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| Mahzarin Banaji, PhD (photo courtesy of Harvard University News Office) |
In the featured event of the Diversity Campus Read initiative, Mahzarin Banaji, PhD, co-author of The Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People, will describe her work exploring the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, nationality and other human differences. Dr. Banaji is professor of social ethics at Harvard University and chair of human dynamics at the Santa Fe Institute.
In this interactive session, Banaji will present current scholarship on unconscious bias and participants will have the opportunity to examine their own cultural attitudes and enhance cultural competence.
Research presented in Blind Spot questions the extent to which our perceptions of social groups—without our awareness or conscious control—shape our likes and dislikes and our judgments about people’s character, abilities and potential. The book explores data from the Implicit Association Test, a tool used in social psychology research designed to measure automatic associations between attributes and concepts, which can illuminate hidden biases. The test was developed by Banaji and Anthony Greenwald along with colleague Brian Nosek in 1995 and they co-authored Blind Spot in 2013 to explain the science behind the now widely used test.
The workshop and discussion will take place in the Sherman Center auditorium on Oct. 28 from 3 to 5 p.m., with a reception following in the Sherman Center Cube and Atrium from 5 to 6 p.m. A book signing will immediately follow the presentation.
Related link on UMassMedNow:
Conversation about unconscious bias launches UMMS Diversity Campus Read
