(Harvard University)
The Mental Representation of Race in America: A New Science Compels a New Reckoning
A concept as complex as that of “race” in the American context must be understood at multiple levels from the literary to the biological. The work I will present is a view from experimental psychology, with a focus on the mental representation of race and ethnicity. Using studies of attention and perception, explicit and implicit attitudes/stereotypes, embeddings in language both historical and today, we will examine the inconsistency between stated values and mental representations and actions. With this evidence in hand, we can ask how such evidence should compel a new reckoning about the meaning of a good society.
This talk is co-hosted by Ohio State’s Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences as part of their series on the cognitive science of racial bias.