her behavior, judgment formation, etc.? Suppose that despite a well-meaning teacher’s best effort to automate egalitarian motives, negative stereotypes nevertheless become activated unconsciously. Once this has occurred, is there anything a conscientious teacher can do to head off unwanted effects on behavior? Neuberg and Fiske (1987) found promising evidence that certain conscious motives (such as cooperation) could lead to individuating, rather than stereotyping, social cognitions. But on the other hand, Bargh's take on the relevant research (notably Devine's [1989] activation vs. application model) is characteristically gloomy: The ability to control a stereotype (given motivation to do so) depends heavily on one's awareness of the possibility of unconscious prejudicial influence, but also on one's theory of how that unconscious prejudice may be manifested and expressed. [...] But stereotypic
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assumptions and beliefs can emerge and be expressed in ways about which a person with egalitarian motives has no theory concerning the unfelt influence. (p. 370) Bargh is right to note that most laypeople—even ones with egalitarian motives—have poor, wrong, or nonexistent theories about the ways in which they may be prejudicially influenced unconsciously. But a person's not having a theory about certain phenomena, or having a wrong one, is a situation that can in some cases be (at least partially) rectified. The key is education—or in this case, teacher-education. Thus it is essential that schools of education include in their curricula state-of-the-science resources on the unconscious nature of prejudice and the corresponding implications for classroom interaction. Equipped with the sophisticated theories on automatic stereotyping effects coming out of psychological research today, possibly recast in the form of carefully tailored heuristics and behavioral maxims for use in the classroom, teachers would be more able to control unwanted "leakage" of activated negative stereotypes in their behavior. Future research is required to test the limits of this hypothesis in a genuine classroom setting. Despite objections and modifications, it is vital that one takes Bargh's skepticism seriously. His careful analysis of previous studies shows that many scientists have overreached the implications of their data in order to meet social agendas. But it is time to depart from the Barghian "roadblock" and move toward a more positive account of the present thesis. Recall that this paper’s primary claim is the following: that teachers potentially can mitigate stereotype effects (as manifested in the "bad" pygmalion effect and stereotype threat), and can do so specifically along three dimensions: (1) from the standpoint of the teacher's own psychology— the "personal" dimension; (2) by modifying teaching methods and classroom management—the "instructional" dimension; and (3) by the careful shaping and design of the classroom
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environment, both physical and emotional—the "environmental" dimension. Let us turn now to these "mitigating" dimensions as the last step of the argument before concluding.
The Personal Dimension What can an individual teacher do to reduce her own unconscious contributors to the racial achievement gap? As suggested above, one approach is to eliminate the problem at its roots—that is, to preempt the activation of negative stereotypes by training herself to form positive automatic associations upon the mere perception of her minority students (fighting automatic fire with automatic fire). What would such a training regimen look like? One clue is offered by standing Bargh's pessimistic account on its head. Here is a reminder of Bargh's outlook: How does the egalitarian motive or goal become automated if not by the individual's chronically pursuing it over time, consciously and intentionally? But doing so ... requires the awareness of possible (nonconscious) bias; knowledge of the effect of the bias on judgments (many of them quite subtle, implicit, and tacit); ability to engage in ... effortful processing at the time; and the good intention to be egalitarian... (p. 377) Bargh is very clear about what would be required to develop a positive implicit stereotype—he just doesn’t think it’s likely to happen. But the recent work by Deutch et al. (2006) cited before shows the possible payoff for those egalitarian-minded individuals who invest the requisite time and energy. In order to preempt the activation of your own negative stereotypes, then, you must "chronically pursue" egalitarian goals "consciously and intentionally" over a long period of time. You must educate yourself on and identify sources of "possible (nonconscious) bias" as well as those biases' effects on judgment. You must be careful to engage in "effortful processing" at times when the threat of stereotype activation is especially
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strong. Do this in accordance with your "good intention to be egalitarian" and you may be well on your way to success. Here is another angle on the matter. Substantial research into the effective teaching of black students (cf. Hilliard, 2003) has shown that the most successful teachers are those who have consistently high standards for their minority students and who insist that those standards can be reached. As Smitherman (1981) reports, "Studies have shown that the attitudes of teachers toward their students have very powerful impacts upon educational attainment. The more teachers expect from their students—however disadvantaged those students may be—the better the students perform" (p. 112). This is, of course, exactly what Rosenthal et al. (1965) found in their original, positive formulation of the pygmalion effect. A teacher, then, whose explicit classroom philosophy is that all her students can and will meet high academic standards, may set into motion a self-fulfilling prophesy whose outcome is real-world evidence confirmatory of the new, positive stereotype. This new evidence—namely the pattern of high standards applied and high standards met—will be shunted into the unconscious as a learned association, ready to be activated automatically. A prime example of this sort of teacher is Marva Collins, the famous Chicago educator who routinely tells her (black) students that they are brilliant, to hold their heads up, to believe in themselves, etc.; and her methods work (Collins, 2008). Cohen and Steele (2002) provide additional evidence for this claim. Citing intervention programs that have been successful in raising grades, test scores, and college prospects of minority students, they write: [E]ducators in these programs all refute negative stereotypes by conveying a faith in each student's intellectual potential. But they do not impart this message by assigning easier work to ensure student success, or by offering heavy doses of unstinting praise ... Rather, minority students in ... [these] success stories are challenged with high performance standards, standards that presume their motivation and ability to succeed. The educators
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in these programs often go an important step further by explicitly assuring students of their capacity to meet those standards through greater effort. (p. 311) Since the thrust of evidence is moving away from a teacher's personal psychology development and more towards classroom management, it is appropriate now to change headings and address this dimension explicitly.
