Photo by Mara 1 (Flickr Creative Commons License)
I’m reading this amazing book at the moment – well, not actually reading it, but listening to it. I download a lot of books from audible.com and listen to them while I’m driving or flying.
Anyway, the book is “Blink!” by Malcolm Gladwell. How we think without really thinking about it. And while it’s all captivating, there was one major aha moment for me, particularly regarding the success mindset.
This point was about priming, and how that can have either a positive or negative effect.
Priming is about introducing a subtle, often unconscious thought or idea into your mind, which unknowingly influences your decisions and choices and ultimately your behaviour.
Priming can be done manipulatively or happen passively just by living in our society that sends out stereotypical messages about various segments of population.
The example that Malcolm Gladwell uses to most effect is the psychological research study that looks at the influence of ethnicity on perceived intelligence.
Carried out by Claude Steele and Joshua Aaronson in the mid 1990′s, they gave 20 questions from the Graduate Record Examination, which is the standardised test for entry to graduate school, to a group of African-American students.
Some of the students were asked, in a pretest, to identify their race. Now here’s the thing. The students that were asked this got only half as many answers correct as the other students who weren’t asked this question.
And even more surprising, when they were asked why they didn’t do so well, they simply assumed it was because they weren’t smart enough! They didn’t even relate it to the question of ethnicity.
All of us have internalised subliminal stereotypical messages about ourelves and whatever group we identify with.
Seems that people who come from a negatively stereotyped group have internalised many of those assumptions. It’s difficult to avoid.
So, people who come from privileged groups are primed more for success because that is the stereotype of the group they belong to. Success tends comes easily to them.
What does this mean, then, for people trying to transcend their backgrounds? Who are struggling to be a success in their chosen field?
I don’t want to get into any debate about the rightness or wrongness of the stereotype issue. I simply want to point out how relentless and subversive it is. We are all victims of it one way or another.
The first step to overcoming negative priming is to become aware of it:
- Are you from a minority?
- Are you from a poor or mediocre background?
- How do you feel about your intelligence?
- How do you feel about your looks and appearance?
- Are you overweight?
- Is there any other way that you are not in the main stream?
- Is there any other reason you don’t identify with successful people, champions, winners, rich people, successful entrepreneurs?
- Why do you think you’re you not making the grade?
- What is your “if only”?