Supercommunicators, page 29
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“exaggerate the differences”: Saul Mcleod, “Social Identity Theory: Definition, History, Examples, and Facts,” Simply Psychology, April 14, 2023.
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whenever we talk: Matthew D. Lieberman, “Social Cognitive Neuroscience: A Review of Core Processes,” Annual Review of Psychology 58 (2007): 259–89; Carolyn Parkinson and Thalia Wheatley, “The Repurposed Social Brain,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19, no. 3 (2015): 133–41; William Hirst and Gerald Echterhoff, “Remembering in Conversations: The Social Sharing and Reshaping of Memories,” Annual Review of Psychology 63 (2012): 55–79; Katherine D. Kinzler, “Language as a Social Cue,” Annual Review of Psychology 72 (2021): 241–64; Gregory M. Walton et al., “Mere Belonging: the Power of Social Connections,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102, no. 3 (2012): 513.
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more influential than others: It is useful to note how the power granted to some identities by society—what is sometimes referred to as privilege—can impact lives greatly. For more on this topic, let me recommend Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006); Devon W. Carbado, “Privilege,” in Everyday Women’s and Gender Studies by Ann Braithwaite and Catherine Orr (New York: Routledge, 2016), 141–46; Linda L. Black and David Stone, “Expanding the Definition of Privilege: the Concept of Social Privilege,” Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development 33, no. 4 (2005): 243–55; and Kim Case, Deconstructing Privilege (New York: Routledge, 2013).
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“nearly one-fifth”: Matt Motta et al., “Identifying the Prevalence, Correlates, and Policy Consequences of Anti-Vaccine Social Identity,” Politics, Groups, and Identities (2021): 1–15.
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In June of that year: “CDC Museum COVID-19 Timeline,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html.
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roughly 85 percent: James E. K. Hildreth and Donald J. Alcendor, “Targeting COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Minority Populations in the US: Implications for Herd Immunity,” Vaccines 9, no. 5 (2021): 489; Lea Skak Filtenborg Frederiksen et al., “The Long Road Toward COVID-19 Herd Immunity: Vaccine Platform Technologies and Mass Immunization Strategies,” Frontiers in Immunology 11 (2020): 1817.
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“math was important”: Claude M. Steele, Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011).
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As he later described: Ibid.
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might be the instructors’ fault: In response to a fact-checking email, Steele wrote that he eventually determined this discrepancy wasn’t due to implicit bias because “1) we got underperformance in our lab studies when there was no possibility of implicit bias since participants took the exams alone in a lab room and 2) when you remove stereotype threat, as we did in the critical conditions of these experiments, underperformance vanished completely, making it clear that in these experiments, at least, nothing but [stereotype threat] could have caused the underperformance since removing it totally eliminated all underperformance.”
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hobbled by social identities: Steele wrote: “They are not so much worrying about their actual abilities as they are worried about how they will be judged and seen and about what that will mean for their futures.”
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For his experiment: Steven J. Spencer, Claude M. Steele, and Diane M. Quinn, “Stereotype Threat and Women’s Math Performance,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 35, no. 1 (1999): 4–28.
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“because they were multitasking”: Steele wrote: “We know now that they don’t underperform because they are overwhelmed, they underperform because they are trying too hard, they are multitasking, trying very hard to do well while they are also constantly monitoring how they are doing and worrying about how it all will affect their performance and the outcomes tied to that performance.”
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Black and white students: Claude M. Steele and Joshua Aronson, “Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69, no. 5 (1995): 797.
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“white students did a lot better”: In response to a fact-checking inquiry, Aronson, the coauthor on this study, said, “Black students did much better when they didn’t feel that they were being evaluated by the test, whereas it didn’t matter for white students and this is presumably because there’s not a stereotype operating.” Aronson cautioned about comparing the scores of Black and white test takers, and rather emphasized that “Black students were susceptible to being confronted with a stereotyping situation: they did worse when they were reminded of the stereotype in some way or when they thought the test was diagnosing their abilities.”
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hundreds of other studies: Charlotte R. Pennington et al., “Twenty Years of Stereotype Threat Research: A Review of Psychological Mediators,” PLOS One 11, no. 1 (2016): e0146487. Today, Steele is the Lucie Sterns Professor Emeritus in the Social Sciences at Stanford University. He previously served as provost at both Columbia University and UC Berkeley.
