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Book Review: Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele

Kaitlyn Upson

Arizona State University- OGL 350: Diversity and Organizations

Dr. Marie Wallace

October 24, 2022

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Book Review: Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele

Introduction

The word stereotype can be defined as “a standardized mental picture that is held in

common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced

attitude, or uncritical judgment” (Miriam Webster, n.d.). Everyone has been stereotyped at one

point or another. Stereotypes are harmful because they encourage a generalized opinion about a

group of people. An example of a stereotype is that all Asians are good at math. While this may

not seem harmful, an asian who may not have strong mathematical skills can be negatively

judged because of it or feel like they do not fit in. In Whistling Vivaldi, social psychologist

Claude Steele discusses how stereotypes affect human behavior.

Summary of Argument

Claude Steele’s purpose for writing this book is to explain the effect that stereotypes have

on human behavior. His argument is that stereotypes are so powerful that they can cause a self-

fulfilling prophecy. He supports his argument by conducting several experiments throughout his

career on how stereotypes affect the performance of different minority groups. His main focus is

students who are part of a minority group. His experiments attempt to show how stereotypes

affect the behavior of students. He explains that the threat of a stereotype can severely impact the

test-taker’s performance. This comes from the pressure of confirming the stereotype which

causes them to underperform. Through the results, he discovered that the most intelligent

students that were affected by a stereotype were most susceptible. Steele explains that these

students suffer pressure from having to prove themselves and separate themselves from the

stereotype. He found that if teachers encourage affirmations that it helps to alleviate some of the
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pressure that these students face. He concludes that stereotypes are always going to be a part of

society and the only way to minimize the effect that they have on people is through empathy

(2011).

About the Author

The author, Claude Steele, is a professor and an American social psychologist. He has a

P.H.D. in psychology and is most known for his research on stereotypes and how they impact the

performance of minority students. He has been a professor at several universities and currently

resides at Stanford University (Claude Steele, n.d.).

Summary of Contents

In order to discover why there was an achievement gap between white students and

minority students, Steele and his colleagues designed experiments in order to test his theory of

how stereotypes affect human behavior. He tested his theory first on women and then on black

students where in both scenarios he found that when told before the test that it was going to be

tested on cognitive ability both groups experienced underperformance. He concluded that the

pressure from the stereotype that white men are more intelligent caused them to not do well on

the tests. This provided a framework for other social psychologists to conduct similar

experiments on other minorities in order to show the power of the threat stereotypes (2011).

Strength

A strength of this book is that it provides a different perspective of how stereotypes affect

those who they are about. Rather than claiming that stereotypes make us feel bad about

ourselves, Steele dives deeper into how stereotypes are communicated through environmental

cues and how that affects our behavior. He explains that the threat of stereotypes are so powerful

that they can cause students to underperform even if they had not thought about it before.
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Weakness

A weakness that this book has is that it does not discuss how stereotypes affect people

who are a part of the LGBTQ community. Steele primarily focuses on how racial and gender

stereotypes affect human behavior and does not go into much detail about LGBTQ stereotypes. I

believe that this is because the book was written over a decade ago during a different time. In

today’s society, people are more open about their sexuality and are more comfortable discussing

it. Because of this, I believe that Steele did not consider stereotypes relating to sexuality.

Conclusion

I enjoyed reading this book because it provides a great example of how stereotypes can

cause a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think that all Americans would benefit from reading this book

because it focuses on the effect that stereotyping has on American society. I would recommend

this book to everyone because it continues to be relevant today and it is a reminder that

stereotypes affect everyone.

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References

Claude Steele. Claude Steele's Profile | Stanford Profiles. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://profiles.stanford.edu/claude-steele?tab=bio

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Stereotype. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved October 17,

2022, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stereotype.

Steele, C. (2011). Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us And What We Can Do. United

Kingdom: W. W. Norton.