Resumen de Performance without Anxiety.
This article examines how, in battles over issues from affirmative action to workplace discrimination, educators, political theorists and activists are relying on Stanford University social psychologist Claude Steele's studies on "stereotype threat" to argue for policies that might make access to jobs and education fair for everyone. Steele developed the theory of stereotype threat--that is, when people are challenged in an area they care deeply about, such as intellectual ability, the fear of confirming negative stereotypes can hurt their performance. Social psychologists rapidly accepted the idea and even identified stereotype threat in groups not typically associated with bias. When experimenters told white golfers that the quality of their game would reflect "natural athletic ability" instead of their strategic intellectual prowess, their performance was much worse than that of black players. White male students' performance was similarly depressed when they took a math test in which Asian-Americans were said to do better. INSET: CLAUDE STEELE: FIGHTING IDENTITY THREAT.
