Embodied Harm: A Phenomenological Engagement with Stereotype Threat

Helmuth Plessner (1892–1985) is an important figure with regards to understanding the Leib/Körper distinction; however, because his major works have not been translated, he is virtually unknown in the contemporary French and English literature on the distinction (Krüger 1998; Schusterman 2010). Heavily influenced by Husserl, who was one of his teachers, Plessner introduces his version of this distinction in a co-authored 1925 essay with the Dutch behavioral researcher Frederick Jacob Buytendijk, entitled “Die Deutung des mimischen Ausdrucks. Ein Beitrag zur Lehre vom Bewusstsein des anderen Ichs” (“The Interpretation of Mimetic Expressions: A Contribution to Understanding One’s Consciousness of Other Subjects”). Plessner’s understanding of the distinction differs from that of both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty in various ways, the most important of which is that for him, the phenomenological approach still problematically relied on the traditional idea of Ego or individual conscious self as the starting point. According to Plessner, such an approach was still contaminated by traditional dualisms of mind as subject versus body as object, but also of self and other, and knowing and doing (Shusterman 2010; also see Fernandez 2016; Krüger 2010). Because the present paper is not meant to focus on the historical debates surrounding different accounts of the Leib/Körper distinction, my discussion of it will be a broad overview, acknowledging that I am glossing over important and nuanced differences. For excellent scholarly work that draws out the complexities and problems of the distinction itself and the ways in which the distinction has been developed and employed in the last century, see Böhme (2003); Schmitz (1965); Habermas (1985); Waldenfels (1997). Also see Fernandez (2016); Krüger (2010); Shusterman (2010); Lindemann and Hyatt (2010).

For Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Husserl on embodiment, see, for example, Behnke (2002), Bruzina (2002), Carman (1999), Heinamaa (2002), Zahavi (2002).

For an excellent account of the intersubjective dimension of embodiment, in particular, within the work of Plessner, see Lindemann and Hyatt (2010).

As with any literature in social psychology, with the growing research on ST, there are also skeptics who question whether ST is an actual phenomenon (see, for example, Nguyen and Ryan 2008; Flore and Wicherts 2015; Stoet and Geary 2012; Doyle and Voyer 2016; Pennington et al. 2016) on account of the fact that several studies have not been replicable (Ganley et al. 2013; Gibson et al. 2014; Moon and Roeder 2014). My aim in this paper is not to respond to these skeptics, nor is it demonstrate that ST exists. Both of those goals would comprise quite a different project. All I will say about this is that many of the studies in question consider such a narrow picture of ST and fail to consider the broader and enduring harms, specifically harms to selfhood and to self-identity (which are obviously much more difficult to test). So indeed, there is much more conceptual and empirical work to be done in this area. The working assumption in this paper is that there is a shared experience of being marginalized that is common to members of oppressed groups and that is related to and brought on within the context of commonly held stereotypes about members of those groups. The harms experienced by members of those groups are related to stereotypes that exist about them. In what follows, I discuss one way in which this harm might be more serious than is commonly thought on account of the pervasive ways in which ST can become embodied.

Here and throughout the paper, I capitalize the first letters of Black and White. I use these words to denote racial categories, which indicate complex group identifications and not just mere skin color.

Several points can be made in response to this question. First, it is important to note that generally, stereotypes are negative in the sense that they are reified accounts of or generalizations about groups of people (i.e., Blacks are dangerous, lazy, athletic, musical; Jews are greedy, rich; women are emotional, caring, nurturing). Insofar as stereotypes are reified or generalized, they do not capture the entirety of the group (or the individual members of that group) and this can and often does have negative consequences for members of that group. Stereotypes have been defined as “false or misleading generalizations about groups held in a manner that renders them largely, though not entirely, immune to counterevidence. In doing so, stereotypes powerfully shape the stereotyper's perception of stereotyped groups, seeing the stereotypic characteristics when they are not present, failing to see the contrary of those characteristics when they are, and generally homogenizing the group” (Blum 2004). Blum continues that the cognitive distortions that are central to stereotypes lead to moral distortions, and that is how stereotypes are negative (2004).

