Seeing Is Believing: How Social Media Is Challenging Physician Stereotypes.

W e invite you to close your eyes and picture a surgeon. Who came to mind? Did an image of a black man, an Asian woman, or a surgeon in a wheelchair emerge? Although these representations are just as qualified, white, male, nondisabled surgeons tend to dominate the societal consciousness and, consequently, the minds of medical students and trainees as they make life-changing decisions about their careers. Since the launch of the #ILookLikeASurgeon movement in August 2015, social media has galvanized a virtual global community to upend the surgeon stereotype. More recent hashtags, including #BlackMenInMedicine and #DocsWithDisabilities, have sought to expand the image of physicians, illustrating that their appearance should be as varied as humanity itself, and inviting students and trainees of all backgrounds to pursue their career goals with greater confidence. This perspective reviews models for stereotype change, summarizes recent social media initiatives, and offers suggestions for how individual physicians, graduate medical education training programs, and specialty societies can become involved in similar efforts to enhance diversity. Stereotypes are widely held, fixed, and simplified images or ideas of a particular person or thing. Psychologists traditionally assumed that stereotypes were rigid and unresponsive to evidence because they were a natural consequence of our cognitive, affective, and social functioning. In the 1980s, researchers outlined possible mechanisms of stereotype change that might occur following exposure to stereotypedisconfirming information. In the bookkeeping model, stereotype change is an incremental process in which each instance of stereotype-relevant information is used to modify the existing stereotype. Any single piece of disconfirming evidence can elicit a minor change. Substantial change occurs with the accumulation of many disconfirming instances that deviate from the stereotype. Recent efforts by physicians on social media are consistent with the bookkeeping model. Mara Antonoff, MD, and Nikki Stamp, FRACS, believe that promoting role models who contrast with our existing cultural ideal of a surgeon will help shape future public perceptions on who belongs in the operating room. Quinn Capers IV, MD, champion of the #BlackMenInMedicine campaign, recognized the ability to ‘‘flood social media with images of black men as physicians to try to turn the tide of this unconscious bias that black men are the face of danger. ’’ Lisa Meeks, PhD, #DocsWithDisabilities founder, similarly wanted to let people know there are not simply 1 or 2 unique physicians with disabilities but, rather, a multitude. Another more recent change model, one likely to resonate with physicians, is the stereotype inoculation model, introduced by Nilanjana Dasgupta, PhD. While individuals usually feel like they make a free choice to pursue one career path over another, she has found that this decision ‘‘is often constrained by subtle cues in achievement environments that signal who naturally belongs there and . who else is a dubious fit. ’’ In contrast, she proposes that exposure to in-group experts and peers who are successful in a high-achievement context act as ‘‘social vaccines’’ that inoculate individuals against selfdoubt, especially in the early years of academic and professional development. This concept has also been propagated through physicians’ recent social media efforts. Stanford Health Care general surgery resident, Auriel August, MD, started the Twitter account, @blackgrlsurgeon, because she couldn’t find a popular black female surgeon to emulate. Now, she wants to be a visible face in academic surgery, so other young black girls have someone to look up to and say, ‘‘I can be like this. ’’ Leaders in cardiothoracic surgery believe that seeing images of surgeons of all genders, races, and backgrounds, with whom diverse youth can identify, will subsequently inspire future generations of trainees. Likewise, an aim for #BlackMenInMedicine is to provide visibility to how role models practice medicine, and perhaps more important, how they spend their time outside of the clinic or hospital. Therefore, one way individual physicians, including residents, fellows, and graduate medical education faculty, can catalyze stereotype change is by sharing DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.4300/JGME-D-19-00266.1