13.4.3: Self-Expectations

 13.4: The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective: Teacher Expectations 

 13.4.3: Self-Expectations 

In the section on conflict theory, you read about how social class affects students’ chances of going to college, which denies advantages to some and heaps advantages on others. You just read about how teachers’ expectations influence students’ performance. In the following Applying Sociology to Your Life, let’s switch the topic to self-expectations—and how they can help you get through college. Applying Sociology to Your Life You Want to Get Through College? Let’s Apply Sociology As you just read, students from low-income homes are less likely to go to college than students from more privileged backgrounds. And if they do go to college, they are more likely to drop out. Why? On average, their scores on the SAT tests are lower, so some might think they aren’t as intelligent. This, in fact, is close to the main problem—but not quite it. These students are not less intelligent. Rather, the problem is that they think they are less intelligent. And this has huge consequences. Students from low-income homes arrive at college with more self-doubts than do students from higher-income homes. When problems occur, as they will, such as doing badly on a test, these self-doubts come into play. Students from low-income backgrounds tend to see the self as the problem. They are more likely to think something like this: “I’m not sure I’m smart enough to get through college. Maybe this is the wrong place for me.” Seeing problems as a sign of self-deficiency sets these students on a self-defeating course. When the same thing happens to students from higher-income homes, they tend to say to themselves, “It’s just a situation. I didn’t study enough.” Or maybe: “The teacher threw in some unexpected material.” Thinking like this deflects blame away from the self. It moves the fault away from the individual’s abilities and places it on a temporary situation. Look at how vitally different these self-expectations are. Students from the less privileged backgrounds tend to see the cause as flaws within the self, while students from the more privileged backgrounds tend to shrug off the problem as a temporary situation. These contrasting self-expectations direct students onto different paths, ones that have resounding consequences for the students’ lives. What I have just told you is not simply an idea. It has been demonstrated in a remarkable set of experiments run by David Laude at the University of Texas (Tough 2014; Kirp 2019). Laude followed good scientific methods. He randomly divided incoming freshmen according to their SAT scores and parents’ income. During their orientation, the control group of students read neutral essays, while the experimental group read an essay about how intelligence increases as people study and learn. The low-scoring students from low-income homes who read the essay about intelligence got better grades as they went through college, and they were more likely to graduate than students from this same background who did not read that essay. Hardly anybody could believe the results of Laude’s experiment. Could reading a little essay really have such a deep impact on students? It did. But how? Without the students realizing it, the essay changed self-expectations. It provided a new way to interpret problem situations in college. “Ah, my brain can grow. My intelligence can change. I can get smarter.” If there is a low grade on a test, the self, then, is not the problem. The problem is the low test score, a temporary situation to overcome. For Your Consideration I wrote this Applying Sociology to Your Life with two purposes in mind. The first is to illustrate the power of self-expectations. I find this to be a fascinating application of symbolic interactionism. You can apply it to many situations in life, not just to college. The second reason is to encourage students. It is good to realize that how you think about the problems you face makes a significant difference for your life. Research shows that your brain continues to develop and your intelligence can continue to increase. When you confront obstacles in college—such as a low test score or doing poorly on a term paper—do not think of the problem as your lack of ability. Rather, think of the problem as a particular situation that you can overcome. You can make it in college. So do it. If this analysis turns out to make a difference in someone’s life, helping to set positively predictive self-expectations and self-interpretations, my ultimate purpose, I will be most pleased.