Pop Psychology: Special Edition - 'Single Asians'

First off, let me begin this entry with an emphatic “Wow.” For those who know me (or frequently read the recess staffbox), it should be pretty clear as to why I enjoyed this video. Mixed Company, meet your biggest fan. Of course, I’m not pre-med, so this might be a lot of barking up the wrong tree.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I would like to highlight how “Single Asians” carries just as much insight into the human mind as the song that inspired Mixed Company’s masterpiece. Whereas “Single Ladies” revealed the foundations of human sexual jealousy, “Single Asians” is an interesting example of a widely acknowledged cognitive phenomenon: stereotype threat. Championed primarily by Stanford’s Claude Steele, the theory behind stereotype threat posits that simply exposing people to prevalent stereotypes alters their behavior to fit these preconceived notions.

And after decades of research, there’s little doubt that stereotype threat is psychological fact. In perhaps the most famous example, Steele gave two groups of black students a sample math section from the SAT. One condition took the test and afterwards completed a form asking them to identify their race. The other condition took the same test but filled out the race questionnaire first. As Steele hypothesized, those students who took the test after identifying themselves as black did much worse than those who thought about their race after the test.

A similar effect can be seen in athletics. In a too-good-to-be-true study led by Jeff Stone, black and white men played a round of miniature golf. One group of men was informed that the course was designed to measure “sports intelligence.” In this case, white men outperformed their black counterparts, conforming to the stereotype that white athletes are more intelligent. Conversely, another group of men was told that the same course measured “natural athletic ability.” Now, black men scored better than the study’s white participants, which would be consistent with the stereotype that black athletes are more inherently gifted. With such a simple but telling study, it’s easy to see how making people aware of various stereotypes can alter performance.

However, it’s a 1999 paper written by Margaret Shih that really lets us understand “Single Asians.” In her study, Shih recruited Asian women to take a math test. Some of the women first answered a survey asking them what it was like to be a woman in today’s society; others were asked about their experiences as an Asian student. As you could expect by now, the “woman” group did much worse on the math test than the “Asian” group. What’s interesting here is that Asian women are prone to stereotypes that can be both detrimental and beneficial, which makes me suspect that Mixed Company’s sexy symbols of science grew up listening to a lot more Yo-Yo Ma than Lady Gaga, if you know what I mean. What’s even more interesting is that stereotype threat theory would suggest that all female Asian students would do themselves a lot of good by watching the video right before their next Orgo test. Couldn’t hurt, right?

Yet the most recent and fascinating development in stereotype threat research deals with the potential changes brought by Barack Obama’s election. In January, a New York Times article discussed the preliminary data from a study investigating the “Obama effect.” Researchers at Vanderbilt University administered a 20-question verbal test to black and white participants at various points throughout the election process. When the test was taken before Obama’s nomination, white participants did considerably better than black participants. However, when participants took the test closely after Obama won the election, there were no significant differences in performance between white and black participants. The researchers admit to having a fairly small sample size and the study still needs to undergo peer review, so we need to take these findings with a heap of salt. But, given the previous research in the field, it’s not entirely implausible to think that a figure like Obama could have such an effect.