When talking about athletes and the every day struggle to perform, stereotypes may be one of the most contributing factors. In the article, Stereotyping that Hurts, Stereotyping that Helps, John M. Grohol describes how stereotypes in everyday life may either help or hurt people in performance. Throughout his blog, Grohol takes several diverse approaches to express his opinion on the different effects of stereotyping. Grohol is very optimistic when trying to reverse the negative stereotypes in to more inspiring labels. Grohol quotes:
“…research from the past few decades that shows when people are reminded of a negative stereotype that pertains to a group they identify with (e.g., race or gender), they do worse on a specific task than when a control group isn’t given the reminder. For instance, when women subjects were reminded that ‘women are no good at math,’ they did worse at a math task.”
In doing this, Grohol is attempting to maintain a positive attitude towards the various negative views on certain groups. In athletic performance, there are also many similar stereotypes that athletes must encounter. Male athletes are expected to perform better than female athletes in all sports while females are also expected to be able to “keep up” with male athletes.
In addition, athletes must also face races separation that causes further stereotypes. In his blog, Grohol call this a “stereotype lift,” when someone uses a negative stereotype for self motivation. Again Grohol is trying to uphold his positive outlook when talking about the problems in negative stereotype. He gives the example of basketball players:
“…if an African-American is reminded that ‘white people can’t jump (e.g., in basketball),’ they’ll perform better.”
No comments:
Post a Comment