Jennifer Eberhardt

All Publications

• People who share encounters with racism are silenced online by humans and machines, but a guideline-reframing intervention holds promise. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Lee, C., Gligorić, K., Kalluri, P. R., Harrington, M., Durmus, E., Sanchez, K. L., San, N., Tse, D., Zhao, X., Hamedani, M. G., Markus, H. R., Jurafsky, D., Eberhardt, J. L. 2024; 121 (38): e2322764121

  Abstract

  Are members of marginalized communities silenced on social media when they share personal experiences of racism? Here, we investigate the role of algorithms, humans, and platform guidelines in suppressing disclosures of racial discrimination. In a field study of actual posts from a neighborhood-based social media platform, we find that when users talk about their experiences as targets of racism, their posts are disproportionately flagged for removal as toxic by five widely used moderation algorithms from major online platforms, including the most recent large language models. We show that human users disproportionately flag these disclosures for removal as well. Next, in a follow-up experiment, we demonstrate that merely witnessing such suppression negatively influences how Black Americans view the community and their place in it. Finally, to address these challenges to equity and inclusion in online spaces, we introduce a mitigation strategy: a guideline-reframing intervention that is effective at reducing silencing behavior across the political spectrum.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2322764121

  View details for PubMedID 39250662

• Leveraging body-worn camera footage to assess the effects of training on officer communication during traffic stops. PNAS nexus Camp, N. P., Voigt, R., Hamedani, M. G., Jurafsky, D., Eberhardt, J. L. 2024; 3 (9): pgae359

  Abstract

  Can training police officers on how to best interact with the public actually improve their interactions with community members? This has been a challenging question to answer. Interpersonal aspects of policing are consequential but largely invisible in administrative records commonly used for evaluation. In this study, we offer a solution: body-worn camera footage captures police-community interactions and how they might change as a function of training. Using this footage-as-data approach, we consider changes in officers' communication following procedural justice training in Oakland, CA, USA, one module of which sought to increase officer-communicated respect during traffic stops. We applied natural language processing tools and expert annotations of traffic stop recordings to detect whether officers enacted the five behaviors recommended in this module. Compared with recordings of stops that occurred prior to the training, we find that officers employed more of these techniques in posttraining stops; officers were more likely to express concern for drivers' safety, offer reassurance, and provide explicit reasons for the stop. These methods demonstrate the promise of a footage-as-data approach to capture and affect change in police-community interactions.

  View details for DOI 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae359

  View details for PubMedID 39290439

• Observers of social media discussions about racial discrimination condemn denial but also adopt it. Scientific reports Sanchez, K. L., Harrington, M., Lee, C., Eberhardt, J. L. 2024; 14 (1): 18246

  Abstract

  Sharing experiences with racism (racial discrimination disclosure) has the power to raise awareness of discrimination and spur meaningful conversations about race. Sharing these experiences with racism on social media may prompt a range of responses among users. While previous work investigates how disclosure impacts disclosers and listeners, we extend this research to explore the impact of observing discussions about racial discrimination online-what we call vicarious race talk. In a series of experiments using real social media posts, we show that the initial response to racial discrimination disclosure-whether the response denies or validates the poster's perspective-influences observers' own perceptions and attitudes. Despite observers identifying denial as less supportive than validation, those who observed a denial response showed less responsive attitudes toward the poster/target (Studies 1-3) and less support for discussions about discrimination on social media in general (Studies 2-3). Exploratory findings revealed that those who viewed denial comments also judged the transgressor as less racist, and expressed less support and more denial in their own comments. This suggests that even as observers negatively judge denial, their perceptions of the poster are nonetheless negatively influenced, and this impact extends to devaluing the topic of discrimination broadly. We highlight the context of social media, where racial discrimination disclosure-and how people respond to it-may be particularly consequential.

  View details for DOI 10.1038/s41598-024-68332-8

  View details for PubMedID 39107466

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC11303685

• "When the Cruiser Lights Come On": Using the Science of Bias & Culture to Combat Racial Disparities in Policing DAEDALUS Hetey, R. C., Hamedani, M. G., Markus, H., Eberhardt, J. L. 2024; 153 (1): 123-150

  View details for DOI 10.1162/daed_a_02052

  View details for Web of Science ID 001184386600010

• We built this culture (so we can change it): Seven principles for intentional culture change. The American psychologist Hamedani, M. G., Markus, H. R., Hetey, R. C., Eberhardt, J. L. 2023

