How to Understand and Disrupt Racial Bias—with Jennifer L. Eberhardt | TED Business

Summary

In this TED Business talk, Jennifer L. Eberhardt, a social psychology professor at Stanford University, delves into the persistent and pervasive issue of racial bias. She shares insights on how stereotypes can lead to biased behavior in personal and professional life. Eberhardt highlights the importance of addressing and mitigating biases through awareness, adding friction to decision-making processes, and structural changes in business settings. Her research reveals that while bias is often ingrained, it's possible to counter it with conscious efforts and organizational strategies. The talk emphasizes adopting 'friction' in decision-making processes to curb automatic biased behaviors. Eberhardt's insights are not just applicable to law enforcement but can significantly impact fairness and equality in business environments.

Highlights

• Jennifer Eberhardt discusses the impact of racial bias and its roots in societal stereotypes. 🎤
• Examples of racial profiling are explored, such as Nextdoor's changes to curb bias on their platform. 📱
• Friction in decision-making can reduce bias, demonstrated by changes in the Oakland police department's procedures. 🚓
• Machine learning technology is used to identify bias in police body camera footage. 📷
• Fairness in business processes is achievable through structured evaluations that limit bias. 📋

Key Takeaways

• Bias and stereotypes often affect our decision-making processes, both consciously and unconsciously. 👀
• Adding 'friction' or slowing down decision-making can help reduce bias, as shown by the Nextdoor and Oakland police department examples. ⌛️
• Awareness and acknowledgment of our own biases is a crucial step towards mitigating them. 🤔
• Structured evaluation processes in businesses can decrease reliance on stereotypes, leading to fairer outcomes. 💼
• Exposure to diverse groups can help counter automatic stereotypical thinking. 👫

Overview

Jennifer L. Eberhardt provides a compelling overview of how deeply ingrained racial biases are in society and their implications in everyday settings. Using a personal anecdote involving her son, she illustrates how even young children can internalize stereotypes about race and crime. Her talk emphasizes the automatic nature of these biases and the need for conscious interventions to overcome them.

Eberhardt's research highlights how subtle biases can affect critical areas like law enforcement and education, often leading to unfair and harmful outcomes for marginalized groups. She shares examples of organizations like Nextdoor and the Oakland police department that successfully added 'friction' – or deliberate pauses – in their processes to reduce bias and racial profiling. These interventions show promise for rethinking and restructuring how decisions are made.

