Concepts that stood out to me from the reading were “self-defeating stereotypes”, and the idea that people might subconsciously endorse a stereotype, even if they consciously reject it.\u00a0 In my Leadership 102 class with Dr. von Reuden, I learned that people can suffer mental and physical ailments due to the stress of feeling like they are a part of a minority group. For this reason, members of minority groups have shorter lifespans than members of majority groups when other variables are held constant. I was surprised to hear this at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The reading mentioned our evolutionary history, and how we have evolved to prioritize being part of the “in-group” (for safety reasons). To feel like a constant outsider is to feel constantly as though a need for survival is not being met. It would be like your brain constantly sending your body signals that you are hungry, even when you just ate. No wonder the increase in stress hormones can have a real, measurable affect on a person’s physical well being.<\/p>\n
Our vulnerability to self-defeating stereotypes presents a huge challenge. In order to be perceptive and self aware, we have to understand reasons why others might make quick (often negative) judgements about us. The catch is that even if we consciously choose not to agree with or believe in these negative judgements, the fact that they exist can create doubt and stress in our minds. Maintaining the balance between self belief and maintaining awareness of others criticisms (even if they are unfair and\/or baseless) adds another layer of social difficulty for anyone who finds themself in a minority group in their environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Concepts that stood out to me from the reading were “self-defeating stereotypes”, and the idea that people might subconsciously endorse a stereotype, even if they consciously reject it.\u00a0 In my Leadership 102 class with Dr. von Reuden, I learned that people can suffer mental and physical ailments due to the stress of feeling like they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4477,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4477"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6250,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6248\/revisions\/6250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}