The Science of Stereotyping and Implicit Bias
Description
This interactive presentation will explore cognitive and behavioral science research on the nature of implicit bias. While the modern era is one in which most professionals believe themselves to be fair-minded individuals-perhaps even genuinely prioritizing egalitarian values-social categories including age, gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation continue to have profound effects on how we see and interact with the world around us in legal domains, in the classroom, and more generally throughout the course of daily life. What research tells us is that contemporary bias is often unconscious, but this doesn't make its implications for organizational climate or the individuals within that environment any less real. The science also demonstrates, however, that we are not hopelessly at the mercy of the power of expectation and bias, and we will identify the circumstances under which bias is most likely to emerge and evaluate potential strategies for trying to curtail such tendencies.
Speaker Bio
Keith Maddox is an associate professor in the psychology department at Tufts University. He received his A.B. in psychology from the University of Michigan, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. As the Director of the Tufts University Social Cognition Lab, his research and teaching are focused on exploring social cognitive aspects of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. The long-range goal of this work is to further the understanding of the representation of stereotypic knowledge and its implications for the behavior and treatment of members of stereotyped groups. He has recently served as the Special Advisor to the Provost for Diversity and Inclusion at Tufts, and has founded an initiative at Tufts that seeks to bring social science evidence to bear on the development and evaluation of programs designed to address the challenges and opportunities associated with diversity, climate, and inclusion in organizations.
Sam Sommers earned his B.A. from Williams College and his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Michigan. Since 2003 he has been a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. His social psychology research focuses on issues related to intergroup relations, diversity, and how a group’s composition affects its dynamics and performance, as well as the intersection of psychology and law. He has won multiple awards at Tufts, including the Lerman-Neubauer Prize for Outstanding Teaching and Advising and the Gerald R. Gill Professor of the Year Award.