Convocation: Joshua Aronson

Associate Professor of Applied Psychology at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, Joshua Aronson has been studying stereotypes, self-esteem, motivation, and attitudes for the past 13 years. His work seeks to understand and remediate race and gender gaps in educational achievement and standardized test performance. Often, the low performance of blacks in particular, but other minorities as well, gets casually chalked up to genetic or cultural differences that supposedly block acquisition of skills or values necessary for academic achievement. In sharp contrast, Aronson has uncovered some exciting and encouraging answers to these old questions by looking at the psychology of stigma—the way human beings respond to negative stereotypes about their racial or gender group. What he has found suggests that being targeted by well-known cultural stereotypes ("blacks are unintelligent", "girls can't do math", and so on) can be very threatening, a predicament that has been termed "Stereotype Threat."