  Abstract

  Calls for culture change abound. Headlines regularly feature calls to change the "broken" or "toxic" cultures of institutions and organizations, and people debate which norms and practices across society are now defunct. As people blame current societal problems on culture, the proposed fix is "culture change." But what is culture change? How does it work? Can it be effective? This article presents a novel social psychological framework for intentional culture change-actively and deliberately modifying the mutually reinforcing features of a culture. Synthesizing insights from research and application, it proposes an integrated, evidence-based perspective centered around seven core principles for intentional culture change: Principle 1: People are culturally shaped shapers, so they can be culture changers; Principle 2: Identifying, mapping, and evaluating the key levels of culture helps locate where to target change; Principle 3: Culture change happens in both top-down and bottom-up ways and is more effective when the levels are in alignment; Principle 4: Culture change can be easier when it leverages existing core values and harder when it challenges deep-seated defaults and biases; Principle 5: Culture change typically involves power struggles and identity threats; Principle 6: Cultures interact with one another and change can cause backlash, resistance, and clashes; and Principle 7: Timing and readiness matter. While these principles may be broadly used, here they are applied to the issue of social inequality in the United States. Even though culture change feels particularly daunting in this problem area, it can also be empowering-especially when people leverage evidence-based insights and tools to reimagine and rebuild their cultures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

  View details for DOI 10.1037/amp0001209

  View details for PubMedID 37971839

• Escalated police stops of Black men are linguistically and psychologically distinct in their earliest moments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Rho, E. H., Harrington, M., Zhong, Y., Pryzant, R., Camp, N. P., Jurafsky, D., Eberhardt, J. L. 2023; 120 (23): e2216162120

  Abstract

  Across the United States, police chiefs, city officials, and community leaders alike have highlighted the need to de-escalate police encounters with the public. This concern about escalation extends from encounters involving use of force to routine car stops, where Black drivers are disproportionately pulled over. Yet, despite the calls for action, we know little about the trajectory of police stops or how escalation unfolds. In study 1, we use methods from computational linguistics to analyze police body-worn camera footage from 577 stops of Black drivers. We find that stops with escalated outcomes (those ending in arrest, handcuffing, or a search) diverge from stops without these outcomes in their earliest moments-even in the first 45 words spoken by the officer. In stops that result in escalation, officers are more likely to issue commands as their opening words to the driver and less likely to tell drivers the reason why they are being stopped. In study 2, we expose Black males to audio clips of the same stops and find differences in how escalated stops are perceived: Participants report more negative emotion, appraise officers more negatively, worry about force being used, and predict worse outcomes after hearing only the officer's initial words in escalated versus non-escalated stops. Our findings show that car stops that end in escalated outcomes sometimes begin in an escalated fashion, with adverse effects for Black male drivers and, in turn, police-community relations.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2216162120

  View details for PubMedID 37253013

• The dynamic nature of student discipline and discipline disparities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Darling-Hammond, S., Ruiz, M., Eberhardt, J. L., Okonofua, J. A. 2023; 120 (17): e2120417120

  Abstract

  Researchers have long used end-of-year discipline rates to identify punitive schools, explore sources of inequitable treatment, and evaluate interventions designed to stem both discipline and racial disparities in discipline. Yet, this approach leaves us with a "static view"-with no sense of how disciplinary responses fluctuate throughout the year. What if daily discipline rates, and daily discipline disparities, shift over the school year in ways that could inform when and where to intervene? This research takes a "dynamic view" of discipline. It leverages 4 years of atypically detailed data regarding the daily disciplinary experiences of 46,964 students from 61 middle schools in one of the nation's largest school districts. Reviewing these data, we find that discipline rates are indeed dynamic. For all student groups, the daily discipline rate grows from the beginning of the school year to the weeks leading up to the Thanksgiving break, falls before major breaks, and grows following major breaks. During periods of escalation, the daily discipline rate for Black students grows significantly faster than the rate for White students-widening racial disparities. Given this, districts hoping to stem discipline and disparities may benefit from timing interventions to precede these disciplinary spikes. In addition, early-year Black-White disparities can be used to identify the schools in which Black-White disparities are most likely to emerge by the end of the school year. Thus, the results reported here provide insights regarding not only when to intervene, but where to intervene to reduce discipline rates and disparities.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2120417120

  View details for PubMedID 37068236

• ?Can you tell me more about this??: Agentic written feedback, teacher expectations, and student learning CONTEMPORARY EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY Griffiths, C., Murdock-Perriera, L., Eberhardt, J. L. 2023; 73

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2022.102145

  View details for Web of Science ID 000944265000001

• White patients' physical responses to healthcare treatments are influenced by provider race and gender. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Howe, L. C., Hardebeck, E. J., Eberhardt, J. L., Markus, H. R., Crum, A. J. 2022; 119 (27): e2007717119

