This illustration is the first in a series of Social Science Bites illustrations by scientific illustrator Alex Cagan. We’ve looked through our archives and chosen some of our favorite episodes from over the years, which Alex has brought to life in these visualizations. We’ll be unveiling new illustrations in this series through June and July 2020 on our Twitter page. Catch each new illustration as it’s released at the hashtag #SSBillustrated.
LISTEN TO MAHZARIN BANAJI NOW!
Explicit statements of prejudice are less common than in the past (even if they are still easily found). “I see that as a mark of progress,” says social psychologist Mahzarin R. Banaji, the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard University. But peer a little below the surface, she adds, “even though you might reject an explicit bias, you actually have the implicit version of it.”
“The brain is an association-seeking machine,” she tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast. “It puts things together that repeatedly get paired in our experience. Implicit bias is just another word for capturing what those are when they concern social groups.
“So, when I see that my mom puts out butter when she puts out bread, the two are associated in some way. But I also see other things in the world. I see as I walk down the street who the poor people are and who the rich people are, and where the one lives and where the other lives.”
Banaji explains her work on implicit bias and the efforts she and her colleagues made in creating the widely recognized implicit association test, or IAT, which helps ferret out this “thumbprint of the culture on our brain.” (See and take the test here.)
That thumb imprints on Banaji herself. She relates a time when she was scheduled for surgery and just assumed the young woman next to her wouldn’t be her anesthesiologist and must instead be a nurse – even though Banaji if asked would readily say that young women absolutely could be any sort of doctor. Still, she asked the “nurse” to relay a message to the anesthesiologist, only to learn the “nurse” was the anesthesiologist. “As I always tell my students when I came back from surgery, these stereotypes are not good for us: you do not want to be in surgery with an angry anesthesiologist working on you!”
She credits the genesis of the IAT with a “stroke of genius” by her colleague Anthony Greenwald (with whom she wrote 2013’s Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People). “It’s based on the idea that two things that are routinely thought of as linked together will be easier to pair as a result, while things that aren’t commonly – or ever — linked will require longer to pair them. The pairing in the initial implicit association test was with a deck of cards that include four suites – two with sets of faces, dark- and light-skinned, and two with words, positive and negative. In the classic result, test-takers can pair the white faces with positive words faster, as they can the peoples of color faces with negative words. Switch it up – people of color with good words, say – and there’s a measurable delay. It’s also been applied to many societal concerns, such as biases related to gender, body size, age, sexuality, and others.
The IAT has shown some predictive power about how biases translate into action in individuals, but it’s no ‘test for racism,’ she stresses.
“I would be the first to say that you can never use the IAT and say, ‘Well, we’re going to use it to hire somebody,’ or ‘We’re going to use it to put someone on the jury.’ One can have these implicit biases and also have a big fat prefrontal cortex that makes us behave in ways that are opposed to the bias.”
Banaji’s contributions to society have been widely recognized in a number of notable fellowships, such as the Society for Experimental Psychologists, Society for Experimental Social Psychology, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and in 2016, the Association for Psychological Science’s (APS) William James Fellow Award for lifetime contributions to the basic science of psychology. (She was president of APS in 2010-11.)
Welcome to the blog for the Social Science Bites podcast: a series of interviews with leading social scientists. Each episode explores an aspect of our social world. You can access all audio and the transcripts from each interview here. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @socialscibites.
The relationship between citizens and their criminal justice systems comes down to just that – relationships. And those relations generally start with […]
The creation of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) has led to a heated debate on the balance between peer review and evaluative metrics in research assessment regimes. Luciana Balboa, Elizabeth Gadd, Eva Mendez, Janne Pölönen, Karen Stroobants, Erzsebet Toth Cithra and the CoARA Steering Board address these arguments and state CoARA’s commitment to finding ways in which peer review and bibliometrics can be used together responsibly.
Thanks to a collaboration between the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), applications are now being accepted for […]
Solicitations are now being sought for the National Science Foundation’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, and in an unheralded […]
What are the three biggest challenges Australia faces in the next five to ten years? What role will the social sciences play in resolving these challenges? The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia asked these questions in a discussion paper earlier this year. The backdrop to this review is cuts to social science disciplines around the country, with teaching taking priority over research.
Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the British Columbia-based Michael Smith Health Research BC […]
Social psychologist Felice Levine, who has served as executive director of the American Educational Research Association for more than 22 years, will step down in 2025.
Sage (the parent of Social Science Space) and the Surviving Society podcast have launched a collaborative podcast series, Social Science for Social […]
The Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences has launched the Big Thinking Podcast, a show series that features leading researchers in the humanities and social sciences in conversation about the most important and interesting issues of our time.
In this month’s edition of The Evidence newsletter, Josephine Lethbridge explores how new flexible working policies are effectively reducing the gender pay […]
‘What Do We Know and What Should We Do About the Irish Border?’ is a new book from Katy Hayward that applies social science to the existing issues and what they portend.
Brexit seems likely to extend the hostility of the UK immigration system to scholars from European Union countries — unless a significant change of migration politics and prevalent public attitudes towards immigration politics took place in the UK. There are no indications that the latter will happen anytime soon.
A new report from the Royal Society about the effects on Brexit on science in the United Kingdom has our peripatetic Daniel Nehring mulling the changes that will occur in higher education and academic productivity.
In this article, co-authors W. Lance Bennet and Julie Uldam reflect on the inspiration behind their research article, “Corporate Social Responsibility in […]
This article aims to explore how the boards of international new ventures (INVs) develop throughout the internationalisation and growth phases of the firm.
How to stimulate interpersonal trust in organizations? How can performance management contribute to trust? And, can other types of management control also […]
The origin of the phrase “publish or perish” has been intriguing since this question was first raised by Eugene Garfield in 1996. Vladimir Moskovkinl talks about the evolution of the meaning of this phrase and shows the earliest use known at this point.
Social psychologist Felice Levine, who has served as executive director of the American Educational Research Association for more than 22 years, will step down in 2025.
Karine Morin, whose experience in the policy world spans health and health research, the physical sciences and equity, diversity, and inclusion, has been named the new president and CEO of Canada’s Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
The National Academies’ Committee on National Statistics seeks nominations for members of an ad hoc consensus study panel — sponsored by the U.S. Census Bureau — to review and evaluate the quality of the 2020 Census.
You’ve likely heard the hype around artificial intelligence, or AI, but do you find ChatGPT genuinely useful in your professional life? A free course offered by Sage Campus could change all th
Kate Winslet’s biopic of Lee Miller, the pioneering woman war photographer, raises some interesting questions about the ethics of fieldwork and their […]
The retraction of academic papers often functions as an indictment against a researcher’s reputation. Tim Kersjes argues that for retractions to function as an effective corrective to the scholarly record, they need shed this punitive reputation.
Each year, the Metascience Conference brings together researchers, advocates, reformers, policymakers, publishers, funders, and other stakeholders to share ideas and build a […]
This webinar will delve into the crucial aspects of safety culture and risk abatement across four key industries: healthcare, mine safety, offshore […]
Thanks to a collaboration between the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), applications are now being accepted for […]
What is the best strategy for finding someone missing in the wilderness? It’s complicated, but the method known as ‘Lost Person Behavior’ seems to offers some hope.
The President’s Management Agenda Learning Agenda: Public Participation & Community Engagement Evidence Challenge is dedicated to forming a strategic, evidence-based plan that federal agencies and external researchers can use to solve big problems.
Christopher Everett, outgoing student body president at the University of North Carolina, reflects on the role of student governance in the modern, and conflicted, university
The creation of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) has led to a heated debate on the balance between peer review and evaluative metrics in research assessment regimes. Luciana Balboa, Elizabeth Gadd, Eva Mendez, Janne Pölönen, Karen Stroobants, Erzsebet Toth Cithra and the CoARA Steering Board address these arguments and state CoARA’s commitment to finding ways in which peer review and bibliometrics can be used together responsibly.
Drawing on a bibliometric study, the authors explore how and why life sciences researchers cite the social sciences and how this relationship has changed in recent years.
The large language models, or LLMs, that underlie generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have an ethical challenge in how they parasitize freely available data.
Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the British Columbia-based Michael Smith Health Research BC […]
When scientists make important discoveries, both big and small, they typically publish their findings in scientific journals for others to read. This […]
The interactional skill of large language models enables them to carry out qualitative research interviews at speed and scale. Demonstrating the ability of these new techniques in a range of qualitative enquiries, Friedrich Geiecke and Xavier Jaravel, present a new open source platform to support this new form of qualitative research.
Harvard psychology professor Joshua Greene studies the back-and-forth between emotion and reason in how human beings make moral decisions. In this Social […]
In this article, co-authors W. Lance Bennet and Julie Uldam reflect on the inspiration behind their research article, “Corporate Social Responsibility in […]
Drawing on a bibliometric study, the authors explore how and why life sciences researchers cite the social sciences and how this relationship has changed in recent years.
By actively collaborating with industry, developing interdisciplinary programs and investing in hands-on learning opportunities, business schools can equip graduates with the specific skills and experiences that employers are seeking.
Qualitative data analysis is a way of creating insight and empathy. Strategies for data analysis and interpretation are tools for meaning-making and […]
The word censorship might bring to mind authoritarian regimes, book-banning, and restrictions on a free press, but Cory Clark, a behavioral scientist at […]
Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the British Columbia-based Michael Smith Health Research BC […]
Republican legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives, arguing that “the American people’s trust in the National Institute of Health has been broken,” have released a blueprint for reforming the agency.
The negative consequences of relying too heavily on metrics to assess research quality are well known, potentially fostering practices harmful to scientific research such as p-hacking, salami science, or selective reporting. To address this systemic problem, Florian Naudet, and collegues present six principles for assessing scientists for hiring, promotion, and tenure.
Candace Jones, Mark Lorenzen, Jonathan Sapsed , eds.: The Oxford Handbook of Creative Industries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 576 pp. $170.00, […]
Kate Winslet’s biopic of Lee Miller, the pioneering woman war photographer, raises some interesting questions about the ethics of fieldwork and their […]
The U.S. National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have teamed up present a 90-minute online session examining how to balance public access to federally funded research results with an equitable publishing environment.
Five organizations representing knowledge networks, research libraries, and publishing platforms joined the Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences to review the present and the future of open access — in policy and in practice – in Canada
The creation of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) has led to a heated debate on the balance between peer review and evaluative metrics in research assessment regimes. Luciana Balboa, Elizabeth Gadd, Eva Mendez, Janne Pölönen, Karen Stroobants, Erzsebet Toth Cithra and the CoARA Steering Board address these arguments and state CoARA’s commitment to finding ways in which peer review and bibliometrics can be used together responsibly.
As the U.S. Congress debates the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, a new paper in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences urges lawmakers to focus on provisions aimed at increasing the numbers of black and Latinx teachers.
To help in decisions surrounding the effects and aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the the journal ‘Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences’ offers this collection of articles as a free resource.
Psychologist Susan Fiske was the founding editor of the journal Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. In trying to reach a lay audience with research findings that matter, she counsels stepping a bit outside your academic comfort zone.
SAGE Publishing — the parent of Social Science Space – will hold its Third Annual Critical Thinking Bootcamp on August 9. Leaning more and register here
On May 13, the American Academy of Political and Social Science hosted an online seminar, co-sponsored by SAGE Publishing, that featured presentations […]
On Friday, April 23rd, join the Population Association of America and the Association of Population Centers for a virtual congressional briefing. The […]
After viewing the the televised version of the The Decameron, our Robert Dingwall asks what the farce set during the Black Death says about a more recent pandemic.
In this month’s edition of The Evidence newsletter, Josephine Lethbridge explores how new flexible working policies are effectively reducing the gender pay […]
Harvard psychology professor Joshua Greene studies the back-and-forth between emotion and reason in how human beings make moral decisions. In this Social […]
In this article, co-authors W. Lance Bennet and Julie Uldam reflect on the inspiration behind their research article, “Corporate Social Responsibility in […]
Kaye Husbands Fealing, an economist who has done pioneering work in the “science of broadening participation,” has been named the new leader of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.
