From: Nathan Newman Reply to: affam-L - New and and Organizing for Affirmative Action To: Multiple recipients of list AFFAM-L Subject: `BELL CURVE' CALLED POLITICAL, NOT SCIENTIFIC `BELL CURVE' CALLED POLITICAL, NOT SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGISTS EXAMINE RACE-IQ CONTROVERSY Don Lattin, Chronicle Staff Writer New York Leading psychologists have challenged both the research methods and the political agenda behind ``The Bell Curve,'' the best- selling book that claims genetic differences between blacks and whites contribute to lower IQ scores among African Americans. UCLA psychologist Halford Fairchild, who is leading one of four sessions devoted to the IQ controversy at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, charged that ``the scientific basis of `The Bell Curve' is fraudulent.'' In a series of papers to be presented this weekend, Fairchild and other experts will argue that the real motive of ``Bell Curve'' authors Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray is supporting the political crusade against federal poverty programs and affirmative action. `` `The Bell Curve' has murderous implications in its call for cutbacks to welfare and aid to children and single parents,'' Fairchild said. Herrnstein, a Harvard University psychologist, died shortly before ``The Bell Curve'' was published last fall. Co-author Murray, a conservative commentator with the American Enterprise Institute, was unavailable for comment. Herrnstein and Murray's book concludes that genetic differences are largely responsible for the fact that the average white IQ score of 100 is 15 points higher than the African American average. They warn that the gap is widening as whites intermarry and produce a ``cognitive elite'' that runs America. Murray, who calls for an end to welfare for unwed mothers, has also been quoted as saying remedial education should be abandoned because ``for many people, there is nothing they can learn that will repay the cost of teaching.'' In a paper entitled, ``Is It Better to Be Born Rich or Smart?'' Cornell University psychologist Steven Ceci said the Murray-Herrnstein book ``oversimplified the path linking childhood IQ to adult economic status, and omitted important counterevidence.'' Ceci said his own study found that social life and educational opportunities have much more effect on economic earnings than IQ. Psychologists Robert Josephs and Daniel Schroeder of the University of Texas at Austin cited research showing that anxiety and poor self-confidence, not genetic differences, lower test scores for ``stigmatized individuals.'' Stanford psychologist Claude Steele came to a similar conclusion after a four-year study of how women and African American college students take tests. Steele blames ``stereotype vulnerability'' for their lower test scores, and says those scores can be raised through affirmative action programs. _________________________________________________________________ Search Feedback Front Page _________________________________________________________________ Friday, August 11, 1995 · Page A6 ©1995 San Francisco Chronicle _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 06:49:33 -0700 From: Nathan Newman Subject: STEREOTYPES AFFECT TESTING, STUDY FINDS STEREOTYPES AFFECT TESTING, STUDY FINDS RESULTS REBUT ARGUMENT OF `BELL CURVE' ON RACE Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer Two Stanford University psychologists have found that ethnic and gender stereotypes play a role in determining how men, women, blacks and whites are likely to perform on standardized tests. The results of their seven-year study give weight to the argument that bias exists in academic testing. They seem to refute the ``Bell Curve'' argument, which says that biology is behind the historical differences in academic achievement found along racial and gender lines. Psychology Professor Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson, now an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, will present their findings today at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in New York City. Steele and Aronson hope that the research will help extinguish the argument that genetics accounts for the 15-point difference in the median IQ scores of blacks and whites. The argument was revived last year after publication of ``The Bell Curve,'' a best-selling book by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Herrnstein and Murray draw the conclusion that high achievements are influenced less by family background than by brains, and that blacks generally achieve less in education and income than whites because they are less intelligent on average. ``These findings demonstrate another process that may be contributing to racial and gender differences in standardized test performance, a process that is an alternative to the genetic interpretation suggested in `The Bell Curve,' '' said Steele. ``And they show that group differences in school achievement can be reduced substantially by programs that emphasize challenge instead of `dumbing down' remediation.'' In their research, the psychologists show how the power of suggestion can influence student performance. Steele and Aronson studied students whose scores on the SAT college entrance exam were all comparably high. In one experiment, two groups of black students were given the same test. One group was asked to state their race. Those who were not asked to give their race outperformed, on average, those who were asked to give it. The researchers call this phenomenon ``stereotype vulnerability,'' and say that white students are not immune to it. White male students about to take a math test were told that the test was difficult and that Asian students usually outperformed whites. Those students performed worse than another group of white males who received no such warning before taking the same test. In a third experiment, women were divided into two groups and given a math test. Before taking the test, one group was told that men generally outperform women on the test. The second group was told that there tended to be no gender differences in the results. ``Women performed worse than men when they were told that the test produced gender differences,'' according to the findings. ``But they performed equal to men when the test was represented as insensitive to gender differences, even though, of course, the same difficult test was used in both conditions.'' Steele said the findings should give educators important clues about how to design better academic and affirmative action programs that do not place women and minorities at a psychological disadvantage. ``You have to do something to break the sense of being under suspicion in order to allow these students to be less defensive and more openly engaging of their academic work,'' he said, noting that the highest-achieving black freshmen are often the ones who drop out of college. Steele's twin brother is Shelby Steele, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution in Palo Alto who touched off the current national debate on affirmative action with his 1990 best-seller ``The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America.'' He has written that he loathes affirmative action ``for the indignity and the Faustian bargain that it presents to minorities, (and) for the hypocrisy and shameless self- congratulation it brings out in its white supporters.'' Yesterday, Shelby Steele said that he and his brother have a bargain of their own: ``We never discuss each other's work.'' _________________________________________________________________ Search Feedback Front Page _________________________________________________________________ Saturday, August 12, 1995 7 Page A15 )1995 San Francisco Chronicle _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 06:51:35 -0700 Subject: SCHOLAR SAYS STEREOTYPING HURTS TEST SCORES Mercury Center ANXIETY AND THE IQ SCHOLAR SAYS STEREOTYPING HURTS TEST SCORES Published: Aug. 12, 1995 By JIM PUZZANGHERA Mercury News Staff Writer Fears of confirming negative stereotypes puts pressure on blacks and women that lowers their academic performance, according to research by a Stanford University professor to be presented today at the American Psychological Association convention in New York. In detailed experiments with dozens of Stanford students, psychology professor Claude Steele found that when he triggered anxiety in blacks that doing poorly on a standardized test would confirm stereotypes about inferior intellectual ability, those students performed worse than blacks who weren't led to believe the same test was a measure of intelligence. Steele calls the phenomenon ''stereotype vulnerability'' and found similar results with women on math tests. The solution, he said, is developing affirmative action programs that play down stereotypes, like one he started at the University of Michigan that replaced remedial freshman courses for some black students with integrated seminars that challenged them academically. Steele's seven years of research could become ammunition for both sides in the affirmative action debate. The affect of stereotypes on performance is an argument for not giving minorities preferential treatment in college admissions, which enforces the stereotype that they are not qualified, say affirmative action opponents. On the other hand, proponents say it is an argument for not putting too much emphasis on standardized test scores in admissions decisions, as could happen without affirmative action. ''It could cut both ways,'' said Glynn Custred , professor of anthropology at California State University, Hayward, and co-author of the California Civil Rights Initiative. Affirmative action tells blacks and other minorities they are not good enough to make it on their own, perpetuating stereotypes, he said. ''This is just telling them that, "You guys, we know you're weak and need help,' '' he said. ''I wouldn't be at all surprised that all these messages lead to some statistically different results on standardized tests.'' But Steele says that oversimplifies the problem. ''I just think that argument about affirmative action stigmatizing blacks is a very naive argument,'' he said during an interview earlier this week. ''The first thing the you've got to realize is that if they get rid of the programs altogether, the stereotype will still be there. The stereotype is rooted in American culture.'' Steele is the twin brother of Shelby Steele, a San Jose State University English professor who argued against affirmative action in his award-winning 1990 book ''The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America.'' Shelby Steele declined Friday to comment on his brother's research. Claude Steele, who is president-elect of the Western Psychological Association and has been published in numerous academic journals, said his research helps disprove theories, set out in books such as 1994's ''The Bell Curve,'' that there are genetic intellectual difference between races. ''Some of what they're calling genetic is not genetic,'' Steele said. But Arthur Jensen, a retired University of California, Berkeley, educational psychologist who touched off the current genetic IQ issue in 1969, is doubtful about Steele's theory. ''These differences (in IQ) show up as early as three years of age,'' said Jensen. ''There's so much other evidence that one wonders if this anxiety about stereotypes has gotten to 3 year olds.'' Steele's 54-page research paper, ''Suspected by Reputation: The Stereotype Vulnerability, Disidentification, and Intellectual Performance of Women and African-Americans,'' is the result of research starting at the University of Michigan and continuing at Stanford, where he has taught since 1991. ''The worst part of being a target of prejudice is often assumed to be coping with the injustice of it, the actual discrimination and bias that befalls one,'' Steele wrote. ''Yet, a significant share of this burden may lie elsewhere, in a chronic sense of being vulnerable to the negative images about one's group, that is, of being judged by them, of being treated in terms of them, of being at risk of fulfilling them.'' A person doesn't have to believe the stereotype in order to be vulnerable, Steele said, and the applications cut across race and gender lines. It is the reason, for example, a white man who is not racist might stumble over his words when talking to a group of minorities for fear of saying something that would validate the stereotype that white men are racist. Or why ballplayers for a team like the Boston Red Sox, which has a history of choking under pressure, might get more tense than their opponents in an important game and play poorly. To test the theory, Steele first tried using the stereotype that woman are worse at math than men. He found that a group of women scored worse than a group of men on a math test when told the test was designed to show gender differences in math abilities. But on a test in which they were told showed no gender differences, a group of similarly skilled woman scored the same as a group of men. But his more detailed research was on blacks. With several groups of black and white students, Steele used various ways of triggering anxiety in blacks about whether a verbal exam made up of questions from the standardized graduate school admissions exam would confirm stereotypes about their performance compared to whites. In ways that varied from telling one group that the test was a measure of intellectual ability and another group that it was just a problem-solving exercise, or asking students to check a box indicating their race, he found that black students scored lower than whites and fellow black students when anxiety about stereotypes were triggered. Only 25 percent of the black students who were told they were taking a test to measured intellectual ability chose to indicate their race on the test, compared to all the black students in the problem-solving test. ''Stereotype vulnerability can selectively damage the performance of black students, very qualified black students,'' Steele said. ''That extra pressure on black students has got to be part of that lower score they got.'' _________________________________________________________________ Return to Mercury Center Home Page.