  Abstract

  The healthcare workforce in the United States is becoming increasingly diverse, gradually shifting society away from the historical overrepresentation of White men among physicians. However, given the long-standing underrepresentation of people of color and women in the medical field, patients may still associate the concept of doctors with White men and may be physiologically less responsive to treatment administered by providers from other backgrounds. To investigate this, we varied the race and gender of the provider from which White patients received identical treatment for allergic reactions and measured patients' improvement in response to this treatment, thus isolating how a provider's demographic characteristics shape physical responses to healthcare. A total of 187 White patients experiencing a laboratory-induced allergic reaction interacted with a healthcare provider who applied a treatment cream and told them it would relieve their allergic reaction. Unbeknownst to the patients, the cream was inert (an unscented lotion) and interactions were completely standardized except for the provider's race and gender. Patients were randomly assigned to interact with a provider who was a man or a woman and Asian, Black, or White. A fully blinded research assistant measured the change in the size of patients' allergic reaction after cream administration. Results indicated that White patients showed a weaker response to the standardized treatment over time when it was administered by women or Black providers. We explore several potential explanations for these varied physiological treatment responses and discuss the implications of problematic race and gender dynamics that can endure "under the skin," even for those who aim to be bias free.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2007717119

  View details for PubMedID 35749352

• Believing that prejudice can change increases children's interest in interracial interactions. Developmental science Pauker, K., Apfelbaum, E. P., Dweck, C. S., Eberhardt, J. L. 1800

  Abstract

  Children begin interacting less across racial lines around middle childhood, but it remains unclear why. We examine the novel possibility that, at that time, children's prejudice theories-their understanding of prejudice as a fixed or malleable attribute-begin to influence their desire for interracial affiliation. We devise immersive behavioral experiences to evaluate when and how prejudice theories affect interracial affiliation. Study 1 measured prejudice theories among 8-13-year-olds (N = 152; 76 White, 76 racial minority) and observed children in a newly-developed social interaction task. In line with our hypothesis, children older than 10 years with stronger malleable-prejudice theories exhibited more interest and affiliation in a simulated cross- (versus same-race) interaction, regardless of their preexisting prejudice level. Study 2 randomly assigned children to listen to a fixed- or malleable-prejudice theory story before engaging in a real, first-time interaction with a same- or cross-race partner at a different school via live video-stream (N = 150; 96 White, 54 racial minority). The malleable theory increased children's interest in further interaction with their cross-race partner. These findings highlight the promise of malleable-prejudice theories for sustaining positive interracial relationships during a critical developmental window-when the frequency of cross-race friendships typically declines. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/desc.13233

  View details for PubMedID 35023598

• Conversations about race in Black and White US families: Before and after George Floyd's death. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Sullivan, J. N., Eberhardt, J. L., Roberts, S. O. 2021; 118 (38)

  Abstract

  Research has shown that Black parents are more likely than White parents to have conversations about race with their children, but few studies have directly compared the frequency and content of these conversations and how they change in response to national events. Here we examine such conversations in the United States before and after the killing of George Floyd. Black parents had conversations more often than White parents, and they had more frequent conversations post-Floyd. White parents remained mostly unchanged and, if anything, were less likely to talk about being White and more likely to send colorblind messages. Black parents were also more worried than White parents-both that their children would experience racial bias and that their children would perpetrate racial bias, a finding that held both pre- and post-Floyd. Thus, even in the midst of a national moment on race, White parents remained relatively silent and unconcerned about the topic.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2106366118

  View details for PubMedID 34518224

• The thin blue waveform: Racial disparities in officer prosody undermine institutional trust in the police. Journal of personality and social psychology Camp, N. P., Voigt, R., Jurafsky, D., Eberhardt, J. L. 2021

  Abstract

  How do routine police encounters build or undermine community trust, and how might they contribute to racial gaps in citizen perceptions of the police? Procedural justice theory posits that officers' interpersonal communication toward the public plays a formative role, but experimental tests of this hypothesis have been constrained by the difficulties of measuring and manipulating this dimension of officer-citizen interactions. Officer-worn body camera recordings provide a novel means to overcome both of these challenges. Across five studies with laboratory and community samples, we use footage from traffic stops to examine how officers communicate to drivers and whether racial disparities in officers' communication erode institutional trust in the police. Specifically, we consider the cumulative effects of one subtle interpersonal cue: an officer's tone of voice. In Studies 1A, 1B, and 1C, participants rated thin slices of officer speech. Participants were blind to the content of the officer's words and the race of their interlocutor, yet they evaluated officers' tone toward White (vs. Black) men more positively. By manipulating participants' exposure to repeated interactions, we demonstrate that even these paraverbal aspects of police interactions shape how citizens construe the police generally (Study 2), and that racial disparities in prosodic cues undermine trust in institutions such as police departments (Study 3). Participants' trust in the police, and personal experiences of fairness, in turn, correlated with their perceptions of officer prosody across studies. Taken together, these data illustrate a cycle through which interpersonal aspects of police encounters erode institutional trust across race. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

