COVID: A Case Study: Re-inventing a Textile Conservation Career

Claudia Iannuccilli, a BS and MS graduate of the TMD Department, is a textile and costume conservator. She was employed as a conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for almost three decades. When the pandemic arrived, the Museum closed and staff were furloughed. After the Museum offered a generous retirement package, Claudia accepted it and started her own business, Studio of Textile Arts. She offers textile conservation services as well as exhibition preparation

Failure Feedback and The Transmission of Gendered Beliefs about Ability

The Brilliance Stereotype associates raw, innate high intellectual ability to men, but not women (Leslie et al., 2015). Such gender stereotyped beliefs about intellectual abilities emerge early (by the age of 6, e.g., Bian et al., 2017), extend into adulthood (e.g., Storage et al., 2020) and can have pernicious effects on behaviour (e.g., Bian et al., 2018; Master et al., 2016). Yet, the sources of development of the brilliance stereotype are seldom investigated. The present research explores the feedback children receive from their parents in response to failure as a potential source of gendered information about intellectual ability. Across two empirical studies, feedback provided by parents to their 5- and 6-year-old children (NStudy1 = 136; NStudy2 = 114) was recorded as they made their way through a challenging puzzle activity (Study One and Two) described as being for “really really smart kids” (Study Two). Parental feedback was recorded and categorized using a coding scheme I developed based on previous research (e.g., Haimovitz & Dweck, 2016). Feedback utterances were coded as either person-oriented (fixed messages, e.g., “this is too hard for you”), process- oriented (growth messages, e.g., “you need practice”), or other messages (e.g., instructions, statements, questions, product messages). Moreover, parents' mindsets and gender stereotyping attitudes were examined to assess their influence on the feedback provided and their relation to children’s mindsets. Overall, results from both studies suggest that, in the face of setbacks, parents provide more growth-related messages to boys compared to girls. Specifically, boys received more strategy- and help-focused messages (Study One), as well as more pedagogical questions, product feedback, and instructions (Study Two). In contrast, girls received less growth-related encouragement in response to failure, which may imply that their efforts are perceived as futile, reinforcing the brilliance stereotype that boys are inherently smarter. Additionally, parents’ mindsets were related to their stereotypical beliefs, yet were not predictive of feedback provided nor did they correlate with children’s implicit beliefs about ability. The findings provide valuable insights about how messages about intellectual ability are communicated within parent-child dynamics, highlighting the potential role of failure feedback in the development of children’s gender stereotypes

Brilliance Beliefs, Not Mindsets, Explain Inverse Gender Gaps in Psychology and Philosophy

Understanding academic gender gaps is difficult because gender-imbalanced fields differ across many features, limiting researchers’ ability to systematically study candidate causes. In the present preregistered research, we isolate two potential explanations—brilliance beliefs and fixed versus growth intelligence mindsets—by comparing two fields that have inverse gender gaps and historic and topical overlap: philosophy and psychology. Many more men than women study philosophy and vice versa in psychology, with disparities emerging during undergraduate studies. No prior work has examined the contributions of both self-perceptions of brilliance and fixed versus growth mindsets on choice of major among undergraduate students. We assessed field-specific brilliance beliefs, brilliance beliefs about self, and mindsets, cross-sectionally in 467 undergraduates enrolled in philosophy and psychology classes at universities in the United States and Canada via both in-person and online questionnaires. We found support for the brilliance beliefs about the self, but not mindset, explanation. Brilliance beliefs about oneself predicted women’s but not men’s choice of major. Women who believed they were less brilliant were more likely to study psychology (perceived to require low brilliance) over philosophy (perceived to require high brilliance). Findings further indicated that fixed versus growth mindsets did not differ by gender and were not associated with major. Together, these results suggest that internalized essentialist beliefs about the gendered nature of brilliance are uniquely important to understanding why men and women pursue training in different academic fields

What Determines Feelings of Belonging and Majoring in an Academic Field? Isolating Factors by Comparing Psychology and Philosophy

Feelings of belonging are integral in people’s choice of what career to pursue. Women and men are disproportionately represented across careers, starting with academic training. The present research focuses on two fields that are similar in their history and subject matter but feature inverse gender gaps—psychology (more women than men) and philosophy (more men than women)—to investigate how theorized explanations for academic gender gaps contribute to feelings of belonging. Specifically, we simultaneously model the relative contribution of theoretically relevant individual differences (empathizing, systematizing, and intellectual combativeness) as well as life goals (prioritization of family, money, and status) to feelings of belonging and majoring in psychology or philosophy. We find that men report higher intellectual combativeness than women, and intellectual combativeness predicts feelings of belonging and majoring in philosophy over psychology. Although systematizing and empathizing are predictive of belonging and, in turn, majoring in psychology and philosophy, respectively, when other factors are taken into account, women and men do not differ in empathizing and systematizing. Women, more than men, report prioritizing having a family, wealth, and status in choosing a career, and these directly or indirectly feed into feelings of belonging and majoring in psychology, in contrast to prior theory. Together, these findings suggest that students’ perceptions of their own combativeness and the extent to which they desire money and status play essential roles in women’s feeling they belong in psychology and men’s feeling they belong in philosophy

E-learning

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