Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

Love the book!

I received this book as part of my subscription to the Next Big Idea Club, and as soon as I had it in my hands, I was excited to read it. Biased is a scientific, uncompromising, empathetic look at bias (often specifically racial bias).I try to read books that will help me become a less biased person whenever they are recommended, but I think this is one of the best ones I’ve read. Dr. Eberhardt is so clear and so compelling, and she comes at the subject in a way that’s unbiased in and of itself — because all her points are so strongly grounded in psychology research, in sociology research, and in neurological research. The result is information that’s straightforward and forgiving — we are all human, and there are real, human reasons for bias, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do everything we can to counteract those reasons.Woven throughout the book are stories from Dr. Eberhardt’s life — the time she was arrested because a police officer thought her car was stolen, because she had out of state plates, the night before she received her doctorate from Harvard; the time her young son feared that a Black man in dreadlocks would rob their plane for no reason. It adds color, makes everything so real, and pulls you through her narrative.I think one of the most interesting things I learned from this book is that the human brain is literally hardwired to be able to tell people apart better when they are members of your own community. The fact that your brain does that isn’t racism, it’s a bias that leads to more efficient information processing, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t be working hard to un-train your brain, because if you act on it, that is racism. And it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be working to make sure that communities are as integrated as possible so that it doesn’t happen as severely in the first place.I definitely recommend this book for everyone — the things I learned are going to make me a better person.

As a Hispanic male in my 50s I was not sure I needed to read this book. I have been a victim of bias and prejudice all of my life and I was not sure there was anything new Dr. Eberhardt could tell me that I didn’t already know. I decided to listen to the book on audio during my drive to and from work. I found the book so riveting and thought provoking that I had to order a hardcopy of the book as well so I could flag important passages for future reference. EVERYONE should read this book!

Academic approach enlightened by personal vignettes works well. She invites self reflection without demanding self condemnation. Her breezy style makes a tough subject highly readable.

I enjoyed reading this book and appreciate that it covered many races and their similar stories. I do agree that Blacks experience a unique challenge compared to all others minorities since others are sometimes able to pass as white in some context. I appreciate the coverage of techniques that do work in education, that’s the only place where I wish there were more coverage. I have asked my Black and Latino peers for advice, but have been told not to generalize, which is exactly what this book says is not helpful and leads to not seeing our discrimination.

Talk about amazing stories and insight. This book opened up amazing conversations and self reflecting. Cannot recommend highly enough. Everyone should read this, I’m already sharing with some friends and family!

I was told to read White Fragility; I did. I have found this to be a better source for many of my colleagues. It pretty much says the same thing, but prompts self-reflection and awareness rather than defensiveness. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the issues of today, how are past determines who we are as a society, and what we can do about it.

We bought this book for our teenage daughter, who is developing a strong interest in social justice issues – on the recommendation of her school teacher. The book is extremely well-written and engaging – our daughter found it very hard to “put it down”. The book has opened her eyes to the extent of the prejudice still common in our society, which (thankfully) she has not witnessed within her own peer group, and has been the catalyst for some very interesting conversations at home. Wholeheartedly recommend it!

Great read.

The blend of science and research and history and personal anecdote is powerful and helps me remember the most salient ideas in this seminal book. I will never present on racism without some reference to this work again.

Needed for a book study at work.

Each time an unarmed black man or black child has been shot and killed by police in the U.S. in recent years, some in the media, local law enforcement, and community ask why, and what will cause change? The answers to these questions are probed in a meticulous and scientific way through Dr. Eberhardt’s new book, Biased. With strong precision Dr. Eberhardt describes scientific evidence that helps us understand the millions of cross-racial interactions that occur every day around the world, and the ways our minds process information, implicitly and explicitly, to affect our reactions to those around us. With each scientific study, personal account, or interview provided in the book, we come to learn more about ourselves and our humanity, and the simple yet complex ways we operate across our communities, universities, and corporations in racialized ways. This is not a book that places blame on any one group. In fact, the author makes us see how blame is misguided. Instead, she provides us with a steady set of evidence about the nature of the problem of bias and what we might do to address it. We come to learn how race-based associations are core to our history in the U.S. and why even the very “best” people among us can come to have unconscious associations that lead us to fear complete strangers or even our neighbors, without cause.

