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Mahzarin Banaji, Cabot Professor of Social Ethics in the Department of Psychology, Senior Advisor to the Provost, and one of the country’s leading experimental social psychologists on the enduring evidence of “implicit bias,” is offering a general session for the Harvard community, including faculty, staff, students, postdoctoral fellows, trainees, and others, on Thursday, January 21, 2021, from 3-5pm.
The seminar will discuss how we can make wise decisions untainted by beliefs and assumptions we hold without even knowing that we do, and the science of “implicit bias” which demonstrates how barely conscious thoughts and feelings can affect our decisions about others, based on their age, gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic class, nationality, or other demographic characteristics that are completely irrelevant—and that our own values tell us ought to be irrelevant—to decision-making. This session is relevant for all of us in the Harvard community, given the universal implications of the many consequential decisions we make in our work and life.
90-minute presentation followed by 30 minutes of Q&A. Closed captioning will be provided. The seminar will not be recorded.
(Note: This webinar was rescheduled from 1/20 to 1/21 so as not to conflict with the US Presidential Inauguration)
Resources:
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“Turning a Light on Our Implicit Biases” https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/12/taking-a-hard-look-at-our-implicit-biases/
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To experience the Implicit Association Test, please visit https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html. The test does not measure your conscious attitudes and beliefs about social groups (i.e., elderly-young, Black-White, Female-Male, Gay-Straight, Democrat-Republican, etc.). Rather it provides a rough assessment of the affect and knowledge you have picked up, over the course of your lifetime, from the society in which you live.
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If you are interested in answers to basic questions like: Does the order of the test matter? I’m left-handed. Will that matter? You will be led to pages of FAQs after completing a test. Here’s an example.
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Outsmarting Human Minds: Visit OHM if you are interested in learning from brief modules on various topics concerning bias and how to counter it. You are also free to use these modules in your own teaching. Each module begins with a description of a social issue, it follows up with what the best science tells us, and ends with possible ways to outsmart the mind.
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Faculty search guide: If you would like to learn about our assessment of best practices in conducting faculty searches, this document will be of help. If you’d like us to add material on issues not currently contained in this document, please send suggestions to the Office of Faculty Development & Diversity at svp_singer@harvard.edu.
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For a general introduction to implicit social cognition: Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People. https://bookshop.org/books/blindspot-hidden-biases-of-good-people/9780345528438.
- If you want a deeper dive into papers published by Mahzarin Banaji on the topic of implicit bias, please visit: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~banaji/research/publications/Publications.html