In the business world, Eberhardt suggests introducing structured processes to minimize bias in recruitment, evaluation, and management. By creating environments where decision-making is less susceptible to gut reactions, businesses can foster equity and inclusion. Eberhardt concludes by encouraging exposure to diverse groups as a natural buffer against ingrained stereotypes, promoting a more just and empathetic society.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Racial Bias and Stereotypes This chapter begins by presenting real-life examples of racial bias and stereotypes that people might encounter or exhibit in everyday situations. Examples include assumptions about individuals based on their race, such as perceiving an Indian person to be an IT expert, feeling threatened by a Black person on the street, or assuming an Asian individual is good at math. The purpose is to highlight the prevalence of these snap judgments and to emphasize the uncomfortable truth that everyone is subject to or can propagate stereotypes, intentionally or unintentionally.
• 01:00 - 06:00: Jennifer Eberhardt's TED Talk Jennifer Eberhardt explores the impact of stereotypes on our behavior, both in life and work contexts. Her research into bias has revealed her own personal biases, emphasizing the unconscious nature of these snap judgments and assumptions. The talk aims to address how to interrupt these automatic thoughts.
• 06:00 - 11:00: Research and Studies on Bias The chapter titled 'Research and Studies on Bias' features insights from Jennifer Eberhardt, a professor of management at Columbia Business School and director at the San Francis Bernstein and Company Center for Leadership and Ethics. In her TED 2020 talk, she explores the reasons behind our tendencies to make broad generalizations and discusses both the advantages and disadvantages of such biases. These biases can have detrimental effects on both personal relationships and business environments. Jennifer Eberhardt, also a social psychology professor at Stanford University, delves into the impact of psychological biases.
• 11:00 - 17:00: Implementing Friction to Reduce Bias In the chapter titled 'Implementing Friction to Reduce Bias', the speaker discusses the association between race and crime and highlights the work of an esteemed individual who received the MacArthur Genius Fellowship and authored the book 'Biased'. This book delves into the hidden prejudices influencing our thoughts and actions. The speaker provides insightful tools and strategies to combat biased behavior, which can be readily implemented in business environments. Following the talk, the speaker promises to share personal experiences on addressing biases.
• 17:00 - 23:00: Police Bias and Technology The chapter titled 'Police Bias and Technology' begins with a personal anecdote from a speaker who recounts an experience on an airplane with their five-year-old son. The son, engrossed in the excitement of the flight, observes a man and remarks that he looks like his father. This opening sets the stage for discussions likely revolving around perceptions, biases, and possibly the role of technology in influencing or revealing such biases in societal contexts.
• 23:00 - 28:00: Personal Reflection and Acknowledgment of Bias In this chapter, the narrator experiences a moment of introspection while observing a man on a plane who looks nothing like her husband, contrary to her initial assumption. She notices that he is the only black man on the plane and recognizes the need to discuss with her son the importance of acknowledging individual differences and not generalizing people based on race or appearance. The chapter highlights the narrator's acknowledgment of bias and the importance of personal reflection on such societal issues.
• 28:00 - 35:00: Applying Bias Reduction in Business Context The chapter begins with a dialogue where one person expresses a stereotypical fear about someone robbing a plane. This sets the stage for discussing biases and prejudice in business contexts. It highlights how assumptions based on stereotypes can impact our interactions and decision-making processes in business. The conversation reflects a common scenario where misconceptions and biases can arise, prompting a reflection on the importance of addressing these biases to foster a more equitable and understanding business environment. The chapter likely explores techniques and strategies for recognizing and mitigating such biases to improve interpersonal and organizational outcomes.
• 35:00 - 39:00: The Role of Exposure in Reducing Bias The chapter titled 'The Role of Exposure in Reducing Bias' delves into the impact of societal exposure on young minds, emphasizing how deeply entrenched racial stratification is. It discusses a scenario where even a five-year-old intuitively understands racial biases and expected social roles, despite the absence of explicit hatred or malevolent intent. The narrative highlights the insidious nature of bias and the role that passive societal conditioning plays in perpetuating stereotypes. This underscores the importance of intentional exposure and education to combat inherently ingrained racial biases.
• 39:00 - 39:09: Conclusion and Podcast Credits This chapter discusses the pervasive impact of crime and racial disparities on the minds of children and society. It highlights how these disparities shape perceptions and narratives, leading to a generalized view of certain groups as criminals or violent. This shaping of mentality begins from a young age, illustrating the societal challenges rooted in racial inequality.

