Intro
Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt is a psychologist who has dedicated her career to illuminating the implicit prejudice that guides people’s behavior and decision-making processes. Eberhardt is at the forefront of behavioral psychology, examining how bias is embedded in everyday actions and informative of people’s actions. Eberhardt is especially interested in the effects of unconscious racial bias: how people’s implicit ideology affects racialized people.
Eberhardt conducts innovative experiments that guide law enforcement agencies and state officers to eliminate bias. She moves across and within disciplines, working directly in the trenches and drawing data from courtrooms, boardrooms, and police departments to complement her state-of-the-art laboratory research.1 Eberhardt’s ability to translate complex behavioral scientist phenomena into actionable change makes her an important activist who believes proper knowledge and training can help society overcome unconscious bias. While bias and negative stereotypes are problems created by all people, not by just a few bad apples, Eberhardt has hope that the solutions rest with people as well.
Bias is not something we exhibit and act on all the time. It is conditional, and the battle begins by understanding the conditions under which it is most likely to come alive.
- Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt in her book Biased.2