This book brilliantly explains some of the ways our environment affects our attitudes, reactions, and opinions, and how challenging it can be to detect and analyze them. In particular, our cultural environment effectively shapes our “system one” (Our brains’ fast, automatic, unconscious, and emotional response to situations and stimuli) reactions—and how these can lead to uncomfortable, difficult, and even tragic outcomes. Since we have all grown up in the same environment, none of us is immune, but the good news is that we can recognize our biases and consciously choose how to react. This is not a one-time thing. It requires continual diligence and care, but Socrates told us “the unexamined life is not worth living.” What I liked best about this book is the thoughtful and empathetic approach of the author. It is never preachy or accusatory. Ms. Eberhardt approaches the subject like a scientist, helping to uncover more about how humans work and how even with small actions we can make a difference.

One of the best books I have read in years.

I picked up this book since I work in the field of discrimination law and wanted to have a better understanding of inherent biases. Like everyone I have biases, I understood how some developed but this book gave me real context for how they develop and how our brain uses biases. Understanding the science gives me a way to check myself without a shame spiral and ultimately be a better friend, neighbor, co-worker and human.The author writes in an accessible manner and most importantly without judgment. She delivers data with anecdotal stories that give meaning to the data. I highly recommend this book to everyone, especially those in public service roles, and those looking to be better members of society.

Jennifer Eberhardt has done a great service by exposing, explaining, and addressing the causes and consequences of bias and, importantly, the ways we can individually and collectively change our attitudes and behavior. Through a mix of clearly explained scientific research and compelling–often heart wrenching–personal and historical stories, she educates us with empathy and encourages us to open our eyes and hearts. I am giving this book to everyone I know, including the young African women I mentor who are in college in the U.S. What we don’t know–or choose to deny or ignore–can hurt us. But we can do and be better.

I recommend it 100%. I had to read it for a promotional test but I recommend it to everyone. This book can bring so much awareness to your own bias.

incredible and necessary read

Outstanding book on how implicit bias and systemic racism plagues our communities. The personal vignettes make the book chilling, compelling us to look at unexamined biases and driving us to action.

Over the past several months I’ve read a few books on racism.From a Christian perspective:”The Gospel and Racial Reconciliation” Russell Moore and Andrew T. Walker”One Blood: Parting words to the church on race” John. M. Perkins”From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race” J. Daniel HaysFrom a non-Christian perspective:”Stamped from the Beginning” Ibram X. Kendi”White Fragility” by Robin DeAngelo”Biased: Uncovering Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What we See, Think, and Do” Jennifer L. EberhardtI really really enjoyed “Biased.” If someone (white) came to me and asked where he should start reading on the issue of race, I would start him with “Biased.”No one likes to be called a racist…so might I interest you in a little bit of biased? Guess what, you are prone to think better of people who look like you. Guess what, everyone else is too. This book does a great job of exposing deep-seated bias without coming across as demonizing people as being closeted Klan members.If you are at all interested or wondering about the race discussion in America, this is where I think you should start.

Hits hard in the beginning, but offers a path forward and hope. Important for policy makers and those who care about good policy.

This is an outstanding book. It covers very deep topics with strong academic rigor, yet remains amazingly easy to read. I finished in a few days, but will be thinking about it much longer. If you have any interest in understanding people as well as some of the issues hard wired into our brains, pick up this book

This book was very informative and provides some great insight. I suggest ordering this if you would like to take a deeper look into the study and research behind bias and it’s effects.

Great educational book!

This book sparked some good conversations in class. The portion about driving on the opposite side of the road and the kids noticing the vehicle the parents almost hit because they didn’t have the same muscle memory in the driver’s wheel made me think about how difficult it to understand other people are experiencing on a daily basis because we’re all going through the expected motions in our day-to-day life. A classmate mentioned that growing up she had to be more careful in crowds and not do things like cut-off someone in foot traffic at the store. If you tick someone off and things escalate in the store aisle it wouldn’t end well for her as a black woman, regardless of who was at fault.It was surprising to hear how her classes went in the prisons. Having the classroom was probably a huge help. I also wondered how classes were affected during the pandemic. I don’t know if prisoners would feel as comfortable engaging in the ways that the author described if they were doing class over a Zoom channel that might be recorded.The portion regarding ways that POC have scrub their resumes was sad to read. I’ve read articles in the past about applicants turning in two applications to an active job posting. Both applications were identical aside from one application having a white sounding name and another having a black sounding name, and the white sounding name being the only one getting a call back. I haven’t heard of POC having to do things like adding hobbies such as hiking to their resumes to make themselves sound like they’ve assimilated to white culture. That part is disappointing to hear given how difficult and frustrating the job hunt already is. When I got out of the military the feedback I got from places like Work Source was that you shouldn’t mention deployments on your resume or during interviews because it’ll put the unconscious suggestion in the employer’s mind that you have PTSD. So, while it was sad to read, it was not difficult at all to believe.

i’ve been deeply involved in issues of bias since I was 10 (1942) and professionally involved since 1956. This great book on implicit bias astonished me both by educating me to some of the scientific literature I had missed but, more importantly than that, led me to a great deal of self-examination about my own implicit biases. Beautifully written, and sometimes heart rending, BIASED should be part of the education of every human being — from teenagers to the very elderly (like me). Give it to your friends (and enemies!).

