‘Angry chauvinists,’ girl stereotypes and a high-stakes poker game
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Version 0 of 1. When Annie Duke made it to the later rounds of the 2004 World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions, she often was the only woman at the table. Only 3 percent of entrants were female; poker was overwhelmingly a male game. (And still is, though less so.) So Duke brought all the baggage of being a minority stereotype to what you might call the ultimate mind game. In his “Hidden Brain” podcast for NPR, science correspondent Shankar Vedantam uses the tense story of that tournament’s final hand — Duke vs. multiple-title-holder Phil Hellmuth, with a $2 million prize at stake — to illustrate how being stereotyped works against you and how you can turn that situation to your advantage. In a 20-minute episode that flips between an interview with Duke to audio clips from the tournament, the show gives a lively sense of Duke (who, though the show doesn’t mention it, did Ivy League graduate work in psychology) facing the “See, she plays like a girl” attitude. Sometimes startled by what she called “angry chauvinists” who wanted her out of the room, she would retreat to her hotel room in tears, but she also used a combination of flirtation, meekness and self-deprecating “little old me” talk (as Vedantam puts it) to do some mental manipulation of her own. Vedantam broadens the topic, bringing in, for example, a Stanford University study of the relatively few black students on the elite campus: They felt like impostors, he says. This is the third podcast in the new “Hidden Brain” series, which Vedantam (a former Post reporter) describes as “a conversation about life’s unseen patterns.” Some episodes, like this one, first appeared in shorter form on NPR. Topics have included giving and getting feedback (i.e., criticism, though he doesn’t use the term) from spouses and colleagues, the social science behind magic, and the interaction between mentors and successful students. A new episode comes out every week; you can listen or subscribe at www.npr.org/podcasts. And how did Duke do in that final $2 million hand? You’ll have to listen. |