  View details for DOI 10.1037/pspa0000270

  View details for PubMedID 34264731

• Lifting the Bar: A Relationship-Orienting Intervention Reduces Recidivism Among Children Reentering School From Juvenile Detention. Psychological science Walton, G. M., Okonofua, J. A., Remington Cunningham, K., Hurst, D., Pinedo, A., Weitz, E., Ospina, J. P., Tate, H., Eberhardt, J. L. 2021: 9567976211013801

  Abstract

  When children return to school from juvenile detention, they face a severe stigma. We developed a procedure to orient educators and students toward each other as positive relationship partners during this period. In Study 1, through a structured exercise, students reentering school powerfully articulated to an educator of their choosing their prosocial hopes for school as well as challenges they faced. In a preliminary field trial (N = 47), presenting this self-introduction to this educator in a one-page letter via a third-party requesting the educator's help reduced recidivism to juvenile detention through the next semester from 69% to 29%. In Study 2 (preregistered), the letter led experienced teachers (N = 349) to express greater commitment to, anticipate more success for, and feel more love and respect for a student beginning their reentry into school, potentially initiating a better trajectory. The results suggest how relationship-orienting procedures may sideline bias and make school more supportive for students facing stigma.

  View details for DOI 10.1177/09567976211013801

  View details for PubMedID 34606384

• The development of race effects in face processing from childhood through adulthood: Neural and behavioral evidence. Developmental science Golarai, G., Ghahremani, D. G., Greenwood, A. C., Gabrieli, J. D., Eberhardt, J. L. 2020: e13058

  Abstract

  Most adults are better at recognizing recently encountered faces of their own race, relative to faces of other races. In adults, this race effect in face recognition is associated with differential neural representations of own- and other-race faces in the fusiform face area (FFA), a high-level visual region involved in face recognition. Previous research has linked these differential face representations in adults to viewers' implicit racial associations. However, despite the fact that the FFA undergoes a gradual development which continues well into adulthood, little is known about the developmental time-course of the race effect in FFA responses. Also unclear is how this race effect might relate to the development of face recognition or implicit associations with own- or other-races during childhood and adolescence. To examine the developmental trajectory of these race effects, in a cross sectional study of European American (EA) children (ages 7 - 11), adolescents (ages 12 - 16), and adults (ages 18 - 35), we evaluated responses to adult African American (AA) and EA face stimuli, using functional magnetic resonance imaging and separate behavioral measures outside the scanner. We found that FFA responses to AA and EA faces differentiated during development from childhood into adulthood; meanwhile, the magnitudes of race effects increased in behavioral measures of face-recognition and implicit racial associations. These three race effects were positively correlated, even after controlling for age. These findings suggest that social and perceptual experiences shape a protracted development of the race effect in face processing that continues well into adulthood.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/desc.13058

  View details for PubMedID 33151616

• Race influences professional investors' financial judgments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Lyons-Padilla, S., Markus, H. R., Monk, A., Radhakrishna, S., Shah, R., Dodson, N. A., Eberhardt, J. L. 2019

  Abstract

  Of the $69.1 trillion global financial assets under management across mutual funds, hedge funds, real estate, and private equity, fewer than 1.3% are managed by women and people of color. Why is this powerful, elite industry so racially homogenous? We conducted an online experiment with actual asset allocators to determine whether there are biases in their evaluations of funds led by people of color, and, if so, how these biases manifest. We asked asset allocators to rate venture capital funds based on their evaluation of a 1-page summary of the fund's performance history, in which we manipulated the race of the managing partner (White or Black) and the strength of the fund's credentials (stronger or weaker). Asset allocators favored the White-led, racially homogenous team when credentials were stronger, but the Black-led, racially diverse team when credentials were weaker. Moreover, asset allocators' judgments of the team's competence were more strongly correlated with predictions about future performance (e.g., money raised) for racially homogenous teams than for racially diverse teams. Despite the apparent preference for racially diverse teams at weaker performance levels, asset allocators did not express a high likelihood of investing in these teams. These results suggest first that underrepresentation of people of color in the realm of investing is not only a pipeline problem, and second, that funds led by people of color might paradoxically face the most barriers to advancement after they have established themselves as strong performers.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.1822052116

  View details for PubMedID 31405967

• Neural adaptation to faces reveals racial outgroup homogeneity effects in early perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Hughes, B. L., Camp, N. P., Gomez, J., Natu, V. S., Grill-Spector, K., Eberhardt, J. L. 2019