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a stereotype exists: Steele wrote: “It’s not that women or Blacks think they have been assigned to their group by other people. Like men or whites they just know that that is their group. They don’t have to assume anything about bigoted people assigning them to it. They simply know that there are stereotypes about their group afoot in the broader society. That’s all it takes for them to feel threatened by the possibility of being judged or treated in terms of those stereotypes when they are in a situation or experiencing something consistent with the stereotype.”
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counteracting stereotype threats: An enormous amount of research has been done on how to fight stereotype threat, with many solutions proposed and tested. For more details, I would recommend chapter 9 of Claude Steele’s book Whistling Vivaldi.
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changed the protocol: Dana M. Gresky, “Effects of Salient Multiple Identities on Women’s Performance Under Mathematics Stereotype Threat,” Sex Roles 53 (2005).
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Qaraqosh, Iraq: Salma Mousa, “Building Social Cohesion Between Christians and Muslims Through Soccer in Post-ISIS Iraq,” Science 369, no. 6505 (2020): 866–70.
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Hundreds of Christians: Richard Hall, “Iraqi Christians Are Slowly Returning to Their Homes, Wary of Their Neighbors,” Public Radio International (2017).
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assaulted Christian women: “For Persecuted Christian Women, Violence Is Compounded by ‘Shaming,’ ” World Watch Monitor, March 8, 2019.
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“They know what they did”: Hall, “Iraqi Christians Are Slowly Returning.”
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additional players would be Muslims: In reply to a fact-checking email, Mousa clarified that, while it is accurate that three additional players would be Muslim, at the meeting people were told only that “in the interests of making sure that members of all communities participate in the leagues, we will be randomly adding players to your team, who may or may not be Christian.” Attendees, however, realized this likely meant the additional players would be Muslim.
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Salma Mousa: Mousa was aided by a close collaboration with community leaders in Qaraqosh and a research manager, Rabie Zakaria. Mousa was a PhD student when this work was done. She is now an assistant professor of political science at Yale.
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contact hypothesis: Thomas F. Pettigrew and Linda R. Tropp, “Allport’s Intergroup Contact Hypothesis: Its History and Influence,” in On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years After Allport by John F. Dovidio, Peter Samuel Glick, and Laurie A. Rudman (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005): 262–77; Marilynn B. Brewer and N. Miller, “Beyond the Contact Hypothesis: Theoretical,” Groups in Contact: The Psychology of Desegregation (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1984): 281; Yehuda Amir, “Contact Hypothesis in Ethnic Relations,” Psychological Bulletin 71, no. 5 (1969): 319; Elizabeth Levy Paluck, Seth A. Green, and Donald P. Green, “The Contact Hypothesis Re-Evaluated,” Behavioural Public Policy 3, no. 2 (2019): 129–58.
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When Mousa surveyed: Mousa, “Building Social Cohesion,” 866–70.
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Muslim players told pollsters: Salma Mousa, “Contact, Conflict, and Social Cohesion” (diss., Stanford University, 2020).
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old rivalries and grudges: Mousa added another context that helped ensure equal footing: All the players on the teams, both Muslim and Christian, had been impacted by the ISIS militiamen. “The Muslims in the study were mostly from the Shabak Shia community, who were persecuted as heretics by ISIS…. So this wasn’t a ‘perpetrator vs. victim’ dynamic per se, but rather a case of deep distrust and prejudice toward Muslims who were seen as diluting the Christian character of Qaraqosh by slowly moving into the city, and being stereotypically less educated, poorer, and more conservative. The shared displacement experience did little to bond the two groups together. Instead, the occupation hardened in-group identities, distrust, and segregation.”
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more than two million: “COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update,” World Health Organization, February 23, 2021.
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persuading people: In response to fact-checking inquiries, Rosenbloom said that “the goal of Boost Oregon is not to convince people to get the shots. It’s to help educate them to make a well-informed decision. Yes, we’re teaching people about why they’re good and why they’re safe, but…what we need to do is we need to help them to get their questions answered, without having an agenda, or else we’re dooming ourselves before we start.”
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motivational interviewing: Jennifer Hettema, Julie Steele, and William R. Miller, “Motivational Interviewing,” Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 1 (2005): 91–111; William R. Miller and Gary S. Rose, “Toward a Theory of Motivational Interviewing,” American Psychologist 64, no. 6 (2009): 527; William R. Miller, “Motivational Interviewing: Research, Practice, and Puzzles,” Addictive Behaviors 21, no. 6 (1996): 835–42; W. R. Miller and S. Rollnick, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change (New York: Guilford Press, 2013).
