Vicious Cycles

by Tom Vanderbilt

A study looking at scholastic chess tournaments found that when female players played male players, they seemed to underperform. As the researchers wrote, "Girls lose to boys at a rate that cannot be explained in terms of initial rating strength." The reason, they hypothesized, is the phenomenon of "stereotype threat:" female players were battling not only male opponents but the perception that they weren't as good. What's more, female players who didn't do as well as their rating would predict played in fewer tournaments the next year - an effect not seen in boys. Life was going to be full of these vicious cycles, I reasoned. Let us tackle them head-on, right now.

6S

Tom Vanderbilt's six sentences are excerpted from Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, which in part describes his experience learning chess alongside his four-year-old daughter.