Even though some stereotypes may at first glance appear to be positive, such as the stereotype that “Asian students are high achieving,” or “women are caring,” they can still have negative consequences for Asian students or women since stereotypes never occur in a vacuum; rather, they are most often accompanied by corresponding expectations. For example, in line with the stereotype that “Asian students are high achieving” comes the expectation that they ought to be high achieving; thus, Asian students are often held (subconsciously) to higher standards than White students or students of color, and when they are not over-achieving, they suffer stronger consequences in terms of the unmet expectations of teachers and educators. In line with the stereotype that “women are caring,” we can all think of many women who are not caring. Does this mean that they are not real women, or that they are somehow deficient? Surely not. Rather, it means that according to the socially constructed ideas and ideals of women, they are not performing their gender well. Insofar as this is the case, uncaring women are judged as being bad women. Moreover, because of the ways in which social norms are internalized, such women might also come to see themselves as bad women. These judgments and the corresponding internalization can have negative moral and social consequences for uncaring women. So, we can see how a seemingly positive stereotype is not really or not always positive. I say not always because there is an interesting study that primed Asian students to be salient of their ethnicity/identity and the results were that this stereotype increased their performance on a math test (see Shih et al. 1999). So the more complete answer to the initial question is mixed in that so-called positive stereotypes can have both negative and positive consequences even if stereotypes are by definition negative. I would like to thank Reviewer 1 for pushing me to answer this question.

In response to the question of how or whether stereotypes can ever affect members of the typically dominant group (i.e., White men), there is an interesting study that looked at athletic performance between Black and White men. When the athletic task was framed in terms of sport intelligence, the Black athletes underperformed; however, when the same task was framed in terms of natural athletic ability, the White athletes performed worse than the Black athletes (Stone et al. 1999; Stone 2002).

Though this paper focuses on the fallout of racial stereotypes, ST is not confined to the domain of race. Rather, studies have shown that ST manifests in all sorts of contexts, for example: Latinos (Gonzales et al. 2002) and members of low SES groups within the context of standardized testing (Croizet and Millet 2012), women in math and science (Logel et al. 2012), the elderly in memory (Chasteen et al. 2012), whites in athletics (Stone et al. 2012).

This phrase “in the air” refers to the fact that situational cues—details easily overlooked—can meaningfully influence performance depending on the way one’s group is viewed by the larger culture (Aronson and Dee 2012: 264).

For some accounts of this traditional or standard account of ST, see the following articles: Stone (2002: 1667), Bosson et al. (2002: 247), Cadinu et al. (2005: 572), Rosenthal and Crisp (2006: 502), Mendes and Jamieson (2011: 51f.), Inzlicht et al. (2012: 106), Croizet and Millett (2011: 187), Chasteen et al. (2012: 205), Stone et al. (2011: 217), Aronson and Dee (2012: 264), Shapiro and Aronson (2013).

For an excellent discussion of the many problems with Steele’s account, see Blum (2016).

As we will see in the “Embodied Harms of Stereotype Threat” section, there are certain claims that Steele makes in Whistling Vivaldi (2010), which could be seen as broadening his account of the consequences of ST from his earlier work. Nevertheless, Blum’s point still holds: namely, that within the first decade and a half of research on ST, results seemed focus almost entirely on the immediate harms that victims suffer within stereotype-relevant contexts.

For other sources (both by philosophers and psychologists) that discuss an expanded account of ST, see Derks et al. (2008), McKinnon (2014), Blum (2016), Goguen (2016a, b) and Freeman (2016).

For a study examining racial discrimination and distress also see Sellers et al. (2003).

It should be noted that there is a silver lining to these findings, namely, that stereotype threat spillover is not inevitable (Inzlicht et al. 2012: 109); even when it occurs, there are many strategies that can be employed by victims to offset these harmful consequences (Inzlicht et al. 2012: 117f.). My worry, however, with strategies that put the burden on victims to do something about their situation is that it shifts the focus to those who are vulnerable and who occupy a subordinate position within the power dynamic. My position is that the default should be to those who occupy positions of social power to do the heavy lifting in order to diminish the possibility of members of marginalized groups experiencing ST.

Some of this discussion is a modified version of a similar point I made in Freeman (2015).

