Self Fulfilling Prophecy

Expectations can become a self fulfilling prophecy, no matter how inaccurate and based in bias they may be, because of how individuals let them affect their outlook. The expectation that women will not be successful in the science field has been built around the reports of innate cognitive sex differences, but Melissa Hines evaluates these studies and their inconsistent results to conclude that there is little, if any evidence to support a genetic basis for these differences. To answer the question posed in the title of her essay, “Do Sex Differences In Cognition Cause the Shortage of Women In Science?” I would have to say no, but I believe the idea that there are sex differences causes the shortage of women in science because of the expectations created by these reports.

Hines’ essay analyzes the reasons sex differences would not prevent women from being successful in science. She acknowledges that although cognitive sex differences are too large to be considered negligible, the studies that have tried to link these differences to hormones are inconsistent. She explains that hormones influence the fundamental organization of the brain and behaviors, so there is a belief that gonadal hormones are significant determinants in cognitive sex differences, but the studies that support this hypothesis have not been able to be replicated. Since the results are so inconsistent, Hines attributes the results to selection bias. When more controls were used to account for background factors, the studies failed to link testosterone or estrogen to cognitive sex differences.

This leads me to believe the problem that causes the shortage of women in science is the way society holds true to the expectations created by these reports. Parents and teachers, who have a vast impact on shaping the minds of the children they encounter, are vulnerable to these expectations that women are different than men and will not perform as well. Teachers are shown to interact differently with children they expect to succeed, and months later, those children are actually shown to be performing better even though they were initially selected at random (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968). The results confirm the teachers expectations, but if there were higher expectations for all students, then they would all benefit from the positive interactions that come with an expectation to be successful.

This confirmation of the expectations is a self fulfilling prophecy, so the answer may be to change the expectation of women in science to actually change the success of women in science. Research into the effects of expectations in education report that “that higher expectations result in higher performance, and that persons with high expectations perform at a higher level than those with low expectations, even though their measured abilities are equal” (Schilling and Schilling, 1999). The problem is that society still believes that innate ability is determining academic success and not acknowledging the importance of quality of teaching instruction and parental involvement (Lumsden 1997). This all relates back to fixed and growth mindsets. Parents and teachers are susceptible to differing expectations based on previous biases and may not even realize that they have an effect on the performance of children because they believe this was predetermined by genetics. They need to view abilities as capable of growth and instill higher expectations for women so they can reach their full potential.

References:

http://www.greaterexpectations.org/briefing_papers/improvestudentlearning.html

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http://www.calwatershedfunds.org/the-pygmalion-effect/