How Stereotypes Affect The Emotionally Sensitive

A research study completed years ago has always fascinated me. In the 1960′s Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson administered a test to all students in an elementary school and gave the results to the teachers. They told the teachers that based on the test results some students were particularly likely to excel academically in the upcoming year whereas others were not.

The "gifted" students were actually chosen by drawing names out of a hat, not by their performance on the test. In fact, the test was bogus and didn't really measure anything. At the end of the year the students identified as gifted scored significantly higher on an actual IQ test than students who weren't labeled as gifted, though in truth there was no difference in the groups at the beginning of the year.

That is an amazing result. The authors believed that the only way this could have happened is through a self-fulfilling prophecy in the minds of the teachers. The students themselves did not know they had been designated as high-achievers (or not) and neither did their parents. Only the teachers knew. The researchers believed that the teachers' expectations caused them to act in ways that improved the performance of the students who were labeled as being intellectually brighter.

Identity Contingency

How could someone just thinking a certain way about you actually change your performance? Is it just that they work harder with you or give you the benefit of the doubt more often? And did the teachers' attitudes negatively influence the scores of the students not seen as gifted?

Recent research suggests that there's another component other than the teachers working harder with the students labeled as gifted. Claude Steele's work, as reported in his book Whistling Vivaldi, would suggest that part of the way self-fulfilling prophecy works is that people, even young children, pick up on cues about the expectations of others and the messages given to them by a setting, though they may not be conscious of these messages.

Even young children are often aware of general stereotypes. Performance results for all ages at many different tasks are dependent to a surprising degree on what Steele calls identity contingency.

Identity contingencies are the things you have to deal with in a situation because you have a given social identity, such as being female, male, an executive or whatever job you perform, black, white, oriental, geeky or emotionally sensitive. Some identity contingencies are more serious than others, but they all carry a sort of stigma.

In general the emotionally sensitive may be seen as too soft, too touchy-feely, or even unstable. The stereotype that goes with being emotionally sensitive includes being seen as not serious about business or career, weak as a person, unreliable, over-reactive, high maintenance, and less professional than those who are not viewed as emotionally sensitive. Many who are emotionally sensitive fear being stereotyped in this way which of course adds stress when in a situation where the stereotype could be applied to them.

Stereotype Threat

Stereotype threat is when you are in a situation where the stereotype could be applied to you and result in your being treated negatively. Thus someone who is emotionally sensitive may be on high alert in certain situations, fearful of showing "too much" emotion and being categorized in a negative way that would have consequences for their relationships and/or their career.

The fear is real. Evidence consistently shows that consequences tied to your social identity make a difference, from the way you perform in certain situations to the careers and friends you choose. To do well in a situation where a social stereotype is in play, individuals experience enormous pressure.

For example, emotionally sensitive people may go to work each day determined to not show emotion and fearful of the labels that others might give them. The added tension from the worry about being labeled is likely to make it even more difficult to manage their emotions.

Social identity threat does not have to be a known threat, with a particular bad thing that could happen, like being labeled as unstable or passed over for a promotion. Social identity threat can exist even if the person is uncertain that anything negative would happen if they were labeled. The person only has to believe that something negative could happen. Negative consequences include embarrassment, humiliation, possible social rejection, awkward interactions, lost career opportunities, being judged, and being dismissed or discounted.

As Steele points out, the problem is that the pressure to disprove a stereotype changes how you are in a situation. It gives you an extra task. In addition to learning new skills, knowledge and ways of thinking in a new situation, or in addition to trying to perform well in a workplace, the person is trying to overcome the negative stereotype. This multi-tasking is stressful and distracting and interferes with performance, especially when trying to learn something new.

When you realize that this stressful experience is chronic in a certain setting, such as that you will always be trying to prove that being emotionally sensitive doesn't mean this or that, you may drop out. Or maybe avoid any situation that involves stereotype threat. Dropping out may confirm the stereotype for some and raise your own doubts about yourself.

How Stereotype Threat Impairs Your Performance

Steele states that identity threats negatively impact a broad range of human functioning. First, the threat of confirming the stereotype makes you vigilant to all things relevant to the threat, and to what your chances of avoiding it are. For the emotionally sensitive, this would mean any interaction or situation they perceived as having an emotional component.

Second, identity threats raise self-doubt and create repeated thoughts/worries about how valid the doubts are.

Third, the self-doubt leads to constant monitoring of how well you're doing which impairs performance. The pianist who plays almost without thinking has a "flow" of performance. But should the pianist be wracked with doubt and evaluate every chord he plays, his performance will suffer. Finally identity threats pressure people to suppress threatening thoughts, thoughts about not doing well or about bad consequences of confirming the stereotype. This requires energy and is exhausting.

Identity threat brings about a kind of panic, according to Steele. Your mind races, your blood pressure rises, you begin to sweat, you redouble your efforts to perform well. In your mind you try to refute the stereotype and what you can't refute you try to suppress. Your alertness to threats increases and this further suppresses the brain activity critical to performance and functioning.

The more you care, the more frustrated you are, and the highter the stakes of performance, the more panicked you may be. If the threat is part of an ongoing situation in you life–an ongoing experience in a workplace for example, or in school, then this reaction can become chronic. And, though it is difficult to believe, you're probably aware of some of this defending and coping, but much of the time you miss it.

A mind trying to defeat a stereotype leaves little mental capacity free for anything else you're doing.

So stigma matters not only in the way others react to you, but in your own performance and choices. Stereotypes hurt in ways we may not even realize.

photo credit: 1CreativeSoul