Mahzarin R. Banaji
Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics
Harvard University Implicit Social Cognition
How deep are the bounds on human thinking and feeling and how do they shape social interactions and decisions? For the past 25 years, I have studied mental processes that appear to operate without conscious awareness or conscious control. In social contexts, the decisions that stem from such processes (i.e., automatically elicited social preferences and beliefs) can be at odds with consciously expressed preferences and beliefs including one’s own cherished moral values. From this basic dissociation between implicit and explicit attitudes and beliefs we have explored all aspects of the nature of implicit social cognition: its universality and cultural variations, its developmental origins, neural underpinnings, and stability and malleability. I will provide an overview of this research program with special focus on the experiments that are currently underway in the lab. Light refreshments will be served after the lecture. This lecture is made possible by a generous Endowment by the family of Allen. L. Edwards. |