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Jennifer Lynn Eberhardt (born 1965) is an American
social psychologist Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the rela ...
who is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
. Eberhardt has been responsible for major contributions on investigating the consequences of the psychological association between race and crime through methods such as field studies and laboratory studies. She has also contributed to research on unconscious
bias Bias is a disproportionate weight ''in favor of'' or ''against'' an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group ...
, including demonstrating how racial imagery and judgment affect culture and society within the domain of social justice. The results from her work have contributed to training law enforcement officers and state agencies to better their judgments through
implicit bias training Implicit bias training (or unconscious bias training) programs purport to expose people to their implicit biases, provide tools to adjust automatic patterns of thinking, and ultimately eliminate discriminatory behaviors. Some researchers say that ...
. She has also provided directions for future research in this domain and brought attention to mistreatment in communities due to biases. Eberhardt has authored ''Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do'', was a recipient of the 2014 MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, been named one of ''
Foreign Policy A state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterally or through ...
's'' 100 Leading Global Thinkers, and has been elected to the
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...
and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
.


Early life

Eberhardt was born in
Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S ...
, the youngest of five children. She was raised in Lee–Harvard, a predominantly African-American middle-class neighborhood. When she was twelve, her family relocated to
Beachwood, Ohio Beachwood is a city in eastern Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, and a suburb of Cleveland. As of the 2020 census the city's population was 14,040. History The land that eventually became Beachwood was originally part of the Connecticut W ...
, where she graduated from Beachwood High School. Eberhardt credits her interest in race and inequality on her family's move from the predominantly African-American working-class neighbourhood of Lee-Harvard to the white suburb of Beachwood. The two neighbourhoods differed in terms of resources and opportunities despite their close proximity. She noticed that she and her non African-American classmates experienced life differently, such as her father and brothers being pulled over more frequently than other residents. This further increased her interest in racial inequality and changed her approach to understanding the world.


Education

After graduating from Beachwood High School, she received her BA from the
University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati) is a public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1819 as Cincinnati College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in Cincinnati and has an annual enrollment of over 44,0 ...
in 1987. She then attended
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
where she received her MA in 1990 and PhD in 1993. She is married to
Ralph Richard Banks Ralph Richard Banks (born December 11, 1964) is a professor at Stanford Law School, where he has taught since 1998. He also teaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. His scholarship focuses on race, inequality and the law. He publi ...
, a law professor at Stanford University. Eberhardt and Banks were elementary schoolmates who reconnected at Harvard. They currently reside in the
San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area G ...
with their three sons.


Career

From July 1993 to July 1994, Eberhardt was a postdoctoral research associate in the Social and Personality Psychology Division at the
University of Massachusetts The University of Massachusetts is the five-campus public university system and the only public research system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The university system includes five campuses (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and a medical ...
. Here, she conducted research on
stereotyping In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
and inter-group relations. She was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University, from September 1994 to June 1995, where she researched the impact of
stereotype threat Stereotype threat is a situational predicament in which people are or feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes about their social group. It is theorized to be a contributing factor to long-standing racial and gender gaps in acad ...
on academic performance. From July 1995 to June 1998, Eberhardt worked as an assistant professor at
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
in the Department of Psychology and the Department of African Studies and African-American Studies. In September 1998, she accepted a teaching position at Stanford University in the Department of Psychology as an assistant professor. In May 2005, she was appointed as an associate professor, and at some point she became a full professor. Eberhardt is also the co-director and faculty co-founder of Stanford's SPARQ (Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions) program. This center at Stanford brings together many industry leaders, researchers and well known faces in society to inspire cultural changes using insights from the behavioral sciences. Through SPARQ, Eberhardt demonstrates the consequences of racial associations in
criminal justice Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other ...
,
education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...
and business.


