Les effets directs et indirects des stéréotypes sociaux sur une décision d'orientation scolaire

Middle-school teachers had to make decisions about the academic tracking of ninth-grade students whose social class (upper-middle vs. underprivileged) was experimentally induced. Stereotypical information about the student's family background was given either directly or indirectly. The results showed that a student from a well-off home was more often oriented towards a college-prep curriculum than a student from an underprivileged home, and symmetrically, an underprivileged student was more often oriented towards vocational school than a well-off student. However, these decisional differences were only observed when the stereotypical information about the student's social class was given indirectly, i.e. in such a way that the subject was unaware of its impact.