It seeps into everything, a point Eberhardt sometimes uses personal anecdote to reinforce. "Because the worlds were so different, I just thought about race a lot and I thought about inequality a lot," she says. Neither was Africa, the other response that was twirling in her head. ... She encourages employers to adopt hiring procedures, akin to the practice of auditioning musicians behind a curtain, to reduce gender bias. Eberhardt was bemused. But she does see signs of progress, from new policies to new training to a greater attention and openness to the problem. Dr. Eberhardt begins with seemingly simple questions re- lated to various research methodologies, including neuroscience, social psychology, and well-established aptitude testing.16It is Socioeconomic Bias in the Judiciary, 61 CLEV. Stanford University 2. The first time Jennifer Eberhardt presented her research at a law enforcement conference, she braced for a cold shoulder. “We must also recognize that the old adage, ‘trust your gut,’ may not prevent us from recognizing implicit bias,” writes Karen Steinhauser in “Everything is a Little Bit Biased.” “We must focus on how we form opinions about people. Consequential reflection can also lead to the generation of different perspectives, which can be another means to reduce the effects of implicit bias. by a team of Stanford University social psychologists led by Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt. Each had to come up with 10 questions designed to stump two fellow classmates, who played the role of contestants. Jennifer L. Eberhardt 1, Paul G. Davies 2, Valerie J. Purdie-Vaughns 3, Sheri Lynn Johnson 4 1 Department of Psychology, Stanford University 2 Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles Eberhardt’s team has been analyzing stop data since 2014 as part of the police department’s ongoing efforts to modernize procedures and improve community-police relations by using data-driven analysis: “Last night’s vote by two councilmembers that ended OPD’s contract with Stanford Professor Jennifer Eberhardt hurts all Oaklanders, and particularly … We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. And some community members have questioned whether implicit bias isn't just convenient cover for racist behavior. Mailing Address: 875 Perimeter Drive MS 2535 Moscow, ID 83844-2535 More than a decade later, Eberhardt is no longer the anonymous academic she was then. Approximately 25 percent of the state prison population at the time was black. Cassino, Dan et al 2014). The results of the research were startling. Eberhardt's message is not an easy one to hear, particularly for the many Americans who think racial discrimination is largely a thing of the past, or that they themselves would never treat someone differently because of race, or that racism is somewhere else. But with images of weapons, the difference was stark—subjects who had unknowingly seen black faces needed far fewer frames to identify a gun or a knife than those who had been shown white faces. Social psychologist and professor of psychology at Stanford, Jennifer Eberhardt, Ph.D., will be coming to the Center for Performing Arts Concert Hall at 7 p.m. on March 19. Being more aware of how implicit bias can compromise your objectivity can activate System 2, which can have the effect of introducing conscious and deliberate thought into the decision-making process. I wasn't going to make a difference from litigation or from protesting," she says. Yet she was certain the vast majority of officers would sincerely recoil at the idea of policing with prejudice. Jennifer Eberhardt, 2019. The conclusion seemed perverse: Someone seeking to mitigate racial disparities in sentencing might be best served by not pointing them out. . Still, that very same message—the ubiquity of implicit bias—can lend an added grimness to Eberhardt's work. "He didn't know why he said it. And President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing issued a report in May that quotes her testimony in its call for implicit bias training at all levels of law enforcement. One such example emerged from orchestras. By getting people to stop and reflect on what they are about to do, you would be activating the conscious part of the brain, which is where more rational-based decision-making takes place. "You are still in control of your behavior.". In one experiment, subjects were subliminally shown black or white faces, then asked to identify a blurry image as it came into focus over 41 frames. “The human brain is a wonderful gift, but with success and tenure we are fooled into certainty and drawn away from humility,” writes Forbes contributor Michael Brainard. . Racial bias against African-Americans isn't confined to the past or the South or police or even whites. ), At Beachwood, by comparison, college seemed inevitable. Training can certainly make people more aware of how implicit bias infiltrates an organization but until concrete action is taken, a number of employees will perceive a lack of procedural justice and fairness. One part of the six-part study showed that in the same way that subjects identified images of guns more quickly when unconsciously primed with black faces, so could they pick out apes much sooner. "This is someone who is really out in the trenches working with police departments and the criminal justice system.". Lost to history for 100 years, Stanford’s first African-American student found a new champion, and an old debate was finally laid to rest. 114, No. When employees are cognizant of the situations where implicit biases are most likely to be a significant factor in decision-making, awareness can potentially mitigate the nefarious effects. Her husband, Stanford law professor Rick Banks, '87, MA '87—who went to the same elementary school but was in the gifted class, which got far more attention—says the doggedness that defines her work probably has roots in those days, when little was expected of her. Framing problems from the perspective of others can assist in generating questions that could uncover implicit biases as well as systemically unfair policies and procedures that limit opportunities for others. Levine also states, “If you make a decision feeling hungry, angry, lonely, or tired (or God-forbid some combination of more than one of the above) emotion wins 100 percent of the time and will likely push you in the wrong direction.”