Whistling Vivaldi: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

In June 23, 2003, the Supreme Court ruled on two affirmative action cases. Shortly before the rulings, NPR interviewed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Curiously, affirmative action never came up in the interview. Instead, the interviewer asked O’Connor about her role as the only woman on the court (later, she was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Connor talked about how, when Ginsburg joined her, different things were expected from her. She no longer stressed as much about making the right choice “for women.” After O’Connor retired, and Ginsburg briefly became the only female justice, Ginsburg made comments suggesting that she felt “burdened with extra scrutiny.”

Essentially, Ginsburg and O’Connor were describing identity contingencies. With two female justices on the court, Ginsburg and O’Connor gained enough “critical mass” to circumvent the extra scrutiny of their peers. Psychologists have studied the concept of critical mass in many different settings. From their perspective, critical mass is defined as “the point at which there are enough minorities in a setting … that individual minorities no longer feel uncomfortable there because they are minorities.” For example, studies have shown that when the number of women in an orchestra approached forty percent, the women no longer feel as stressed and stigmatized—suggesting that forty percent is the “critical mass” for an orchestra.

In the 1990s, Steele researched the factors that lead to a person being affected by identity threats. Initially, he believed that psychological factors, such as confidence, were most relevant. But over time, he began to realize that often, the people who were most confident—such as O’Connor—suffered from identity threats the most. Steele began to understand that environmental factors were just as important in predicting people’s responses to identity threats. Steele assumed that environmental cues, some of them almost undetectable, have a discernible influence on people’s behavior.

Steele and his research partners began to develop a theory of how environmental cues contribute to identity threats. It seemed that “identity cues” tended to influence people’s behavior when they accumulated over time. Individual identity cues, however, didn’t necessarily impact behavior. By “identity cues,” Steele means external stimuli that remind people of an identity stereotype. Many of these stimuli exist regardless of whether or not people are actively prejudiced. For example, when O’Connor was the only woman on the court, she wasn’t reacting to overt displays of prejudice; rather, she was reacting to the number of male justices itself. Steele posits that identity cues must gather a certain “critical mass” in order to influence people’s cognitive processes.

At this point in his research, Steele had many new questions about identity contingencies, above all, “Can a few cues in a setting really undermine a person’s sense of belonging? Are people so attuned to the details of their social environments?” Working with three colleagues, Valerie Purdie-Vaughs, Paul Davies, and Mary Murphy, Steele developed experiments designed to measure the influence of environmental cues on behavior. Davies, working with Steve Spencer, ran an experiment in which students were asked to watch TV commercials, some of which depicted women in stereotypically gendered roles. Then they were asked to complete a test. The experiment suggested that women exposed to gender-neutral TV were likely to perform at the same level as the men, but when they watched women in stereotypical roles, they underperformed.

Steele and Purdie-Vaughns developed their own experiment, in which black and white participants were given a newsletter, supposedly from a tech company, and then asked if they’d trust the company. Some copies of the newsletter included photographs showing a small number of black people at the company, while other copies showed larger numbers of black employees. Some copies specified that the company had a “color-blind” hiring policy, while other copies said the company valued diversity. White participants said they trusted the company no matter which version of the newsletter they read. Black participants were much more likely to say they trusted the company if they saw pictures of many black people, regardless of what the company’s diversity policy was. But they were also more likely to say they’d trust the company that valued diversity, even if there were fewer black people in the pictures.

The results of the experiment might suggest that people with minority identities feel more comfortable when they see other minorities (i.e., the critical mass approach), but also when they understand that their teachers or employers value diversity. But the results further suggest that certain environmental cues (such as photographs of minorities) can “cancel out” others. Even if it’s impossible to control every detail of an environment, such as a classroom, psychologists’ research could be used to create enough positive cues that people feel relaxed and un-stigmatized.

Mary Murphy proposed that the researchers study the physiological impact of identity cues in everyday situations (rather than during a test). With the help of James Gross, an emotional psychologist, Steele and Murphy developed experiments to measure the physiological impact of situational cues. Student participants watched a video advertising a science conference, and their heart rates were recorded. Some students watched a video showing more men than women at the conference, while others saw a video with equal numbers of men and women. Men who watched the videos showed little change in heart rate. Women, however, experienced an elevated heart rate while watching the video with more men than women, and also remembered more "incidental features," showing heightened vigilance.

Murphy, Steele, and Gross had shown that, under ordinary circumstances—something as banal as watching a commercial—women experienced an identity threat. This supported the hypothesis that 1) responses to identity threats were largely the result of environmental cues, rather than psychological disposition, and 2) it might be possible to neutralize these environmental cues with other cues.