Star Trek Stops Women From Becoming Computer Scientists
“You can get a message about whether you want to join a certain group just by seeing the physical environment that that group is associated with,” Cheryan says. “You walk in, see these objects and think, ‘This is not me.’”
Cheryan and colleagues tested this idea by alternately decorating a computer science classroom with objects that earlier surveys pegged as stereotypically geeky—Star Trek posters, videogames and comic books — or with objects that the surveys found to be neutral— coffee mugs, plants and art posters. Thirty-nine college students spent a few minutes in the room, then filled out a questionnaire on their attitudes toward computer science.
Women who spent time in the geeky room reported less interest in computer science than women who saw the neutral room. For male students, however, the room’s décor made no difference.
In follow-up tests, a total of 215 students were asked to imagine they were joining either a geekily decorated or a neutrally decorated company after graduation. For every possible scenario, women preferred the non-geeky space.
“It’s a consistent effect,” Cheryan says. “The environment can communicate a sense of belonging, but it also communicates a sense of exclusion, or a sense that this is not a place where I would fit in.”
I wonder if a poster of Kirk and Spock kissing would help....
Did they try the same experiment on jocks and men who prefer NASCAR and those who would not be caught dead at SF conventions?
I wonder if a poster of Kirk and Spock kissing would help....
I know it would help me. I would have taken more than one physics class.
FCM
Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Robert Downey Jr.
Javier Bardem
(ita, you should expect some pictures of him soon too)
After about three years of denial, I finally have to face the truth that someone stole my baby and replaced her with this young girl: [link]
Oh my goodness! Where did the baby go?
Where did the baby go?
Dingos. Happens every time.
F: RDJ
C:JB
M: JDM (If juliana even let me that near him. Which I doubt.)
I like this look at the state of the health care debate right now:
But notice the quality of the debate. Note that Howard Dean, Markos Moulitsas, much of the FireDogLake team and others are raising important questions and pointing to real flaws. At the same time, note that Ezra Klein, Jonathan Cohn, Nate Silver and others are offering meaningful defenses of the Democratic plan, based on substantive evaluations.
Progressive activists and progressive wonks are at each other's throats this week, but they want largely the same goals. Their differences are sincere and significant, but the intensity of their dispute is matched by the potency of their arguments.
And then turn your attention to the other side of the divide, and notice the quality of the arguments conservatives and Republicans have offered -- and continue to offer -- in this debate. Death panels. Socialism. Hitler. Government takeover. Socialized medicine. Incomprehensible charts. Incessant whining about the number of pages in a proposal.
The United States could have had a great debate this year about one of the most important domestic policies of them all. But Americans were denied that debate, because the right didn't have an A game to bring. Intellectual bankruptcy left conservatives with empty rhetorical quivers.
But as it turns out, it's not too late for the debate, we were just looking in the wrong place. We expected the fight of the generation to occur between the right and left, when the more relevant and interesting dispute was between left and left.
Where did the baby go?
I loved that book when I was little: [link]
Oh, I forgot to mention that my oldest son Max is playing the French horn in school. He picked it without knowing his dad played the French horn. (He said he picked it because it's "easiest", even though it's actually the hardest brass instrument to play.)
I wonder if there's a gene for liking the French horn....