  Abstract

  A hallmark of intergroup biases is the tendency to individuate members of one's own group but process members of other groups categorically. While the consequences of these biases for stereotyping and discrimination are well-documented, their early perceptual underpinnings remain less understood. Here, we investigated the neural mechanisms of this effect by testing whether high-level visual cortex is differentially tuned in its sensitivity to variation in own-race versus other-race faces. Using a functional MRI adaptation paradigm, we measured White participants' habituation to blocks of White and Black faces that parametrically varied in their groupwise similarity. Participants showed a greater tendency to individuate own-race faces in perception, showing both greater release from adaptation to unique identities and increased sensitivity in the adaptation response to physical difference among faces. These group differences emerge in the tuning of early face-selective cortex and mirror behavioral differences in the memory and perception of own- versus other-race faces. Our results suggest that biases for other-race faces emerge at some of the earliest stages of sensory perception.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.1822084116

  View details for PubMedID 31262811

• Americans' Health Mindsets: Content, Cultural Patterning, and Associations With Physical and Mental Health ANNALS OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE Conner, A. L., Boles, D. Z., Markus, H., Eberhardt, J. L., Crum, A. J. 2019; 53 (4): 321–32

  View details for DOI 10.1093/abm/kay041

  View details for Web of Science ID 000480802100002

• The Numbers Don't Speak for Themselves: Racial Disparities and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Justice System CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Hetey, R. C., Eberhardt, J. L. 2018; 27 (3): 183–87

  View details for DOI 10.1177/0963721418763931

  View details for Web of Science ID 000434696300008

• Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Voigt, R., Camp, N. P., Prabhakaran, V., Hamilton, W. L., Hetey, R. C., Griffiths, C. M., Jurgens, D., Jurafsky, D., Eberhardt, J. L. 2017

  Abstract

  Using footage from body-worn cameras, we analyze the respectfulness of police officer language toward white and black community members during routine traffic stops. We develop computational linguistic methods that extract levels of respect automatically from transcripts, informed by a thin-slicing study of participant ratings of officer utterances. We find that officers speak with consistently less respect toward black versus white community members, even after controlling for the race of the officer, the severity of the infraction, the location of the stop, and the outcome of the stop. Such disparities in common, everyday interactions between police and the communities they serve have important implications for procedural justice and the building of police-community trust.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.1702413114

  View details for PubMedID 28584085

• Cognitive control, attention, and the other race effect in memory PLOS ONE Brown, T. I., Uncapher, M. R., Chow, T. E., Eberhardt, J. L., Wagner, A. D. 2017; 12 (3)

  Abstract

  People are better at remembering faces from their own race than other races-a phenomenon with significant societal implications. This Other Race Effect (ORE) in memory could arise from different attentional allocation to, and cognitive control over, same- and other-race faces during encoding. Deeper or more differentiated processing of same-race faces could yield more robust representations of same- vs. other-race faces that could support better recognition memory. Conversely, to the extent that other-race faces may be characterized by lower perceptual expertise, attention and cognitive control may be more important for successful encoding of robust, distinct representations of these stimuli. We tested a mechanistic model in which successful encoding of same- and other-race faces, indexed by subsequent memory performance, is differentially predicted by (a) engagement of frontoparietal networks subserving top-down attention and cognitive control, and (b) interactions between frontoparietal networks and fusiform cortex face processing. European American (EA) and African American (AA) participants underwent fMRI while intentionally encoding EA and AA faces, and ~24 hrs later performed an "old/new" recognition memory task. Univariate analyses revealed greater engagement of frontoparietal top-down attention and cognitive control networks during encoding for same- vs. other-race faces, stemming particularly from a failure to engage the cognitive control network during processing of other-race faces that were subsequently forgotten. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses further revealed that OREs were characterized by greater functional interaction between medial intraparietal sulcus, a component of the top-down attention network, and fusiform cortex during same- than other-race face encoding. Together, these results suggest that group-based face memory biases at least partially stem from differential allocation of cognitive control and top-down attention during encoding, such that same-race memory benefits from elevated top-down attentional engagement with face processing regions; conversely, reduced recruitment of cognitive control circuitry appears more predictive of memory failure when encoding out-group faces.

  View details for DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0173579

  View details for Web of Science ID 000396091800053

  View details for PubMedID 28282414

• Polluting Black space. Journal of experimental psychology. General Bonam, C. M., Bergsieker, H. B., Eberhardt, J. L. 2016; 145 (11): 1561-1582

  Abstract

  Social psychologists have long demonstrated that people are stereotyped on the basis of race. Researchers have conducted extensive experimental studies on the negative stereotypes associated with Black Americans in particular. Across 4 studies, we demonstrate that the physical spaces associated with Black Americans are also subject to negative racial stereotypes. Such spaces, for example, are perceived as impoverished, crime-ridden, and dirty (Study 1). Moreover, these space-focused stereotypes can powerfully influence how connected people feel to a space (Studies 2a, 2b, and 3), how they evaluate that space (Studies 2a and 2b), and how they protect that space from harm (Study 3). Indeed, processes related to space-focused stereotypes may contribute to social problems across a range of domains-from racial disparities in wealth to the overexposure of Blacks to environmental pollution. Together, the present studies broaden the scope of traditional stereotyping research and highlight promising new directions. (PsycINFO Database Record