How to Understand and Disrupt Racial Bias—with Jennifer L. Eberhardt | TED Business Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 thinking the indian guy in your office elevator is nit and handing them your computer hearing footsteps behind you as you walk down the street noticing a black person and immediately putting your cell phone away lest you get robbed giving the plush quant heavy assignment to your asian employee because they must be good at math these are all examples that my students shared with me snap judgments they made or fell victim to the uncomfortable truth is that we all
• 00:30 - 01:00 hold stereotypes that can lead to biased or discriminatory behavior in both life and work in fact my research on bias has brought me face to face with some of my own biases so how do we stop ourselves from making snap judgments and assumptions when they're so automatic that we might not even see them welcome to the ted business podcast i'm your host madupa akanola associate
• 01:00 - 01:30 professor of management at columbia business school and director of the san francis bernstein and company center for leadership and ethics in her talk at ted 2020 jennifer eberhardt explains why we make these gross generalizations and discusses the benefits and costs because these types of biases can be harmful personally and for our businesses jennifer eberhardt is a social psychology professor at stanford university she researches the consequences of the psychological
• 01:30 - 02:00 association between race and crime she received the prestigious macarthur genius fellowship and authored the book biased which discusses the hidden prejudice that shapes our thoughts perceptions and behaviors in this riveting talk jennifer offers us tools to stop ourselves from engaging in bias behavior tools that we can apply right away in our business settings i'll explain how right after the talk and i'll tell you how i rooted out one big bias that i
• 02:00 - 02:30 used to hold some years ago i was on an airplane with my son who was just five years old at the time my son was so excited about being on this airplane with mommy he's looking all around and he's checking things out and he's checking people out and he sees this man and he says hey that guy looks like daddy
• 02:30 - 03:00 and i look at the man and he didn't look anything at all like my husband nothing at all and so then i started looking around on the plane and i noticed this man was the only black guy on the plane and i thought all right i'm gonna have to have a little talk with my son about how not all black people look alike my son he he lifts his head up and he
• 03:00 - 03:30 says to me i hope he doesn't rob the plane and i said what what did you say and he says well i hope that man doesn't rob the plane and i said well why would you say that you know daddy wouldn't rob a plane and he says yeah yeah yeah well i know and i said well why would you say that and he looked at me with this really sad
• 03:30 - 04:00 face and he says i don't know why i said that i don't know why i was thinking that we are living with such severe racial stratification that even a five-year-old can tell us what's supposed to happen next even with no evil doer even with no explicit hatred this association between blackness and
• 04:00 - 04:30 crime made its way into the mind of my five-year-old it makes its way into all of our children into all of us our minds are shaped by the racial disparities we see out in the world and the narratives that help us to make sense of the disparities we see those people are criminal those people are violent those people
• 04:30 - 05:00 are to be feared when my research team brought people into our lab and exposed them to faces we found that exposure to black faces led them to see blurry images of guns with greater clarity and speed bias can not only control what we see but where we look we found that prompting people to think of violent crime can lead them to
• 05:00 - 05:30 direct their eyes onto a black face and away from a white face prompting police officers to think of capturing and shooting and arresting leads their eyes to settle on black faces too bias can infect every aspect of our criminal justice system in a large data set of death eligible defendants we found that looking more black more than double their chances of receiving a death sentence
• 05:30 - 06:00 at least when their victims were white this effect is significant even though we controlled for the severity of the crime and the defendant's attractiveness and no matter what we controlled for we found that black people were punished in proportion to the blackness of their physical features the more black the more death worthy bias can also influence how teachers discipline students my colleagues and i have found that
• 06:00 - 06:30 teachers express a desire to discipline a black middle school student more harshly than a white student for the same repeated infractions in a recent study we're finding that teachers treat black students as a group but white students as individuals if for example one black student misbehaves and then a different black student misbehaves a few days later the teacher responds to that second
• 06:30 - 07:00 black student as if he had misbehaved twice it's as though the sins of one child get piled onto the other we create categories to make sense of the world to assert some control and coherence to the stimuli that we're constantly being bombarded with categorization and the bias that it seeds allow our brains to make judgments more quickly and efficiently and we do this
• 07:00 - 07:30 by instinctively relying on patterns that seem predictable yet just as the categories we create allow us to make quick decisions they also reinforce bias so the very things that help us to see the world also can blind us to it they render our choices effortless friction free yet they exact a heavy toll what can we do
• 07:30 - 08:00 we are all vulnerable to bias but we don't act on bias all the time there are certain conditions that can bring bias alive and other conditions that can muffle it let me give you an example many people are familiar with the tech company next door so their whole purpose is to create stronger healthier safer neighborhoods and so they offer this online space