Research


Implicit bias

Eberhardt and her colleagues developed research that introduced alternative approaches to considering race and ethnicity. In 2008, she published a study that sought to examine how the variations in beliefs regarding the root of racial differences can impact social interactions. The study’s findings revealed that those who believed racial differences arise due to biological differences differed from those who looked at race as a
social construct Social constructionism is a theory in sociology, social ontology, and communication theory which proposes that certain ideas about physical reality arise from collaborative consensus, instead of pure observation of said reality. The theory ...
. Those who view racial differences as biologically influenced are, according to this study, less likely to express interest in interracial relationships. These people were also at a higher risk of promoting race-based stereotypes, were less likely to set aside inequalities and defended these inequalities as a product of innate racial differences. When people perceive racial differences as biologically determined, they create strict barriers between themselves and racial out-groups. This impacts the well-being of members of historically disadvantaged racial groups. Golby and Eberhardt's research focused on why humans are more likely to recognize people in their own race over those in another race. African-American and European-American subjects looked at images of unfamiliar African-American and European-American faces while getting
fMRI Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area ...
scans. There was 1.5 times more activation in the
right hemisphere The lateralization of brain function is the tendency for some neural functions or cognitive processes to be specialized to one side of the brain or the other. The median longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebr ...
of the brain, specifically the
fusiform face area The fusiform face area (FFA, meaning spindle-shaped face area) is a part of the human visual system (while also activated in people blind from birth) that is specialized for facial recognition. It is located in the inferior temporal cortex ( ...
s (FFAs), when looking at same-race faces. Another finding was that memory recognition was greater for recognizing same-race faces in European-Americans which showed higher activation in the left fusiform cortex and the right
hippocampal The hippocampus (via Latin from Greek , 'seahorse') is a major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. The hippocampus is part of the limbic system, an ...
and parahippocampal regions. This demonstrates that own- and other-race faces stimulate differential activation in the FFAs, however it does not explain why activation for same-race faces takes place in right side of the brain and memory encoding takes place in the left side of the brain. This can be an area for future research.


Criminal justice

Eberhardt’s research demonstrated how the automatic effect of implicit racial stereotypes impacts one’s
visual processing Visual processing is a term that is used to refer to the brain's ability to use and interpret visual information from the world around us. The process of converting light energy into a meaningful image is a complex process that is facilitated by ...
. A series of studies focusing on
priming Priming may refer to: * Priming (agriculture), a form of seed planting preparation, in which seeds are soaked before planting * Priming (immunology), a process occurring when a specific antigen is presented to naive lymphocytes causing them to d ...
were conducted, specifically priming individuals with images related to crime. The intention was to see whether individuals would focus on White or Black faces when cued for crime. The study showed that people and officers specifically focused more on Black faces. The next study focused solely on officers who were separated into two groups, those who were primed for crime and those who weren't. They were presented with a picture of a Black or White suspect and were asked to complete a memory task where they had to identify the suspect in a lineup with other suspects of the same race. Some lineups had suspects with highly stereotypical features of each respective race, whereas others had less stereotypical facial features. Crime-primed officers who viewed a Black suspect misremembered the suspect with someone who had more stereotypical Black features; but crime primed officers who saw a White suspect were less likely to identify a less stereotypical White suspect and more likely to associate it with a more stereotypical Black face. Eberhardt’s research shows how racial associations can impact the public's perception of Black people and crime and how this can influence how White people would misremember or neglect evidence that isn't accurate for a Black defendant. This also introduces future directions for research such as the cognitive accessibility of primed information. In a 2006 study, Eberhardt and her colleagues examined databases in Philadelphia which examined whether the likelihood of being sentenced to death is related to the defendant looking stereotypically Black (thick lips, dark skin, dark hair, broad noses) when the victim was either Black or White. Those who were stereotypically Black were sentenced to death 57.5 percent of the time compared to 24.4 percent of the lighter African-Americans, especially if the victims were White. This research provides evidence that physical traits alone can influence sentencing decisions to quite an extent. In a related 2008 study, Eberhardt and her colleagues conducted an analysis on printed newspaper articles regarding Caucasian and African-American convicts in line for the
death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...
. This study was rooted in the notion that African-American males are frequently wrongly accused, misjudged and wrongfully remembered as aggressors. During the analysis of the newspaper articles, the researchers’ main focus was on detecting “ape imagery” (this included characterizing a person as a beast, hairy, wild). They found this imagery was significantly more common for African-Americans than Caucasians. In the case of African-Americans, the ape imagery also predicted who would be sentenced to the death penalty. The research done by Eberhardt demonstrated not only the mistreatment of African-American detainees, but also the lack of
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
available to members of other lower-status groups who are often misjudged as aggressors. In 2012, Eberhardt and colleagues studied how racial stereotypes can affect a juror’s perception of the legal distinction between a juvenile and adult criminal offender. Participants read non-homicide case studies depicting either a Black or White juvenile offender. They found White Americans were more likely to support severe sentences when they read case studies depicting a Black juvenile offender than when the offender’s race was changed to White. This was because white offenders' behaviour was more likely to be attributed to youthful indiscretion while Black offenders were more likely to be perceived as having the maturity and criminal intentions of adults. In another study in 2014, Eberhardt and Hetey (a Stanford University colleague) examined how just the
mere exposure The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle. The effect ...
of racial disparities can impact an individual's support for harsh criminal justice policies. White participants were split into two groups, in group one they watched a video clip in which 25 percent of the images were of Black inmates and in group two, 45 percent of the images were of Black inmates. They were then informed of strict criminal laws abiding in the state of California, followed by a petition form to sign to amend the laws and make them less harsh. From group one, more than 50 percent of the participants signed the petition, whereas only 28 percent of group two agreed to sign it. In 2015, the
Oakland Police Department The Oakland Police Department (OPD) is a law enforcement agency responsible for policing the city of Oakland, California, United States. As of May 2021, the department employed 709 sworn officers and 371 civilian employees. The department is div ...
committed to participate in President
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...
's Police Data Initiative. Through SPARQ, Eberhardt worked with the Oakland Police Department to analyze police stop data for racial disparities. They used
computational linguistics Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, computational linguistics ...
to assess interactions between officers and members of the Oakland community. Although they found no explicit bias, they found that when speaking to white drivers, officers were reassuring, used positive words, and expressed concern for safety. In contrast, when officers were speaking to Black drivers, they more often used negative terms, stuttered, used informal language, and used less explanatory terms. The researchers made fifty recommendations for critical changes within the Oakland Police Department, many of which have been implemented as of the report’s 2017 release. The recommendations create a model that spans four categories: data analysis, policies and practices, training, and community engagement. As of 2017, Eberhardt and her team have since given bias training to ninety percent of the Oakland Police Department’s officers.


