Region: North America

Issues: Children & Youth; Education; Tolerance

Focus: Implicit Prejudice and Stereotypes in Children: Basic Research and Teaching Tolerance

Details: Psychology, in the past, has paid relatively little attention to the development of social beliefs and attitudes. What we currently know about these concepts in children is based on verbal self-report measures that ask for introspective reports of what the child thinks and feels. These measures provide rich information about consciously accessible attitudes and beliefs, and especially with young children, it is conceivable that social pressures to report only acceptable views may not be as much of a problem as it is with adults. Yet it is clear that children early on are quite aware of the "right" answers to provide, and more importantly, just as with adults, children simply may not have access to their less conscious thoughts and feelings.

The need to move to indirect measurement of prejudice is urgent. A focus on these developmental questions has obvious potential for advancing knowledge about the origins of belief and preferences, of the ability to challenge and shape existing theories and knowledge regarding the nature of prejudice and the scope of its influence in everyday life. A commitment to Lewin's notion of "action research", of moving from phenomena in the world to the laboratory and back, has already led Dr. Banaji's team to consider the applications of their adult work to the workplace, as well as in legal and educational settings.

Such communication has improved their science and there is the hope that such work will have a positive effect on the society that supports this work by discovering what society ought to teach and especially how society ought to teach about tolerance. Dr. Banaji's main focus regarding the application of the research findings involves devising environments that can reduce both conscious and nonconscious bias.

Dr. Banaji studies human thinking and feeling as it unfolds in social context. Her focus is primarily on mental systems that operate in implicit or unconscious mode. In particular, she is interested in the unconscious nature of assessments of self and other humans that reflect feelings and knowledge (often unintended) about their social group membership (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, gender, class). From such study of attitudes and beliefs of adults and children, she asks about the social consequences of unintended thought and feeling. Her work relies on cognitive/affective behavioral measures and neuroimaging (fMRI) with which she explores the implications of her work for theories of individual responsibility and social justice.

External Links: Project Implicit | Mahzarin R. Banaji Profile | Publications