Campus invited to FORWARD presentations on May 8
Members of the NDSU community are invited to attend a series of presentations by Toni Schmader, associate professor of psychology at the University of Arizona on Friday, May 8. Her research involves the interplay between self and social identity, particularly when one’s social identity is targeted by negative stereotypes.
Schmader will present “No Stigmatized Child Left Behind: Understanding and Reducing the Effects that Stereotypes have on Academic Performance,” on Friday, May 8, at 9:00 a.m. in Memorial Union Century Theater. This talk is open to the public. Refreshments will be served before the presentation and all members of the NDSU community are invited to attend.
Schmader also will hold a noon workshop titled “The Science of Unconscious Bias,” for faculty and administrators. Separate discussions with academic administrators and faculty will follow the workshop. The discussion with faculty is scheduled for 1:15 p.m. The discussion with academic administrators is scheduled for 3 p.m.
CAMPUS RESEARCH TALK – Friday, May 8, at 9:00 a.m. in Memorial Union Century Theater
No Stigmatized Child Left Behind: Understanding and Reducing the Effects that Stereotypes have on Academic Performance
Social scientists have long struggled to account for group differences in test scores between the sexes in math and sciences and between minority and majority students in intellectual tests more broadly. Social psychologists have argued that these performance differences can be at least partly explained by a phenomenon called stereotype threat, whereby members of stigmatized groups feel an added pressure to perform well to avoid confirming negative stereotypes about their group. Paradoxically, this added pressure impairs performance on cognitively complex tasks. The first part of Dr. Schmader’s talk will provide a summary of the current state of research on stereotype threat documenting the processes that underlie this phenomenon. Having identified some of the key mechanisms of these effects, the second part of the talk will examine strategies that might be effective at reducing stereotype threat. Implications will be discussed for narrowing the gap in performance and participation of women and minorities in academic pursuits.
WORKSHOP TALK – – Friday, May 8, at noon in Memorial Union Prairie Rose room
The Science of Unconscious Bias
It is often assumed that if people are simply motivated to be non-prejudiced, that they will be unbiased in their treatment of women and minorities. More than two decades of research demonstrates, however, that even well-intentioned people hold unconscious biases against other groups that can influence their behavior toward them. In this workshop, Dr. Schmader will summarize the psychological theory behind these unconscious biases, conduct a demonstration of how these biases can be revealed and studied, and review the evidence that such biases can lead to poorer outcomes for members of traditionally disadvantaged groups. The implications of this evidence for minimizing the negative influence of unconscious bias in an organizational setting will be discussed.
About Toni Schmader, Ph. D.
Toni Schmader is an internationally recognized scholar of social stigma, prejudice, and intergroup relations. Professor Schmader is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1999 and has held a visiting position at Harvard University. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, and Psychological Review. She was the 2000 Dissertation Award winner from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and a 2007 Magellan Circle Teaching Award winner from the UA College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Her research has received funding from both the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health. She has served as an Associate Editor at Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, sits on the editorial board of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and is an elected member of the executive committee for the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.