The Instructional Dimension The instructional methods a teacher employs, as well as her general classroom management techniques, may have serious implications for the reduction of the stereotype activation effects which contribute to the racial achievement gap. This section provides a cluster of different methods and interventions, far from exhaustive, which recent cross-disciplinary research and a fresh analysis suggest may be especially effective. 1. Give fewer tests. Tests are inherently stereotype threat-arousing, yet they often form the primary source of information from which student achievement is measured, thus unfairly disadvantaging minority students. Instead, offer multiple ways of demonstrating mastery over some subject: writing assignments, presentations, filmmaking, collages, skits, etc. By allowing your students to demonstrate their academic mastery without arousing stereotype threat, you level the playing field between blacks and whites while simultaneously collecting evidence that blacks can achieve, thus disconfirming negative stereotypes in your classroom. 2. If you must administer a test, employ a "focused intervention" to mitigate the threat involved. Cohen et al. (2006) tested a social-psychological "intervention" designed to minimize the effects of stereotype threat among minority students in a testing situation. The intervention, a short in-class writing assignment, was designed to help
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students affirm their individual self-worth, thus diminishing the salience of group qualities and stereotypes. Result: a 40% reduction in the racial achievement gap on subsequent measures. Another study, conducted by Michael Johns and colleagues (2005), tested the hypothesis that simply teaching students about the stereotype threat phenomenon would reduce its harmful effects. Their study showed that women taking a math test performed at the same level as their male peers in the condition in which they had been taught about stereotype threat. Further research should bear out whether similar effects would occur with black students under threatening conditions. 3. Give "wise" criticism. Cohen and Steele (2002) performed a study in which they provided critical feedback on a writing assignment in two ways. In the control condition, they simply pointed out areas of weakness and offered suggestions for how to improve. In the "wise" condition, they (in addition) explicitly invoked their high expectations for the student writer as well as their belief that the student could meet those expectations. In the first condition, black students could attribute negative feedback to racial bias on the part of the teacher and were thus less motivated to rewrite and improve; in the second condition, however, no such attribution was possible—and the black students were just as motivated as their white peers to succeed on the assignment. Many other such strategies may be effective in reducing stereotype effects that widen the racial achievement gap; it is beyond the scope of this essay to list them all here. Let us turn now, then, to the final dimension before closing, the "environmental" dimension.
The Environmental Dimension What does a classroom look like and feel like? Claude Steele (2008) reminds us that stereotype threat may be activated by even very subtle environmental cues. Do the posters on the
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wall of important historical figures include black heroes like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., or only white men and women? (Kay et al., 2004, found that simple material objects in the environment can have strong unconscious priming effects.) Is the atmosphere one of constant evaluation, or one of cooperative exploration? Steele suggests that a classroom in which black students are unlikely to suffer from stereotype threat is one in which there is "a substantiated narrative enabling black students to trust the identity safety of the setting" (Steele, 2008). To get some idea of the work involved in constructing such a narrative, consider Carrie Secret, a teacher at Prescott Elementary school, as described by Theresa Perry (2003): •
She "routinely exposes her students to models of Black literary excellence, individuals who, in their writings—sometimes in the same text—write in both Black language and edited American English" (p. 56-7).
•
She "uses the oral performance of literary texts, speeches, poems, and portions of essays to build community, create hope, inspire the children, and extend their vocabulary" (p. 57).
•
She "uses music—Black popular and classical music and European classical music— to help her students center and calm themselves, and to help them focus" (p. 57).
•
She "understands that what makes students powerful is not simply their acquisition of the standard code, but their fluency in content knowledge and their familiarity with many literatures and the language of many different disciplines. ... She readily draws upon and uses the cultural characteristics that have been identified as central to African-American culture to ground her educational practice" (p. 57).
•
She "creates multiple speech events in her classroom, events in which students are expected to practice speaking and presenting in edited American English" (p. 57). Etc.
It is easy to see why the students in Carrie Secret's class were among the few black students achieving (based on standardized test scores) in the entire Oakland school district at the time of Perry's writing (p. 56).
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McGlone and Pfiester (2007) also emphasize the importance of the environmental dimension in combating harmful stereotype activation: "One advantage to explaining underperformance in terms of situational variables is that it points the way to situational solutions for boosting performance. ... Schoolteachers can work [for example] to create a nonevaluative atmosphere in class" (p. 184). Finally, Davis III et al. (2006), in their study examining the factors which moderate stereotype threat, write, "attention to both [the effect that surroundings have on attempting to improve behavior] and [each individual as a unique human being] are important, but when situations are particularly loaded, individual differences will matter less" (p. 415). They understand the power of the situation to shape classroom outcomes. Taken together, these studies provide strong evidence for the importance of classroom "environmental design" in limiting the harmful effects of automatically activated stereotypes.
Conclusion Having covered the map laid out in the introduction, there is little left to say here. But to review, the argument has been as follows. (1) Unconscious mental processes (such as the automatic activation of racial stereotypes) can lead to such phenomena as negative pygmalion effects and stereotype threat, both of which directly interfere with black students' academic success, thus widening the racial achievement gap. (2) Because stereotype activation occurs automatically, there is the disturbing possibility that nothing can be done to fully mitigate its harmful effects. (3) Recent cross-disciplinary research suggests, however, that by putting in deliberate effort along the personal, instructional, and environmental dimensions, conscientious teachers can counteract these effects and help close the achievement gap.
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