  View details for PubMedID 27656758

• A Vicious Cycle: A Social-Psychological Account of Extreme Racial Disparities in School Discipline PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Okonofua, J. A., Walton, G. M., Eberhardt, J. L. 2016; 11 (3): 381-398

  Abstract

  Can social-psychological theory provide insight into the extreme racial disparities in school disciplinary action in the United States? Disciplinary problems carry enormous consequences for the quality of students' experience in school, opportunities to learn, and ultimate life outcomes. This burden falls disproportionately on students of color. Integrating research on stereotyping and on stigma, we theorized that bias and apprehension about bias can build on one another in school settings in a vicious cycle that undermines teacher-student relationships over time and exacerbates inequality. This approach is more comprehensive than accounts in which the predicaments of either teachers or students are considered alone rather than in tandem, it complements nonpsychological approaches, and it gives rise to novel implications for policy and intervention. It also extends prior research on bias and stigmatization to provide a model for understanding the social-psychological bases of inequality more generally.

  View details for DOI 10.1177/1745691616635592

  View details for Web of Science ID 000376971900009

  View details for PubMedID 27217251

• Distinct representations of configural and part information across multiple face-selective regions of the human brain FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY Golarai, G., Ghahremani, D. G., Eberhardt, J. L., Gabrieli, J. D. 2015; 6

  View details for DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01710

  View details for Web of Science ID 000364637100001

• Distinct representations of configural and part information across multiple face-selective regions of the human brain. Frontiers in psychology Golarai, G., Ghahremani, D. G., Eberhardt, J. L., Gabrieli, J. D. 2015; 6: 1710

  Abstract

  Several regions of the human brain respond more strongly to faces than to other visual stimuli, such as regions in the amygdala (AMG), superior temporal sulcus (STS), and the fusiform face area (FFA). It is unclear if these brain regions are similar in representing the configuration or natural appearance of face parts. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging of healthy adults who viewed natural or schematic faces with internal parts that were either normally configured or randomly rearranged. Response amplitudes were reduced in the AMG and STS when subjects viewed stimuli whose configuration of parts were digitally rearranged, suggesting that these regions represent the 1st order configuration of face parts. In contrast, response amplitudes in the FFA showed little modulation whether face parts were rearranged or if the natural face parts were replaced with lines. Instead, FFA responses were reduced only when both configural and part information were reduced, revealing an interaction between these factors, suggesting distinct representation of 1st order face configuration and parts in the AMG and STS vs. the FFA.

  View details for DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01710

  View details for PubMedID 26594191

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC4635218

• Two Strikes: Race and the Disciplining of Young Students PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Okonofua, J. A., Eberhardt, J. L. 2015; 26 (5): 617-624

  Abstract

  There are large racial disparities in school discipline in the United States, which, for Black students, not only contribute to school failure but also can lay a path toward incarceration. Although the disparities have been well documented, the psychological mechanisms underlying them are unclear. In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that such disparities are, in part, driven by racial stereotypes that can lead teachers to escalate their negative responses to Black students over the course of multiple interpersonal (e.g., teacher-to-student) encounters. More generally, we argue that race not only can influence how perceivers interpret a specific behavior, but also can enhance perceivers' detection of behavioral patterns across time. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical benefits of employing this novel approach to stereotyping across a range of real-world settings.

  View details for DOI 10.1177/0956797615570365

  View details for Web of Science ID 000354269100006

  View details for PubMedID 25854276

• Racial Disparities in Incarceration Increase Acceptance of Punitive Policies PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Hetey, R. C., Eberhardt, J. L. 2014; 25 (10): 1949-1954

  Abstract

  During the past few decades, punitive crime policies have led to explosive growth in the United States prison population. Such policies have contributed to unprecedented incarceration rates for Blacks in particular. In this article, we consider an unexamined relationship between racial disparities and policy reform. Rather than treating racial disparities as an outcome to be measured, we exposed people to real and extreme racial disparities and observed how this drove their support for harsh criminal-justice policies. In two experiments, we manipulated the racial composition of prisons: When the penal institution was represented as "more Black," people were more concerned about crime and expressed greater acceptance of punitive policies than when the penal institution was represented as "less Black." Exposure to extreme racial disparities, then, can lead people to support the very policies that produce those disparities, thus perpetuating a vicious cycle.

