"What's distinctive about her work is how bold she is," says Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton University who wrote the authoritative textbook about social cognition. race relations, such as the role of bias in police shootings. "She is taking this world that black people have always known about and translating it into the principles and building blocks of universal human psychology," adds Phillip Atiba Goff, a former graduate student of Eberhardt's who runs the Center for Policing Equity at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.Įberhardt hasn't shied away from some of the most painful questions in U.S. Eberhardt's studies are "strong methodologically and also super real-world relevant," says Dolly Chugh of New York University's Stern School of Business, a psychologist who studies decision-making. 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. Over the decades, Eberhardt and her Stanford team have explored the roots and ramifications of unconscious bias, from the level of the neuron to that of society. It stems from our brain's tendency to categorize things-a useful function in a world of infinite stimuli, but one that can lead to discrimination, baseless assumptions, and worse, particularly in times of hurry or stress.
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. "That is one of the most horrible, fantastic stories ever!" said Noah, a black South African.īut it was true. 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." In Oakland, California, a gang of black teenagers caused a mini–crime wave of purse snatchings among middle-aged women in Chinatown. Criminals have learned to exploit the effect, she told Noah. Discussing unconscious racial bias, which she has studied for years, the Stanford University psychologist mentioned the "other-race effect," in which people have trouble recognizing faces of other racial groups. When Jennifer Eberhardt appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah in April 2019, she had a hard time keeping a straight face.
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