See Iris Young’s development of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective to include an account of the gendered differences of embodiment (2005). Here I am drawing upon Young’s argument but instead of focusing on gendered embodiment, I’m focusing on racialized embodiment. This qualification could be taken to mean that I’m assuming one can simply look at gender differences apart from race differences. But that is not the case. Using an intersectional methodology, we know that there is no such thing as race apart from gender, sexuality, class, age, ability, etc., and that there is no such thing as gender apart from the other various intersecting dimensions of one’s identity. I am not aware of any studies on ST that account for the intersections of identity and indeed, this is a serious shortcoming of the literature and a call for further studies that are done using an intersectional methodology (see Bright et al. 2016 for an interesting discussion of this matter). As it stands, though I am focusing on ST on account of race, I recognize that the precise contours of how the harms manifest differently for men, women, and people of all genders are real. The two harms that I’m considering now are experienced by people of all genders, though indeed, one’s age, sexuality, ability, etc. might tweak the experiences in important ways.

I include this caveat because as I said in the “Embodiment” section, there are ways in which we might experience ourselves as Körper that are not necessarily harmful, such as when one’s body is examined by a health care provider. In a physical examination, my body is made into an object both for me and for the health care provider, but, when done properly, it is under conditions of consent and therefore, does not necessarily result in harm. Moreover, in addition to the fact that one willingly enters this kind of situation, the heightened awareness of one’s body as Körper is relatively temporary. Another positive example of a heightened awareness of one’s body as Körper is when athletes (i.e., boxers, dancers) are training or practicing, which might involve using their bodies as a tool of sorts. An important distinguishing factor that separates harmful from non-harmful instances of experiencing one’s body as Körper is agency. In the first and second examples, it is important to note that the agent has willingly made their body into a kind of object (medical, athletic). That is, it is up to the agent to see a health care provider or to push their body beyond what it is currently capable of doing. However, what I’m concerned with is when subjects experience a heightened awareness of their body as Körper that is not voluntary, but forced. In such cases where one’s agency is not in play, harmful consequences can result. In the examples provided in the main text of experiences of embodied existences of people of color under conditions of racial oppression, we see how experiencing one’s body as Körper is involuntary in at least two senses: first, it is not their choice to have their bodies viewed and treated as objects; second, it is not within their power to change such a harmful state of affairs. In what follows, I discuss the various harms that result. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to clarify this point and for suggesting the second example I have just provided.

For one of the best accounts of the experience of inhabiting two different worlds—those of the oppressor and the oppressed—see María Lugones’ famous essay, “Playfulness, ‘World’-Travelling, and Loving Perception” (1987).

According to Fuchs, corporealization means that the body does not provide access to the world; rather, it stands in the way as an obstacle, separated from its surroundings’ (2005: 99). This concept, founded on the Leib/Körper distinction, employs the same terminology as classical phenomenologists but also diverges in important respects from the concepts employed by them. For an excellent account of the complicated roots of this concept, see Fernandez (2016).

Elsewhere, Fuchs characterizes the corporeal body as “the obstinate or heavy body that eludes my disposal; the body as shown or exposed to others; the body that I am bound to, or that I reflect upon” (2002: 224f.). Such an account is also helpful to keep in mind here for the case that I am building with regards to the negative, embodied consequences of existing in the world as a person of color under conditions of racial oppression.

A body, I should add, that is also physically and cognitively able, cis-gender, heterosexual, though these further details tend not to be mentioned in most phenomenological texts (Ahmed is an exception here).

Iris Young uses this phrase in the service of her argument that feminine bodily comportment within a patriarchal society ensures that female bodies comport themselves as an “I cannot” as opposed to an “I can” (2005). I am expanding the scope of her phrase in the service of making a similar argument with regards to racialized bodies in a white supremacist society.

I would like to thank Thiemo Breyer for inviting me to present a version of this paper at Harvard University in March 2015, and for the audience there and in other venues where I have presented versions of this work for helping me to develop and clarify many parts of the argument. I would like to thank Reviewer 2 for their meticulous reading of several versions of this paper and for pushing for clarity and precision throughout. I would also like to thank Andreas Elpidorou for his always careful eyes and for his endless patience in reading multiple drafts of this paper.