Dumb Jock Stereotypes In Sports

Athletics and Academic Success: Abandoning the Stereotype

Over time and especially today, there has been a common misconception that students who participate in athletics or team sports are more likely to be less accomplished (in terms of academic success) than those students who are not and John R. Gerdy’s “Americas Failed Experiment with Elite Athletics” is a prime example of this false belief. Teachers and faculty members often devalue athletics and some even feel that it is a poor representation of such. Often time’s parents or guardians are reluctant or in opposition to allowing their children to get involved in sports because they believe it will derail their learning and/or achievement in school. The majority of those people who presume

this to be true is because they believe that the average student-athlete will spend a great amount of their free time dedicating themselves to their sport rather than using it to advance academically.

One study suggested that the worry of potentially confirming the “dumb jock” stereotype might be to blame for any performance gap between student athletes and non-student athletes (Moltz, 2009). Teachers and professors are directly linked to the athletes academic success, and negative perceptions of student athletes in the classroom is a paramount matter because they are exposing them to the stigma attached to athletic participation. This is problematic because when the students are made aware of this bias their academic performance declines because they feel more anxious and pressured as to not confirming the dumb jock stigma, a phenomenon known as stereotype threat. Some studies even show that these stereotyped groups actually perform better than

non-stereotyped groups when the threat is removed (Moltz, 2009).
Stereotype threat refers to being at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group.

This term was first used by Steele and Aronson (in 1995) who showed in several experiments that Black college freshmen and sophomores performed more poorly on standardized tests than White students when their race was emphasized and when it was not emphasized, Black students performed better and equivalently with White students. The results of this experiment highlight that performance in academic settings can be harmed by the awareness that one's behavior might be viewed through the lens of not just racial stereotypes, but any stereotype. Currently, there have been over 300 experiments on stereotype threat that have been published in peer-reviewed journals which goes to show the importance and much needed attention of this ever prevalent epidemic. In the abundance of these different research experiments, they have come to show that the consequences of stereotype threat are extended beyond just underachievement on academic tasks. It can also lead to self-handicapping strategies, reduced sense of belonging to the stereotyped group, and after consistent exposure to stereotype threat, it can reduce the degree that individuals value the stereotyped group in question (Yopyk & Prentice, 2010). In education, it can also lead students to choose not to pursue that area of study where they felt threatened by a stereotype and as a consequence therefore limit the range of professions that

they are able to pursue. Therefore, the long-term effects of stereotype threat might contribute not only to educational inequality but social inequality as well.
Furthermore, stereotype threat has been shown to affect stereotyped individuals performance in multiple fields outside of academics, such as white men in sports, homosexual men in providing childcare, and women in driving which are just a few examples of how you might, and probably have been, affected by stereotype threat as well. The majority of society has multiple social identities as individuals, and as a result, can be the central victims of conflicting stereotypes. For example, female student-athletes at a highly selective university. Because of their identity as college students, they are assumed to possess high academic ability and motivation. Yet contrastingly, because of their identity as athletes, they are assumed to be somewhat lacking in academic ability.
It has been shown that stereotype threat can harm the academic performance of individual for whom the situation provides a stereotype-based expectation of poor performance. Research has also extended its reach to understanding what situations are most likely to lead to stereotype threat. Thus, situations that increase the prominence of the stereotyped group identity can increase vulnerability to stereotype threat. A particular interest to researchers are the mechanisms behind stereotype threat such as how do negative stereotypes lead to the previously stated consequences? Although the research that I was able to acquire was not entirely clear on providing an answer to this question, some previous research has shown that stereotype threat can reduce working memory resources which would resultantly inhibit the ability to successfully complete complex intellectual tasks and could, in fact, disrupt the ability to maintain proper focus on task-relevant information (Schmader & Johns, 2003). This clearly goes far beyond just beyond just underachievement on academic tasks in the classroom and in fact extends to far more vital depths.