Annie Pilote, dean of the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies at the Université Laval, was named chair of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences at its 2023 virtual annual meeting last month. Members also elected Debra Thompson as a new director on the board.
To address racial and ethnic inequalities in the U.S. criminal justice system, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine just released “Reducing Racial Inequality in Crime and Justice: Science, Practice and Policy.”
The ECPR-IPSA World of Political Science Survey 2023 assesses political science scholar’s viewpoints on the global status of the discipline and the challenges it faces, specifically targeting the phenomena of cancel culture, self-censorship and threats to academic freedom of expression.
The social and behavioral sciences supply evidence-based research that enables us to make sense of the shifting online landscape pertaining to mental health. We’ll explore three freely accessible articles (listed below) that give us a fuller picture on how TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and online forums affect mental health.
With research-based evidence increasingly being seen in policy, we should acknowledge that there are risks that the research or ‘evidence’ used isn’t suitable or can be accidentally misused for a variety of reasons.
Over a 10-year period Carol Tenopir of DataONE and her team conducted a global survey of scientists, managers and government workers involved in broad environmental science activities about their willingness to share data and their opinion of the resources available to do so (Tenopir et al., 2011, 2015, 2018, 2020). Comparing the responses over that time shows a general increase in the willingness to share data (and thus engage in Open Science).
When scientists make important discoveries, both big and small, they typically publish their findings in scientific journals for others to read. This […]
Yes, dad jokes can be fun. They play an important role in how we interact with our kids. But dad jokes may also help prepare them to handle embarrassment later in life.
When scientists make important discoveries, both big and small, they typically publish their findings in scientific journals for others to read. This […]
Kate Winslet’s biopic of Lee Miller, the pioneering woman war photographer, raises some interesting questions about the ethics of fieldwork and their […]
The interactional skill of large language models enables them to carry out qualitative research interviews at speed and scale. Demonstrating the ability of these new techniques in a range of qualitative enquiries, Friedrich Geiecke and Xavier Jaravel, present a new open source platform to support this new form of qualitative research.
Qualitative data analysis is a way of creating insight and empathy. Strategies for data analysis and interpretation are tools for meaning-making and […]
Qualitative data analysis is a way of creating insight and empathy. Strategies for data analysis and interpretation are tools for meaning-making and […]
After viewing the the televised version of the The Decameron, our Robert Dingwall asks what the farce set during the Black Death says about a more recent pandemic.
Yes, dad jokes can be fun. They play an important role in how we interact with our kids. But dad jokes may also help prepare them to handle embarrassment later in life.
Harvard psychology professor Joshua Greene studies the back-and-forth between emotion and reason in how human beings make moral decisions. In this Social […]
The relationship between citizens and their criminal justice systems comes down to just that – relationships. And those relations generally start with […]
In the first post from a series of bulletins on public data that social and behavioral scientists might be interested in, Gary Price links to an analysis from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
The next in SAGE Publishing’s How to Get Published webinar series focuses on promoting your writing after publication. The free webinar is set for November 16 at 4 p.m. BT/11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT.
At a time when there are so many concerns being raised about always-on work cultures and our right to disconnect, email is the bane of many of our working lives.
The interactional skill of large language models enables them to carry out qualitative research interviews at speed and scale. Demonstrating the ability of these new techniques in a range of qualitative enquiries, Friedrich Geiecke and Xavier Jaravel, present a new open source platform to support this new form of qualitative research.
The Accelerator For Innovation and Research Funding Experimentation (AFIRE) is a new tool dedicated to boosting and revitalizing the design, synthesis, and implementation of experiments through innovation and research funding.
A new database houses more 250 different useful artificial intelligence applications that can help change the way researchers conduct social science research.
This March, the Sage Politics team launches its first Politics Webinar Week. These webinars are free to access and will be delivered by contemporary politics experts —drawn from Sage’s team of authors and editors— who range from practitioners to instructors.
The U.S. National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have teamed up present a 90-minute online session examining how to balance public access to federally funded research results with an equitable publishing environment.
This was a great show! I am so happy you are producing this series. I look forward to each one. Glad to learn more about implicit bias.