Drawing Conclusions

For the past couple of decades, researchers have been using the Draw-A-Scientist test to gauge what kids think about scientists. The test is amazingly simple – children are asked to draw a picture of a scientist. And the results are amazingly consistent – across age and socioeconomic groups, kids typically draw pictures of middle-aged white men wearing lab coats.

Obviously there’s a stereotype at work here, or we’d see more pictures of buff female marine biologists in tank tops and cutoffs. Most kids simply don’t know any real scientists, so they fall back on images from television and the movies. Those images are usually, shall we say, less than flattering. They certainly don’t resemble most of the scientists I know, very few of whom have any plans for world domination.

Personal experience can change things, though. In some Draw-A-Scientist studies, kids are asked to draw a second picture after a scientist visits their classroom and talks about his or her research. Typically, the second picture looks a lot like the visiting scientist. So what would happen if you brought kids to meet a whole bunch of scientists?

Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers reports on what happened when a seventh-grade class was asked to draw pictures of scientists before and after a visit to Fermilab. The descriptions changed, in some cases dramatically. After the kids got to meet a few scientists, they stopped seeing them as caricatures of Dr. Clayton Forrester, and started thinking of them as

“normal people with a not-so-normal job.”

And maybe now a few of them are imagining themselves in the role.

Comments

[bryant]

I think part of it also relates to the idea of iconography: as a culture, we're trained to relate information in the simplest and most graphic way possible (with skills honed playing charades and pictionary).

There are certain iconographic trappings associated with different professions: labcoats and jacob's ladders for scientists; those reflecting mirror things (which I have never once seen) and stethoscopes for doctors; pillbox hats for nurses; t-squares and rolled up blueprints for architects. These are essentially an evolution from the iconographic trappings that distinguished different religious figures (Herakles' lionskin cloak, Athene's aegis; St. Sebastian's body filled with arrows; St. Bartholomew's flayed skin). In the absence of a common spoken language symbols were the primary means of communication.

We're (hopefully) becoming a more literate society; I would think that if you asked (rather than have them draw) kids about scientists, their answers would be a little more representational and less stereotypical/iconographic.

I also think that all of the efforts made to promote diversity in the media -while perhaps obviously transparent to us now- will do wonders for kids in the future. We may still have kids drawing scientists in labcoats (because, let's face it, labcoats are cool) but they won't be all white guys.

[Thom H.]

The link to the drawings that the kids made was interesting. Much as 'bryant' conjectured, their written descriptions were broader than their drawings. I have to admit that if I, a college educated adult (and former scientist), had been asked to draw a picture of a scientist I probably would have come up with exactly the same stereotypical drawing. Two reasons: One is the iconography that 'bryant' mentions. Number two is that that's the kind of scientist I was... lab coat, lab bench, graduated cylinders, centrifuge, petri dishes, bunsen burners... it's a stereotype because it's real. Also, it really doesn't pay very well which is why I'm in a different line of work now.

[Thom H.]

p.s.
"very few of whom have any plans for world domination."

That was my laugh for the day. :-)

[Cambias]

I've noticed that kids, in particular, draw iconically. If you ask an elementary-schooler to draw a house, you get a square with a triangle on top, even if the kid lives in a flat-roofed townhouse.