I am married to an African Woman. I didn’t know what white privilege was until I witnessed the struggle she’s going through. Prejudice is still alive. Especially in education. It’s okay for a black woman to be a teacher but when she gets her doctorate and wants to get into administration she has multiple roadblocks in her path.From Superintendents that will release white teachers from their contracts. In one situation she passed the first interviews but when it came to interview with the school board. The board members didn’t even ask a single question and just ignored her.This is a paradox. Educators are supposed to be open minded until it doesn’t fit their own bias.

This book should be read by all high school students and college students, by everyone. The information is quite pertinent. Enjoyed every minute of it. Thanks Ms .Eberhart for such a great book

explains the brains natural tendencies towards under appreciated bias. dangerous to the point of planetary specie survival.

Human psychology is both wonderful and confounding. Psychology was my first love in the social sciences. It was my undergraduate focus and the discipline in which I conducted my first professional-quality research. It still enraptures me today, and I can’t describe my excitement to finally be teaching psychology for the first time this fall. At the same time, studying the human mind at this level can be a sobering, morale-squashing endeavor. But it is never hopeless. Psychology will not always give you the answers, but as a science it can guide you in the right direction, slowly but surely. That makes psychology hopeful, even when surveying the darkest corners of the human condition.Jennifer L. Eberhardt, PhD captures this tension exquisitely in her new book (releasing tomorrow, March 26), Biased. She takes on the subject of bias in the context of police shootings and other instances of inherent bias in today’s culture. This means that the primary focus is on racial bias and stereotypes, and for good reason: Eberhardt also has personal experience that speaks volumes on this subject. However, Eberhardt does not limit her study to racial bias but also offers examples and insight on gender bias as well. It is a comprehensive view of cognitive bias with a distinct focus.Eberhardt uses history in order to both portray racial bias and speak on the development of the field of cognitive bias research in the social sciences. She speaks in depth on Social Darwinism and other theories that feed on cognitive bias (subjects that need more direct discussion in our current era), and in order to situate the subject in its historical context she discusses the social scientist Walter Lippman at length. Lippman (who displayed a bit of bias himself throughout his career) was the first to apply the idea of “stereotyping” in the social sciences. Eberhardt quotes Lippman in order to help readers grasp the power of stereotypes:“There is economy in stereotyping”, he wrote. “For the attempt to see all things freshly and in detail, rather than as types and generalities, is exhausting…. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety…. [W]e have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage with it.”We stereotype because we’re human and we cannot process data well. It’s simply easier to put things and people into “types and generalities” than it is to process everything separately. And, guess what, a lot of times we are right. But that’s what lulls us into complacency and makes us think our stereotypes are reliable. They are not. They are misleading, dangerous, and destructive. They lead us into bias.Racial biases seep into every aspect of our lives without our awareness. Eberhardt makes this clear in her original research and relays others’ as well. The following passage contains the most shocking (for me) revelation:Researchers Max Weisbuch, Kristin Pauker, and Nalini Ambady chose eleven popular television shows that have positive representations of black characters — including CSI and Grey’s Anatomy, where black characters are doctors, police officers, and scientists. The researchers showed study participants ten-second clips of a variety of white characters interacting with the same black character, but with the sound muted and the black characters edited out of the frame. Participants who were unfamiliar with the shows were asked to watch a number of these clips and to rate how much each unseen character was liked and was being treated positively by the white characters on the screen. Sometimes the unseen character was black, and sometimes the unseen character was white. A consistent pattern emerged when the researchers pooled the ratings: participants perceived the unseen black characters in these popular shows to be less liked and treated less positively by the other characters than the unseen white characters. The black characters were surrounded by a cast of white characters who — through their subtle facial expressions and body movements — communicated less regard for them. And the television viewers were affected by this: The more negative the nonverbal actions directed at the unseen black characters, the more antiblack bias the study participants revealed on an implicit association test following the showing. That is, there was evidence for a type of “bias contagion.” The researchers found this to be the case even though the study participants were unable to identify any consistent pattern in treatment of the white and black characters when asked to do so directly.So where is the hope? Eberhardt devotes much of the book to this question. There are pathways out of bias, although none of them are sure. But there is most definitely hope. Her explorations of tech companies NextDoor and Airbnb share the problems that these giants encountered with respect to stereotyping and bias, but they also provide the solutions that NextDoor and Airbnb employed to successfully combat these issues. I won’t spoil the details of these success stories, but know that they provide hope.It also seems that exposure and discussion, in the right context, can cure some bias. This does not mean that bias will eventually go away as our world becomes more cosmopolitan. It does not mean we can sit back and wait it out. It means we need to work to provide the environment for such exposure and discussion to occur.It also means we need to be aware of the bias within ourselves and not think someone is attacking us when it is pointed out, directly or indirectly. I wanted to find a reason to reject the study about TV shows and racial bias, but I found that I couldn’t. Why did it bother me so much? Because if actors in TV shows can display racial bias without even thinking about it, then I could too. Anti-black bias isn’t even contained to white people either (a fact that becomes clear throughout Biased). It is something deeply ingrained in our culture, in our bones, in our unconscious thoughts. Awareness is the first step to dealing with it. Which is why you need to read this book. It haven’t seen or heard of a more coherent and complete discussion of bias. It could be the next classic book in modern cognitive and social psychology.I received this book as an eARC courtesy of Viking and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.