  View details for DOI 10.1177/0956797614540307

  View details for Web of Science ID 000343858200012

• Racial disparities in incarceration increase acceptance of punitive policies. Psychological science Hetey, R. C., Eberhardt, J. L. 2014; 25 (10): 1949-1954

  Abstract

  During the past few decades, punitive crime policies have led to explosive growth in the United States prison population. Such policies have contributed to unprecedented incarceration rates for Blacks in particular. In this article, we consider an unexamined relationship between racial disparities and policy reform. Rather than treating racial disparities as an outcome to be measured, we exposed people to real and extreme racial disparities and observed how this drove their support for harsh criminal-justice policies. In two experiments, we manipulated the racial composition of prisons: When the penal institution was represented as "more Black," people were more concerned about crime and expressed greater acceptance of punitive policies than when the penal institution was represented as "less Black." Exposure to extreme racial disparities, then, can lead people to support the very policies that produce those disparities, thus perpetuating a vicious cycle.

  View details for DOI 10.1177/0956797614540307

  View details for PubMedID 25097060

• Racial Disparities in Incarceration Increase Acceptance of Punitive Policies Psychological Science - A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science Hetey, R. C., Eberhardt, J. L. 2014
• Race and the Fragility of the Legal Distinction between Juveniles and Adults PLOS ONE Rattan, A., Levine, C. S., Dweck, C. S., Eberhardt, J. L. 2012; 7 (5)

  Abstract

  Legal precedent establishes juvenile offenders as inherently less culpable than adult offenders and thus protects juveniles from the most severe of punishments. But how fragile might these protections be? In the present study, simply bringing to mind a Black (vs. White) juvenile offender led participants to view juveniles in general as significantly more similar to adults in their inherent culpability and to express more support for severe sentencing. Indeed, these differences in participants' perceptions of this foundational legal precedent distinguishing between juveniles and adults accounted for their greater support for severe punishment. These results highlight the fragility of protections for juveniles when race is in play. Furthermore, we suggest that this fragility may have broad implications for how juveniles are seen and treated in the criminal justice system.

  View details for DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0036680

  View details for Web of Science ID 000305335800013

  View details for PubMedID 22649496

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC3359323

• The role of social meaning in inattentional blindness: When the gorillas in our midst do not go unseen JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Rattan, A., Eberhardt, J. L. 2010; 46 (6): 1085-1088

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.06.010

  View details for Web of Science ID 000284440200030

• Not yet human: Implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequences JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Goff, P. A., Eberhardt, J. L., Williams, M. J., Jackson, M. C. 2008; 94 (2): 292-306

  Abstract

  Historical representations explicitly depicting Blacks as apelike have largely disappeared in the United States, yet a mental association between Blacks and apes remains. Here, the authors demonstrate that U.S. citizens implicitly associate Blacks and apes. In a series of laboratory studies, the authors reveal how this association influences study participants' basic cognitive processes and significantly alters their judgments in criminal justice contexts. Specifically, this Black-ape association alters visual perception and attention, and it increases endorsement of violence against Black suspects. In an archival study of actual criminal cases, the authors show that news articles written about Blacks who are convicted of capital crimes are more likely to contain ape-relevant language than news articles written about White convicts. Moreover, those who are implicitly portrayed as more apelike in these articles are more likely to be executed by the state than those who are not. The authors argue that examining the subtle persistence of specific historical representations such as these may not only enhance contemporary research on dehumanization, stereotyping, and implicit processes but also highlight common forms of discrimination that previously have gone unrecognized.

  View details for DOI 10.1037/0022-3514.94.2.292

  View details for Web of Science ID 000252567300008

  View details for PubMedID 18211178

• Looking Deathworthy - Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes Readings in Social Psychology: General, Classic, and Contemporary Selections Eberhardt, J. L. edited by Lesko, W. A. Columbus, OH: Allyn & Bacon. 2008; 7
• Looking Deathworthy - Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes Readings in Social Psychology: The art and science of research Eberhardt, J. L. edited by Fein, S., Kassin, S. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. 2008; 4
• Differential development of high-level visual cortex correlates with category-specific recognition memory NATURE NEUROSCIENCE Golarai, G., Ghahremani, D. G., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., Reiss, A., Eberhardt, J. L., Gabrieli, J. D., Grill-Spector, K. 2007; 10 (4): 512-522

  Abstract

  High-level visual cortex in humans includes functionally defined regions that preferentially respond to objects, faces and places. It is unknown how these regions develop and whether their development relates to recognition memory. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the development of several functionally defined regions including object (lateral occipital complex, LOC)-, face ('fusiform face area', FFA; superior temporal sulcus, STS)- and place ('parahippocampal place area', PPA)-selective cortices in children (ages 7-11), adolescents (12-16) and adults. Right FFA and left PPA volumes were substantially larger in adults than in children. This development occurred by expansion of FFA and PPA into surrounding cortex and was correlated with improved recognition memory for faces and places, respectively. In contrast, LOC and STS volumes and object-recognition memory remained constant across ages. Thus, the ventral stream undergoes a prolonged maturation that varies temporally across functional regions, is determined by brain region rather than stimulus category, and is correlated with the development of category-specific recognition memory.

  View details for DOI 10.1038/nn1865

  View details for Web of Science ID 000245228600023

  View details for PubMedID 17351637

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC3660101

• Looking deathworthy - Perceived stereotypicality of black defendants predicts capital-sentencing outcomes PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Eberhardt, J. L., Davies, P. G., Purdie-Vaughns, V. J., Johnson, S. L. 2006; 17 (5): 383-386

  Abstract

  Researchers previously have investigated the role of race in capital sentencing, and in particular, whether the race of the defendant or victim influences the likelihood of a death sentence. In the present study, we examined whether the likelihood of being sentenced to death is influenced by the degree to which a Black defendant is perceived to have a stereotypically Black appearance. Controlling for a wide array of factors, we found that in cases involving a White victim, the more stereotypically Black a defendant is perceived to be, the more likely that person is to be sentenced to death.

  View details for Web of Science ID 000237064900005

  View details for PubMedID 16683924

• Imaging race AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST Eberhardt, J. L. 2005; 60 (2): 181-190

  Abstract

  Researchers have recently begun to use the tools of neuroscience to examine the social psychological responses associated with race. This article serves as a review of the developing literature in this area. It advances the argument that neuroscience studies of race have the potential to shape fundamental assumptions about race, and the interplay between social and biological processes more generally.

  View details for DOI 10.1037/0003-066X.60.2.181

  View details for Web of Science ID 000227289300004

  View details for PubMedID 15740450

• Seeing black: Race, crime, and visual processing JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Eberhardt, J. L., GOFF, P. A., Purdie, V. J., Davies, P. G. 2004; 87 (6): 876-893

  Abstract

  Using police officers and undergraduates as participants, the authors investigated the influence of stereotypic associations on visual processing in 5 studies. Study 1 demonstrates that Black faces influence participants' ability to spontaneously detect degraded images of crime-relevant objects. Conversely, Studies 2-4 demonstrate that activating abstract concepts (i.e., crime and basketball) induces attentional biases toward Black male faces. Moreover, these processing biases may be related to the degree to which a social group member is physically representative of the social group (Studies 4-5). These studies, taken together, suggest that some associations between social groups and concepts are bidirectional and operate as visual tuning devices--producing shifts in perception and attention of a sort likely to influence decision making and behavior.

  View details for DOI 10.1037/0022-3514.87.6.876

  View details for Web of Science ID 000225442400010

  View details for PubMedID 15598112

• Believing is seeing: The effects of racial labels and implicit beliefs on face perception PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN Eberhardt, J. L., Dasgupta, N., Banaszynski, T. L. 2003; 29 (3): 360-370

  Abstract

  Two studies tested whether racial category labels and lay beliefs about human traits have a combined effect on people's perception of, and memory for, racially ambiguous faces. Participants saw a morphed target face accompanied by a racial label (Black or White). Later, they were asked to identify the face from a set of two new morphed faces, one more Black and the other more White than the target. As predicted, entity theorists, who believe traits are immutable, perceived and remembered the target face as consistent with the racial label, whereas incremental theorists, who believe traits are malleable, perceived and remembered the face as inconsistent with the racial label. In Study 2, participants also drew the target face more consistently (entity theorists) or less consistently (incremental theorists) with the racial label. Results of both studies confirm that social variables can affect how physical features are seen and remembered.

  View details for DOI 10.1177/0146167202250215

  View details for Web of Science ID 000180951800006

  View details for PubMedID 15273013

• Differential responses in the fusiform region to same-race and other-race faces NATURE NEUROSCIENCE Golby, A. J., Gabrieli, J. D., Chiao, J. Y., Eberhardt, J. L. 2001; 4 (8): 845-850

  Abstract

  Many studies have shown that people remember faces of their own race better than faces of other races. We investigated the neural substrates of same-race memory superiority using functional MRI (fMRI). European-American (EA) and African-American (AA) males underwent fMRI while they viewed photographs of AA males, EA males and objects under intentional encoding conditions. Recognition memory was superior for same-race versus other-race faces. Individually defined areas in the fusiform region that responded preferentially to faces had greater response to same-race versus other-race faces. Across both groups, memory differences between same-race and other-race faces correlated with activation in left fusiform cortex and right parahippocampal and hippocampal areas. These results suggest that differential activation in fusiform regions contributes to same-race memory superiority.

  View details for Web of Science ID 000170137300019

  View details for PubMedID 11477432