. PART 1: Understanding implicit bias and its detriment to organizations, crucial in overcoming implicit bias in the workplace, women made up approximately 10 percent of the total members in the country’s top orchestras, a controversial internal memo written by an employee at Google, evaluate candidates based on a list of requirements, 5 ways to improve remote performance evaluations, Meet the CLO Advisory Board: Tamar Elkeles, Chief Learning Officer’s most-watched webinars of 2020, Text-based learning: emerging from the pandemic as a must-have, Getting 2021 Right – Harvard Psychologist on Building Productivity & Wellbeing, Creating Your Micro-credentialing Strategy, Learning Driven Growth at Schneider Electric, Building the LG Electronics Leadership Bench: High Potential Development to Drive High Performance. Some of your best talent could leave if their concerns are not systematically addressed. Humility is an important component to mitigate implicit bias. 9. "They understand that it is a real issue with which they need to deal, but not because the profession is made up of ill-intentioned individuals with explicit biases (e.g., racists), but because the profession is comprised of humans," she said in an email. She exposes racial bias at all levels of society--in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and criminal justice system. Eberhardt has been responsible for major contributions on investigating the consequences of the psychological association between race and crime through methods such as field studies and laboratory studies. Surprising, professional, and even at times uplifting, in my mind Eberhardt produced a future classic in social psychology. Eberhardt and her colleagues are analyzing footage of thousands of encounters recorded with officers’ body cameras . The reach of implicit bias, arising from America’s tortured racial history, from culture and from still pervasive inequities, is powerful, enduring and underrecognized. From the beginning of her career at Stanford in 1998 (which she began as a non-tenure-track professor), the now-tenured Eberhardt has coupled scholarship with a drive to bring her research into the world, typically through novel collaborations with officials in the criminal justice system. Not everyone buys the idea of racial bias being an unconscious problem, Magnus says; some believe it should be viewed as a more deliberate form of discrimination. Acknowledgments: First off, thanks to Josh Cavalier for the reviews and advice, and to Linda Bump Harrison, Jennifer Eberhardt, and everyone else at New Riders for the opportunity to work on such a wonderful book. (2016) will provide background for this assignment. Thanks as well to Diana Johnson of Sorenson Media and Kymberlee Weil of FlashForward. She is also working with Oakland and Stockton police and California Attorney General Kamala Harris to develop statewide training on implicit bias that can be measured for efficacy over time. Biased: Uncovering the hidden prejudice that shapes what we see, think and do. Figueroa is eager for the results of one of Eberhardt's most ambitious projects. But Eberhardt has helped move the field's focus from the people with biased attitudes to the people targeted by those biases, and she has found ingeniously simple but powerful ways to make the problems with stereotyping apparent. "Bias can grow organically out of that," she says. Jennifer Eberhardt, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, suggests slowing down your thinking processes as a method to mitigate implicit bias: “There are lots of things we have at our disposal to manage the potential for bias, and one of … What Are Learning Organizations, and What Do They Really Do? Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What we See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt; Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji & Anthony G. Greenwald; Move from silent bystander to an active ally. “Implicit Political Attitudes” Oxford Handbook of Political Communication. When Eberhardt asked the students to discuss the unexpected result, silence fell over the normally chatty class. To combat this, orchestral leaders started using blind auditions during the 1970s and 1980s — implementing this structural change removed the implicit gender bias during the audition process, the results completely reversed the stereotypical thoughts that existed in the orchestral leaders. "I felt like through the research I could make a difference.". Michael Bret Hood is a corporate trainer and consultant, a University of Virginia adjunct professor and a retired FBI special agent. As much as you may not want to acknowledge it, you are not as rational as you believe yourself to be. He credits Eberhardt for pushing for the change. 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