Jennifer Eberhardt has always enjoyed living in Kansas. When she was twelve, her family relocated to Beachwood, Ohio, where she graduated from Beachwood High School. To protect ourselves from bias we can think of the conditions that make it come alive and come up with ways to address it when we get into situations where our biases can be triggered, Eberhardt said. Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt was born in 1965 in Cleveland, Ohio. 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Making people aware of their own actions, giving them time to pause and reflect on what they are doing, can help them to see patterns in their own behavior, Eberhardt said. Eberhardt credits her interest in race and inequality on her family's move from the predominantly African-American working-class neighbourhood of Lee-Harvard to the white suburb of Beachwood. It stands to reason that the cameras improve officers behavior, since higher-ups can easily review their actions. Unfortunately, oftentimes, stereotypes about Black people have dangerous and deadly consequences. Eberhardts interest in how stereotypes impact peoples treatment of others occurred accidentally as she was studying cognitive psychology during graduate school at Harvard.7 She was presenting on the fundamental attribution error, a cognitive bias through which we overemphasize the impact of personalities in situations. It was really destabilizing., Eventually, she said, my brain was able to retrain itself to distinguish between white faces. In 2008, she published a study that sought to examine how the variations in beliefs regarding the root of racial differences can impact social interactions. Eberhardt, a social psychologist, has linked deeply imbedded stereotypes of blacks with harsher sentencing and a greater likelihood of being identified as criminals by police officers. Only the identities of the disadvantaged differ: In the US, those with stereotypically sounding African-American names are more frequently rejected; in Australia, its Middle Easterners; in Canada, those of Chinese descent. The two neighbourhoods differed in terms of resources and opportunities despite their close proximity. Through interdisciplinary collaborations and a wide-ranging array of methods, Eberhardt has revealed the startling extent to which racial imagery and judgments suffuse our culture and society, and in particular . About a year ago, the world was shaken by disturbing footage of a police officer kneeling on George Floyds neck, leading to his death. There was 1.5 times more activation in the right hemisphere of the brain, specifically the fusiform face areas (FFAs), when looking at same-race faces. She received her doctorate in psychology from Harvard University in 1993; since, she has conducted research on implicit bias in the workplace, schools, and in policing. Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt is a professor of psychology at Stanford and a recipient of a 2014 MacArthur "genius" grant. Speaking at TED conference earlier this month, Jennifer Eberhardt, a social psychologist who helped Nextdoor address its racial profiling problem explained how designing for speed can sometimes. Jennifer Eberhardt is professor of psychology and co-director of SPARQ, a Stanford Center that brings together researchers and practitioners to address significant social problems. [8][9], Eberhardt credits her interest in race and inequality on her family's move from the predominantly African-American working-class neighbourhood of Lee-Harvard to the white suburb of Beachwood. Once your brain creates categories to sort impressions, it's hard to change. It requires us to constantly attend to who we are, how we got this way, and all the selves that we have the capacity to be.14. Only a year ago, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt published a book that encompasses the ideas on racial bias she has devoted her career to developing. Findings in the research suggest pervasive negative stereotypes may give rise to mistrustful relationships between racially stigmatized students and teachers. Eberhardt credits her interest in race and inequality on her family's move from the predominantly African-American working class neighbourhood of Lee-Harvard to the white suburb of Beachwood. There, she grew up with four older siblings in a mostly Black and lower income neighborhood. Eberhardt's research not only shows that police officers are more likely to identify African American faces than white faces as criminal, she further shows that the race-crime association leads people to attend more closely to crime related imagery. For example, in instances where Black students are often given the label of troublemakers, students may feel stigmatized and have distrust for teachers, thus they are more likely to misbehave in the future. Jennifer Eberhardt began her life's work at age 12, when a family move to a new neighborhood taught the future social psychologist an unsettling lesson about bias her own. Jennifer enjoys spending time with her family, her and her husband Bill are blessed with three children, Brooke, Dalton, and, Ethan. [14] African-American and European-American subjects looked at images of unfamiliar African-American and European-American faces while getting fMRI scans. From July 1993 to July 1994, Eberhardt was a postdoctoral research associate in the Social and Personality Psychology Division at the University of Massachusetts. 13 Having her own family increased Eberhardt's motivation to fight racial bias, as she saw first-hand how stereotypes are already concretized in the minds of young individuals. Jennifer Eberhardt received a B.A. We can have power over this. For example, in instances where Black students are often given the label of troublemakers, students may feel stigmatized and have distrust for teachers, thus they are more likely to misbehave in the future. Jennifer Eberhardt has always enjoyed living in Kansas. Eberhardt was a guest on Trevor Noahs popular program, The Daily Show. [20], In a related 2008 study, Eberhardt and her colleagues conducted an analysis on printed newspaper articles regarding Caucasian and African-American convicts in line for the death penalty. They found White Americans were more likely to support severe sentences when they read case studies depicting a Black juvenile offender than when the offenders race was changed to White. I didnt expect that so early in his life.. Eberhardt's research shows that humans have a built-in bias for the same race. Racial categories influence your perceptions. Jennifer Eberhardt is a Stanford professor and MacArthur Genius award recipient who has worked with several police departments to improve their interactions with communities of color. We've received your submission. Extending the sentencing research to juveniles, Eberhardt found that bringing to mind a black juvenile offender leads people to view juveniles in general as more similar to adults and therefore deserving of more severe punishment. Despite her passion for psychology, she was still unsure whether she should pursue psychology in a graduate program, inspired by other successful African-Americans she valorized who tended to be doctors, lawyers or engineers.12, Although she doubted her career choice, Eberhardt pursued a PhD in Psychology at Harvard. Eberhardt discusses findings from her research that help her not only answer these questions, but also provide tools through which we can overcome biased treatment of others.15 If youd like a sneak peek into what the book entails, you can listen to Eberhardt talk about the book in the lecture she gave at the First-Year Experience conference in 2020. SARAH YENESEL/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER. This can be an area for future research. She was raised in Lee-Harvard, a predominantly African-American middle-class neighborhood. She has also contributed to research on unconscious bias, including demonstrating how racial imagery and judgment affect culture and society within the domain of social justice. As she claimed in an interview bias is not a trait but a state. When we individuate, we are not seeing a person just in terms of social category, Eberhardt said. Although they found no explicit bias, they found that when speaking to white drivers, officers were reassuring, used positive words, and expressed concern for safety. Name: School: . [24] This was because white offenders' behaviour was more likely to be attributed to youthful indiscretion while Black offenders were more likely to be perceived as having the maturity and criminal intentions of adults. [1] The results from her work have contributed to training law enforcement officers and state agencies to better their judgments through implicit bias training. [12] Those who view racial differences as biologically influenced are, according to this study, less likely to express interest in interracial relationships. Read. [19] This also introduces future directions for research such as the cognitive accessibility of primed information. [18] The researchers made fifty recommendations for critical changes within the Oakland Police Department, many of which have been implemented as of the reports 2017 release. Stanford professor wins MacArthur grant for her study of biases September 16, 2014 - Read full story at The San Francisco Chronicle Jennifer Eberhardt is a pioneering social psychologist one of the world's leading experts on unconscious bias. In honor of the protests appearing around the nation, we've made our e-course on racial bias free to the public. Her book is "Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do." Out-group bias can surface instinctively.. 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