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. In cleverly designed experiments, she has shown how social conditions can interact with the workings of our brain to determine our responses to other people, especially in the context of race. Eberhardt presents this research with such elegance and clarity that it is easy to forget just how unwieldy, technical, and utterly terrifying this body of literature is. Research Report Looking Deathworthy Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes Jennifer L. Eberhardt,1 Paul G. Davies,2 Valerie J. Purdie-Vaughns,3 and Sheri Lynn Johnson4 1Department of Psychology, Stanford University; 2Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles; 3Department of Psychology, Yale University; … Using statistical analysis to analyze how a defendant’s skin color and hair texture relate to the sentencing decisions of jurors, Eberhardt has shown that black defendants are more likely to receive the death penalty if their facial characteristics are stereotypically black and their victims are white. In response to these findings, Eberhardt has recently begun to work with law enforcement agencies to design interventions to improve policing and to help them build and maintain trust with the communities they serve. J ennifer Eberhardt is a MacArthur “genius grant” winner and psychology professor at Stanford University who studies implicit bias. Law enforcement officers across the … We've updated our privacy policies in response to General Data Protection Regulation. She has a Ph.D. from Harvard, and is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including a … APS President Elect Jennifer Eberhardt discussed her research on racial bias, stereotypes, and their impacts during the 2019 Henry and Bryna David Lecture at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. It didn’t seem to be bigotry—the students completed a survey indicating that they did not consciously harbor bias. Jennifer Eberhardt: Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do. (1987) from the University of Cincinnati and an A.M. (1990) and Ph.D. (1993) from Harvard University. Jennifer Eberhardt drew from her 20-plus years of research and teaching as a Stanford University professor for her book Biased. In the 19th century, prominent scientists such as Louis Agassiz and Paul Broca embraced “racial science,” which saw black people as an evolutionary step between apes and white people. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was named one of Foreign Policy ’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers. In cases when the victim was white, the criminals who appeared the most “black” were more than twice as likely as others to have received a death sentence. She introduced the class to the quizmaster test, in which one student poses as a quiz show host, like Alex Trebek on Jeopardy!, and another poses as a contestant. Jennifer Eberhardt, Ph.D., is Morris M. Doyle Centennial Professor of Public Policy, Professor of Psychology, and Faculty Co-Director of SPARQ. Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt is a professor of psychology at Stanford. Eberhardt has written that the phrase “they all look alike,” long the province of the bigot, “is actually a function of biology and exposure.” There’s no doubt plenty of overt bigotry exists, Eberhardt says; but she has found that most of us also harbor bias without knowing it. Even before knowing the roots of the behavior, Eberhardt’s team worked with the police department to change it by creating role-playing exercises to train police to conduct traffic stops more respectfully. As a result, the number of traffic stops dropped by nearly half from 2016 to 2018, and stops involving black drivers dropped by 43%. There’s no easy antidote for unconscious bias. Students also had more trouble remembering faces of races other than their own. Those subjects primed by crimerelated objects were quicker to notice a black face. ", "MacArthur Genius Recipient Jennifer Eberhardt Discusses Her New Book 'Biased'", "'You Don't Have to Be a Bigot to Have Bias,' Expert Explains", Research Finds Police Officers Less Respectful to African-American Drivers, "Police Are Less Respectful Toward Black Drivers, Report Finds", "Study: Black Teachers Won’t Save Black Students from Receiving Harsher Punishments Than Their White Peers", © 2021 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, MacArthur Award for Creative & Effective Institutions. Through interdisciplinary collaborations and a wide-ranging array of methods -- from laboratory studies to novel field experiments -- Psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt explores the roots of unconscious bias—and its tragic consequences for U.S. society. — Bruce Western, author of Punishment and Inequality in America and Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice Policy, Harvard University We love a movie with a lawyer who frees an innocent man or, one where a woman uncovers the corruption at a state penitentiary. “The whole culture has changed, and Dr. Eberhardt has been part of that.”. “As a scientist, I made it my role not to just be a member of a group who could be targeted by bias but to do something about it,” she says, “to investigate, understand it, and communicate with others.”. But phrases such as “I’m sorry to have to pull you over, but …” or “Drive safely, ma’am,” were reserved mostly for white people, whereas black motorists more often heard phrases such as “All right, my man. When police asked the teens why they targeted that neighborhood, they said the Asian women, when faced with a lineup, “couldn’t tell the brothers apart.”. And last year, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Eberhardt and colleagues reported that implicit bias affects leaders in the asset allocation industry—a $69.1 trillion business that helps universities, pension funds, governments, and charities decide where to invest. She and colleagues did a series of experiments using the dot-probe paradigm, a well-known method of implanting subliminal images. Jennifer Eberhardt’s research shows subconscious connections in people’s minds between black faces and crime, and how those links may pervert justice. “She has been working tirelessly on this issue and brought a whole new series of concepts to the department,” says Jim Chanin, an attorney whose class action suit prompted the court order and who has seen the department’s record improve. The results, published in PNAS in 2017, confirmed that police routinely used less respectful language when speaking to black people than to white people. Jennifer Eberhardt, Ph.D., is Morris M. Doyle Centennial Professor of Public Policy, Professor of Psychology, and Faculty Co-Director of SPARQ. Eberhardt, a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” award winner in 2014, has long been putting her insights to work. Nowadays, Oakland’s officers make stops only for documented reasons and ignore minor violations such as double parking. BONUS EPISODE with Jennifer Eberhardt (social psychologist who is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University) is the first in a monthly series on dissecting the Black experience in America. Criminals have learned to exploit the effect, she told Noah. “Drawing on her pioneering research, Jennifer Eberhardt’s new book offers a powerful exploration of how racial bias seeps into our classrooms, college campuses, police departments, and businesses.”—Bruce Western, author of Punishment and Inequality in America and Professor of Sociology, Columbia University Psychology, Harvard University, June 1993 A.M. Just keep your hands on the steering wheel real quick.”. (Benjamin Zephaniah) "Jennifer Eberhardt's work is essential to helping us understand racial inequalities in our country and around the world. Then the researchers used a combination of human raters and machine learning algorithms to analyze those utterances on scales of respect, formality, impartiality, and politeness. Discussing research her and her colleagues have conducted, as well as the research of other social psychologists, Eberhardt’s talk covered a range of outcomes of stereotypical associations, including the propensity to associate Black Americans with crime, and to support punitive policies when they disparately impact Black Americans. In the late 1990s, four officers calling themselves the Riders would brutalize and plant evidence on people. Why you should listen. The privacy of your data is important to us. “Those are the faces our brain is getting trained on.”. Her research found the association between Black Americans and crime is so powerful that just thinking about violent crime can lead people to … Eberhardt has been especially active in criminal justice, playing a key role in the court-ordered reform of the Oakland police department, which has a history of toxic community relations. Eberhardt’s finding, added to earlier studies showing similar associations, suggests a dangerous sequence of cognitive events, especially in situations when adrenaline runs high. About Jennifer Lynn Eberhardt A social psychologist at Stanford University, Jennifer Eberhardt investigates the consequences of the psychological association between race and crime. “The effect was just flat,” she says: The student observers did not see the quizmaster as any more intelligent than the contestant. 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