• 08:00 - 08:30 where neighbors can gather and share information yet next door soon found that they had a problem with racial profiling in the typical case people would look outside their window and see a black man in their otherwise white neighborhood and make the snap judgment that he was up to no good even when there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in many ways how we behave online is a reflection of how we
• 08:30 - 09:00 behave in the world but what we don't want to do is to create an easy-to-use system that can amplify bias and deepen racial disparities rather than dismantling them so the co-founder of next door reached out to me and to others to try to figure out what to do and they realized that to curb racial profiling on the platform they were going to have to add friction that is they were going to have to slow people down so next door had a choice to make
• 09:00 - 09:30 and against every impulse they decided to add friction and they did this by adding a simple checklist there were three items on it first they asked users to pause and think what was this person doing that made him suspicious the category black man is not grounds for suspicion second they asked users to describe the person's physical features
• 09:30 - 10:00 not simply their race and gender third they realized that a lot of people didn't seem to know what racial profiling was nor that they were engaging in it so next door provided them with a definition and told them that it was strictly prohibited most of you have seen those signs in airports and in metro stations if you see something say something next door try modifying this
• 10:00 - 10:30 if you see something suspicious say something specific and using this strategy by simply slowing people down next door was able to curb racial profiling by 75 percent now people often will say to me you can't add friction you know in every situation in every context and especially for people who make split-second decisions all the time
• 10:30 - 11:00 but it turns out we can add friction to more situations than we think working with the oakland police department in california i and a number of my colleagues were able to help the department to reduce the number of stops they made of people who were not committing any serious crimes and we did this by pushing officers to ask themselves a question before each and every stop they made is this stop intelligence led yes or no
• 11:00 - 11:30 in other words do i have prior information to tie this particular person to a specific crime by adding that question to the forum officer is complete during a stop they slow down they pause they think why am i considering pulling this person over in 2017 before we added that intelligence-led question to the form
• 11:30 - 12:00 officers made about 32 000 stops across the city in that next year with the addition of this question that fell to 19 000 stops african-american stops alone fell by 43 percent and stopping fewer black people did not make the city any more dangerous in fact the crime rate continued to fall and the city became safer for everybody so one solution can come from reducing the
• 12:00 - 12:30 number of unnecessary stops another can come from improving the quality of the stops officers do make and technology can help us here we all know about george floyd's death because those who tried to come to his aid held cell phone cameras to record that horrific fatal encounter with the police but we have all sorts of technology that we're not putting to good use
• 12:30 - 13:00 police departments across the country are now required to wear body worn cameras so we have recordings of not only the most extreme and horrific encounters but of everyday interactions with an interdisciplinary team at stanford we've begun to use machine learning techniques to analyze large numbers of encounters this is to better understand what happens in routine traffic stops what we found
• 13:00 - 13:30 was that even when police officers are behaving professionally they speak to black drivers less respectfully than white drivers in fact from the words officers use alone we could predict whether they were talking to a black driver or a white driver the problem is that the vast majority of the footage from these cameras is not used by police departments to understand what's going on on the street
• 13:30 - 14:00 or to train officers and that's a shame how does a routine stop turn into a deadly encounter how did this happen in george floyd's case how did it happen in others when my eldest son was 16 years old he discovered that when white people look at him they feel fear elevators are the worst he said when those doors close people are
• 14:00 - 14:30 trapped in this tiny space with someone they have been taught to associate with danger my son senses their discomfort and he smiles to put them at ease to calm their fears when he speaks their bodies relax they breathe easier they take pleasure in his cadence his diction his word choice
• 14:30 - 15:00 he sounds like one of them i used to think that my son was a natural extrovert like his father but i realized at that moment in that conversation that his smile was not a sign that he wanted to connect with would-be strangers it was a talisman he used to protect himself a survival skill he had honed over thousands of elevator rides he was learning to accommodate the
• 15:00 - 15:30 tension that his skin color generated and that put his own life at risk we know that the brain is wired for bias and one way to interrupt that bias is to pause and to reflect on the evidence of our assumptions so we need to ask ourselves what assumptions do we bring when we step onto an elevator or an airplane
• 15:30 - 16:00 how do we make ourselves aware of our own unconscious bias who do those assumptions keep safe who do they put at risk until we ask these questions and insist that our schools and our courts and our police departments at every institution do the same we will continue to allow bias to blind us
• 16:00 - 16:30 and if we do none of us are truly safe thank you [Music] jennifer eberhardt is an inspiration on so many dimensions she actually inspired my dissertation research her findings that police officers are quicker at associating blacks with criminality made me wonder the extent to
• 16:30 - 17:00 which stress might exacerbate those associations and i discovered in a shooting simulation that under stress police officers were more accurate in their shooting decisions with black targets than they were with white targets in a nutshell we instructed officers in the simulation to shoot armed targets but not unarmed ones and we found that under stress which can make you vigilant to threat officers were better at making quick decisions to shoot an armed target
• 17:00 - 17:30 when that target was black not white why is this even relevant for our everyday business dealings because organizations regularly afford greater privileges to white male employees relative to black people employees of color and females even if they don't mean to and even if they don't realize they're doing it this is bad for business as it means that not everyone is reaching their fullest potential now to solve this toxic problem our
• 17:30 - 18:00 business decisions need what jennifer calls friction and from what i've seen friction and business decisions means structure structure that reduces ambiguity and reduces reliance on open box open-ended processes and questions first let's start with thinking about the everyday work context where bias can loom its ugly head where we might need to apply some structure to stop it the most obvious is recruitment and
• 18:00 - 18:30 selection but beyond hiring there's also onboarding and orientation retention performance management all of these are breeding grounds where our snap judgments can lead to preferential treatment for white males relative to all other categories structure can help build fairness into all of these big decision points for instance think of the simple step of removing names from resumes during hiring but i want to focus on performance
• 18:30 - 19:00 management and feedback systems as places where friction can and should be introduced to reduce bias you want to know what some studies have shown feedback can be more positive to people of color relative to white people now this might seem counterintuitive because negative stereotypes about the abilities and competence of minorities would make it seem like that feedback should be more negative but this positivity bias comes from evaluators wanting to appear egalitarian not wanting to appear prejudiced and fearing
• 19:00 - 19:30 that overly negative feedback could make people of color they're evaluating less engaged and less trustful ironically praise and positivity can prevent people of color from learning and improving their performance which is critical to career progression and what about women in performance evaluations shelley carell and her team at stanford found that in evaluation processes women were more likely to receive vague feedback with few details on what went
• 19:30 - 20:00 well and how to advance men on the other hand tended to receive longer reviews highlighting their technical abilities while women's reviews were shorter and focused on communication skills so how do we create friction through structure in evaluation processes here's what corel and colleagues suggest friction looks like having clear checklists that outline specific assessment criteria and prompt the evaluator to judge performance based on these criteria this prevents evaluators
• 20:00 - 20:30 from relying on gut reactions which is where stereotyping can emerge friction looks like moving away from vague questions such as what is the employee done well what are areas of improvement to instead being specific for each employee consistently identifying three explicit and measurable results they've achieved in the company studied by corel and colleagues ninety percent of managers reported that questions like this helped
• 20:30 - 21:00 them to be more fair and consistent those are all examples of structures and processes that can help us slow down our evaluation decisions enough to stop stereotypes from making those decisions for us but you know what i believe the first step is in much of this bias reduction work acknowledging our imperfections accepting we're all biased in some shape or fashion and noticing when we engage in this behavior whether as managers or
• 21:00 - 21:30 as coworkers this is something we can all make an effort to do whether or not we're hiring or recruiting or evaluating anyone's performance and it's what i had to do in the work i've done with police inspired by jennifer growing up in harlem in the 80s and 90s which was predominantly black and latino the dominant narrative was that police are bad and i'm not saying there aren't bad biased officers on the police force
• 21:30 - 22:00 there certainly are but the months and years i've spent working with police across the u.s have exposed me to officers who are generous thoughtful committed to my safety your safety regardless of our skin color people who have dedicated their lives to serving they too are appalled by racial disparities in policing and by the tragedies that have occurred this antidote to bias is not about structure but about exposure spending time with people who defy the
• 22:00 - 22:30 stereotype and that has helped change the automatic negative association ingrained in me since childhood so whatever role you're playing in your business in addition to pausing in addition to adding friction to processes where bias lurks don't forget to spend time with people who don't look like you people who are negatively stereotyped in society people who are counter stereotypical exemplars as i believe that is one of the best
• 22:30 - 23:00 bias elixirs of them all [Music] thanks so much for tuning in ted business is hosted by me madupa akanola grace rubenstein is our producer the show is edited by sheena ozaki and mixed by dan dazula special thanks to colin helms michelle quint angela chang corey hayjim and anna phelan until next week [Music]