What an AMAZING book! I am so glad I read it. It brought to light so many unconscious biases I wasn’t aware of. Elegantly written. I intend to re-read it because I know I can learn more from it a second time around. I’m working towards my masters in counseling and I will take what I learned in this book and directly apply it.

Well researched, intelligently written, thought provoking, disturbing yet critical information to know. So relevant to these times. A call for change.

One of the most impressive books of this Spring is Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt’s Biased. A superbly revealing book on racism. Some of her thoughts are not entirely new, but her language, and her concise way of developing new ideas gives a fresh dimension to some of the very severe manifestations of insidious racism that are still present. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers.Some of her summaries on intolerance are so trenchant. Unfortunately many of her observations are well known to the liberal communities. These can be anecdotal as well as original.I love a term she uses “multiple selves.”On rereading some of her paragraphs it is not quite clear to me if people even realize some of their subconscious traits that have been learned from childhood.Biased may offer a preview of some of her future books with new scholarship, her role as a mother, and her penetrating conclusions.

The book isn’t a cure for bias but it does provide countless examples of real people experiencing bias and the why and where it comes from finishing with some hopeful solutions they’ve found. But I think the reminders of how bias is harmful will bring awareness and help too.

The studies referenced really opened my eyes and filled me with fact filled hope for a better future for all people of every color.

I totally enjoyed the book. Timely and well written

Dr. Eberhardt does an excellent job weaving science along with personal stories that make it engaging and educating at the same time. I’ve studied these topics extensively, and this is one of the best and most accessible books explaining the problem, along with practical ways to start to take steps toward righting the wrongs of 400 years of African-American subjugation.

This book is a refreshingly great read about an incredibly difficult subject. Jennifer Eberhardt, PhD has the rare ability to put her readers at ease while discussing an incredibly difficult, complex and critical issue. What I expected, (my biases) was to walk away feeling beaten on, what I received was some really really great insight into why we form the biases we do and how our culture, job personal background and biology all plays a role. It was backed up with scientific evidence, years of experience and a willingness to treat people as individuals. This is a book that can reach across divides and make connections people of all backgrounds can relate too. I can’t recommend it enough.

I felt it was easy to read and digest.

This well organized, fascinating book provides the psychology of bias, giving the reader multiple pathways to increase personal awareness and to begin to change behavior so bias doesn’t impede decision making in our complex world.

A book that will speak to your head, heart, and soul, written by Macarthur Genius Grant winner and Stanford psychology professor Jennifer Eberhardt. I don’t think I will ever forget some of the stories she shared. And, despite being a researcher in this field, there are studies she describes which are either new to me or resonating in new ways through her explanations. Professor Eberhardt is a masterful writer and teacher, who somehow walks the tightrope of being both scientific and personal in her work. I feel very lucky to have seen an advance galley of this book and highly recommend this book.

Great book, very balanced and informative. Also very data driven which was refreshing.

The author addresses very difficult subjects with skill as a researcher, sometime victim, community participant, and writer. In particular, she weaves the result of research studies, her own and others’, into the narrative in a way that is totally transparent to non-experts. She also weaves personal stories, her own and others’, into what becomes a page-turner. And finally, she helps us see hope in the darkness.