Bias in the education system

Okonofua and Eberhardt (2015) examined teachers' responses to students' misbehaviors, and whether there were racial differences in how these responses were directed. The study discovered teachers' responses contributed to racial disparities in discipline in the sense that Black students are more likely to be labeled as "troublemakers" than White students. It was also found that when students of color and White students commit similar behaviors, the behaviors are viewed as being more serious for students of color. Black students' misbehaviors are more likely to be viewed as a pattern than White students. The study also found that responses given by teachers may potentially drive racial differences in students' behaviors. In 2016, Okonofua, Walton, and Eberhardt ran a
meta-analysis A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting m ...
on past research literature examining how social-psychological factors play a role in the structure of racial disparities in teacher-student relationships. Findings in the research suggest pervasive negative stereotypes may give rise to mistrustful relationships between racially stigmatized students and teachers. For example, in instances where Black students are often given the label of ‘troublemakers’, students may feel stigmatized and have distrust for teachers, thus they are more likely to misbehave in the future. As a result, such teachers' interactions with students through frequent labelling can potentially produce a never-ending cycle of increased punishment and misbehaviors. Due to such issue, a discipline gap is produced, which results in Black students having less opportunity to learn. The meta-analysis also noted an approach that has been implemented in over 7000 schools in the U.S. called the
Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports Positive is a property of positivity and may refer to: Mathematics and science * Positive formula, a logical formula not containing negation * Positive number, a number that is greater than 0 * Plus sign, the sign "+" used to indicate a posi ...
approach (PBIS), the authors argued although the approach aims to improve students’ behavior, the subject of positive teacher-student relationship is neglected. Therefore, future interventions should aim to solve psychological barriers in order to reinforce positive teacher-student relationships rather than placing the majority of emphasis on teaching social skills, or prescriptive rules.


Awards and recognition


References


External links


Personal Website of Jennifer L. Eberhardt

Profile at Stanford University

Stanford SPARQ
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Eberhardt, Jennifer 1965 births African-American academics American social psychologists American women academics American women psychologists Harvard University alumni Living people MacArthur Fellows Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Stanford University faculty University of Cincinnati alumni 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American people 20th-century African-American women 21st-century African-American women Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences