Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Issues of Our Time)

by Claude M. Steele

they asked black and white Stanford students to write letters to ostensible minority elementary school students in East Palo Alto, California, advocating an expandable view of human intelligence. They were given information documenting the expandability of human intelligence; information on the nature of learning, on how the brain changes to reflect learning and experience, and evidence of people making great strides in building intellectual skills. And, of course, writing the letter gave them a chance to thoroughly process this narrative. For white Stanford students, not negatively stereotyped in this area, writing the letter had no effect on their subsequent grades. For black Stanford students, however, living under the suspicion of negative ability stereotypes, this changed narrative increased their grades by one-third of a letter grade in the next semester.

Fixed vs growth mindset. Got students to think about it by writing letters to schoolchildren. Had no effect on white students (isn’t hat a surprise, given Dweck’s hypothesis?), but lifted performance of the Black letter-writers