Ta-Nehisi Coates
#1 New York Times-bestselling author of Between the World and Me and The Water Dancer
Dr. Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Award-winning social psychologist and one of the world’s leading experts on unconscious bias
Photo credit: Nana Kofi Nti
A social psychologist at Stanford University and a recipient of the 2014 MacArthur 'Genius' Grant, Dr. Jennifer L. Eberhardt studies the consequences of the psychological association between race and crime. As one of the world’s leading experts on unconscious racial bias, her innovative experiments show how racial bias can lead to disparities in education, employment, housing, and the criminal justice system.
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About Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Social psychologist Dr. Jennifer L. Eberhardt is fascinated by the ways ingrained stereotypes can affect our visual perception, attention, memory, and behavior. Through interdisciplinary collaborations, unprecedented access to data, and a wide-ranging array of methods—from laboratory studies to novel field experiments—Dr. Eberhardt has revealed the startling and often dispiriting extent to which racial imagery and judgments take root in our brains, suffuse our culture and society, and shape actions and outcomes within the criminal justice system.
Through her innovative experiments, Dr. Eberhardt has shown not only that police officers are more likely to identify African American faces as criminal than white faces, but that the race-crime association leads people to attend more closely to crime-related imagery. For example, in one experiment, people who were exposed to Black faces were more quickly able to identify a blurred image of a gun than those who were exposed to white faces or no faces. She quantified the devastating effects of race-crime association outside the laboratory through experiments that showed a correlation between the appearance of African American defendants and the severity of their sentencing.
Dr. Eberhardt believes the problems associated with race are ones we have created, but they are also ones we can solve. She has recently begun to work with law enforcement agencies to help them improve policing by building and maintaining trust within the communities they serve. Inspired by Silicon Valley innovation, she aims to combine social psychological insights with technology to improve outcomes in the criminal justice system and beyond.
In her book, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice that Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, Dr. Eberhardt offers a reasoned look into the effects of implicit racial bias and practical suggestions for reform, while taking the reader behind the scenes to police departments implementing her strategies. Her eye-opening lectures draw not only from her state-of-the-art laboratory experiments, but from research she has conducted in courtrooms, prisons, police departments, boardrooms, and on the street.
Dr. Eberhardt is a professor of psychology at Stanford and a recipient of a 2014 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant. 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. She also is co-founder and co-director of SPARQ (Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions), a Stanford Center that brings together researchers and practitioners to address significant social problems.
Discover Dr. Eberhardt can help your organization unpack unconscious bias. Visit her Company Reads page to learn more.
Contact us to learn more about bringing Dr. Jennifer L. Eberhardt to your next event.
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Speaking Topics
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice that Shapes What We See, Think, and Do
In this lecture, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt draws from state-of-the-art technology, innovative experiments, and meticulous data to uncover how implicit bias shapes our visual perception, attention, memory, and behavior. She takes audiences behind the scenes of her research and the police departments who are implementing her strategies, and offers a shocking, but reasoned look at the effects of implicit racial bias while offering practical suggestions for reform.
Categories: Diversity + Inclusion Speakers, Black History Month Speakers, College + University Speakers, Company Reads Speakers, Current + Social Issues Speakers, First-Year Experience Speakers, Law and Ethics Speakers, MacArthur Fellow Speakers, Social Justice Speakers, Technology Speakers, TED Talks Speakers -
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Praise for Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Praise for Biased
Compelling and provocative, this is a game-changing book about how unconscious racial bias impacts our society and what each of us can do about it.
— Kirkus ReviewsCombining storytelling with a deep dive into the science of implicit bias, Eberhardt explains how bias and prejudice form—and she describes their pernicious effects on all of us. But she doesn’t stop at the problem: Her book shines a spotlight on what we can do to fight bias at a personal and institutional level.
— Greater Good Magazine[A] timely, exhaustive investigation of how bias infiltrates every sector of public and private life… Eberhardt offers tips for reforming business practices, police departments, and day-to-day interactions in pursuit of a fairer world for everyone.
— Esquire.comExplores the reasons for bias of all kinds — racial, religious, gender and more — and lays out research-based strategies that can short-circuit our initial prejudices.
— New York PostAn immensely informative and insightful analysis of race-based stereotypes. [Eberhardt] also offers practical suggestions for managing mechanisms of prejudice that ‘are rooted in the structures of our brains.
— Psychology TodayPowerful…useful for those new to the topic as well as those well-versed in the topic…Eberhardt abandons the jargon-speak of academic research and speaks to the reader’s head, heart, and soul…[and] will make you think about the news, your neighborhood, your work place and yourself with fresh eyes.
— ForbesA fascinating new book… [Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt is] a genius.
— Trevor Noah, The Daily Show with Trevor NoahJennifer Eberhardt’s work is essential to helping us understand racial inequalities in our country and around the world.
— Michelle Alexander, author of New York Times bestseller The New Jim CrowThe hope for progress is greatly increased by Jennifer Eberhardt’s groundbreaking new book on implicit bias. Biased presents the science of bias with rare insight and accessibility, but it is also a work with the power and craft to make us see why overcoming racial bias is so critical.
— Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just MercyThis book helps us scientifically view how racial bias works in our own minds and throughout society. We could not ask for a better guide to understand this reality than Jennifer Eberhardt. Her research reveals critical information that can help leaders better understand how biases can impact our judgment and how we are perceived by the communities we are sworn to serve.
— Kamala D. Harris, United States Senator from CaliforniaThere was not a field of social psychology and criminal justice, and then there was Jennifer Eberhardt, and then there was a field.
— Phillip Goff, Co-founder and President, Center for Policing Equity at John Jay College of Criminal JusticeShe is saying things that make people uncomfortable, but she has the evidence to back up the reality of what’s she’s describing… [her work is]…original, provocative, and rigorous. I think she has changed the way we all think about the American dilemma of race.
— Susan Fiske, Psychologist, Princeton UniversityThis is not someone who is just doing work in the ivory tower of a university. This is someone who is really out in the trenches working with police departments and the criminal justice system.
— Chris Magnus, Chief of Police, Tucson, ArizonaBiased is deeply relevant to education and other fields of work, within the U.S. and globally. Dr. Eberhardt’s work offers a touchstone for educators, leaders, lawmakers, and all those who want a society that serves everyone equally.
— Linda Darling-Hammond, author of The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity will Determine our FutureThis book makes a significant contribution to our thinking about the role of bias in both our institutions and our perceptions.
— Deb Bubb, Vice President, Human Resources, IBM Chief Leadership and Learning OfficerDrawing 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 Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice Policy, Harvard UniversityJennifer is one of the great thinkers and one of the great voices of our time…I believe her book will change the conversation on race in our society–and perhaps our society itself.
— Carol Dweck, author of New York Times bestseller Mindset: The New Psychology of Success -
Books by Jennifer L. Eberhardt
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Featured Title
Biased
“Poignant….important and illuminating.”—The New York Times Book Review
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