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subtly guides the client: Ken Resnicow and Fiona McMaster, “Motivational Interviewing: Moving from Why to How with Autonomy Support,” International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 9, no. 1 (2012): 1–9.
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CHAPTER SEVEN: HOW DO WE MAKE THE HARDEST CONVERSATIONS SAFER?
The Problem Netflix Lives With: There are a number of missteps one can make in writing about race and ethnicity, particularly when the author is, like myself, a heterosexual white man who has enjoyed numerous advantages and privileges. One risk is failing to see insights that would be obvious to other writers. To that end, in writing this chapter I spoke to scholars of racism, prejudice, and interracial communication who were generous with their time, many of them thinkers with lived experiences of exclusion. I was grateful for their insights and asked some of them to review this chapter and give me their thoughts and suggestions. In some instances, their contributions are included in the text, or detailed in these notes. It is also important to note that while different kinds of prejudice often have some commonalities, they should not be lumped together. Racism is distinct from sexism, and from homophobia. Every prejudice—and every instance of injustice—is, in its own way, unique. Finally, in choosing how to refer to sensitive topics in this and other chapters, including how to refer to specific ethnicities, I have tried to adhere to the standards of the Associated Press Stylebook.
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he said the n-word: “At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks,” The Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2018.
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another thought: It is important to note that statements that give offense might be blatant—such as using a racial slur—but they can also be much more subtle, which some scholars refer to as microaggressions. For more on this topic, please see Derald Wing Sue and Lisa Spanierman, Microaggressions in Everyday Life (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2020); Derald Wing Sue et al., “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice,” American Psychologist 62, no. 4 (2007): 271; Derald Wing Sue, “Microaggressions: More Than Just Race,” Psychology Today 17 (2010); Anthony D. Ong and Anthony L. Burrow, “Microaggressions and Daily Experience: Depicting Life as It Is Lived,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 12, no. 1 (2017).
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Reed Hastings: Reed Hastings cofounded Netflix with Marc Randolph.
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the culture deck: For my understanding of Netflix, I am indebted to many sources, including Reed Hastings’s book, written with Erin Meyer: No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention (New York: Penguin, 2020); Corinne Grinapol, Reed Hastings and Netflix (New York: Rosen, 2013); Patty McCord, “How Netflix Reinvented HR,” Harvard Business Review 92, no. 1 (2014): 71–76; James Morgan, “Netflix: Reed Hastings,” Media Company Leader Presentations 12 (2018); Bill Taylor, “How Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Amazon Learn from Failure,” Harvard Business Review 10 (2017); Kai-Ingo Voigt et al., “Entertainment on Demand: The Case of Netflix,” in Business Model Pioneers: How Innovators Successfully Implement New Business Models (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2017): 127–41; Patty McCord, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility (San Francisco: Silicon Guild, 2018).
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Netflix would either match it: In response to fact-checking questions, a representative for Netflix said this practice does not happen as often today, and that as the company has grown and become more sophisticated, the firm does a better job of setting salaries at industry standards without employees needing to solicit outside offers.
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A note was sent: In response to fact-checking questions, a representative for the company said this happens less frequently today.
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Businessperson of the Year: This award was bestowed in 2010.
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don’t seem particularly effective: Evelyn R. Carter, Ivuoma N. Onyeador, and Neil A. Lewis, Jr., “Developing and Delivering Effective Anti-bias Training: Challenges and Recommendations,” Behavioral Science and Policy 6, no. 1 (2020): 57–70; Joanne Lipman, “How Diversity Training Infuriates Men and Fails Women,” Time 191, no. 4 (2018): 17–19; Peter Bregman, “Diversity Training Doesn’t Work,” Harvard Business Review 12 (2012); Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev, “Why Doesn’t Diversity Training Work? The Challenge for Industry and Academia,” Anthropology Now 10, no. 2 (2018): 48–55; Hussain Alhejji et al., “Diversity Training Programme Outcomes: A Systematic Review,” Human Resource Development Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2016): 95–149; Gwendolyn M. Combs and Fred Luthans, “Diversity Training: Analysis of the Impact of Self-Efficacy,” Human Resource Development Quarterly 18, no. 1 (2007): 91–120; J. Belluz, “Companies Like Starbucks Love Anti-bias Training but It Doesn’t Work—and May Backfire,” Vox (2018); Dobin and Kalev, “Why Doesn’t Diversity Training Work?,” 48–55; Edward H. Chang et al., “The Mixed Effects of Online Diversity Training,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 16 (2019): 7778–83.
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