Black History Month Profile Series: Jennifer Eberhardt

This month, DPIC cel­e­brates Black History Month with week­ly pro­files of notable Black Americans whose work affect­ed the mod­ern death penal­ty era. The sec­ond in the series is Professor Jennifer Eberhardt. 

Jennifer Eberhardt, a pro­fes­sor of Psychology at Stanford University and a recip­i­ent of a MacArthur ​“genius grant,” stud­ies the rela­tion­ship between race and sen­tenc­ing. Her book, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, uncov­ers implic­it bias­es in all aspects of life, specif­i­cal­ly in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Dr. Eberhardt’s research expos­es how racial per­cep­tions and bias in death penal­ty sen­tenc­ing dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly prej­u­dice Black defendants. 

Dr. Eberhardt inves­ti­gates the race-crime asso­ci­a­tion in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment cas­es. In a ground­break­ing 2006 study, she and her col­leagues at Stanford found that Black defen­dants con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal crimes against white vic­tims were more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death if they had more stereo­typ­i­cal Black fea­tures, con­trol­ling for rel­e­vant vari­ables. Dr. Eberhardt and col­leagues con­clud­ed that stereo­typ­i­cal fea­tures of Black peo­ple may be a cue to ​“death­wor­thi­ness” for juries. 

Her research on the asso­ci­a­tion between Black peo­ple and apes shines a light on the dehu­man­iza­tion of Black peo­ple in our soci­ety. In a series of stud­ies, Dr. Eberhardt found that the per­cep­tions of peo­ple who implic­it­ly link Black peo­ple to apes affect their judg­ment of Black defen­dants. Her research found that the same peo­ple sup­port harsh­er con­se­quences for Black defen­dants because of their per­ceived con­nec­tion with apes, con­trol­ling for implic­it anti-Black bias. Furthermore, por­tray­als of Black defen­dants in asso­ci­a­tion with apes in the media were asso­ci­at­ed with jury death sentences.

Her recent research extends to racial pro­fil­ing, observ­ing the con­se­quences of implic­it bias in police stops through analy­sis of body cam­era footage. A recent study showed that esca­la­tion by police offi­cers at the begin­ning of the inter­ac­tion led to esca­lat­ed out­comes such as arrests and deten­tions. Police stops that result in esca­la­tion are more like­ly to begin with offi­cers using com­mands or refus­ing to inform dri­vers why they were pulled over. Such approach­es from police offi­cers were also found to cause neg­a­tive emo­tions in Black men, specif­i­cal­ly fear that offi­cers would use excessive force.

As a co-direc­tor of SPARQ, a behav­ioral sci­ence research cen­ter at Stanford University, Dr. Eberhardt works with law enforce­ment agen­cies such as the Oakland Police Department to ana­lyze their poli­cies for racial effects and find rea­son­able solu­tions. These ini­tia­tives fos­ter stronger rela­tion­ships between the police and the com­mu­ni­ty and enhance people’s aware­ness of their own implic­it bias­es. SPARQ con­tin­ues to use a data-dri­ven approach to uncov­er and elim­i­nate race-based dis­par­i­ties in the crim­i­nal justice system.

Dr. Eberhardt stress­es the impor­tance of uncov­er­ing our implic­it bias­es. Today, implic­it bias is often con­flat­ed with being racist, even though researchers like Dr. Eberhardt do not equate the terms. In her book, Dr. Eberhardt dis­cuss­es how implic­it bias­es affect us all, even her­self, and how it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to address them. Vice President Kamala Harris described her book as ​“crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion that can help lead­ers bet­ter under­stand how bias­es can impact our judg­ment and how we are per­ceived by the com­mu­ni­ties we are sworn to serve.” Author of best­seller Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, called Biased ​“ground­break­ing” and ​“a work with pow­er and craft to make us see why over­com­ing racial bias is so critical.”

Jennifer Eberhardt received her B.A. from the University of Cincinnati, and an A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology. She cur­rent­ly is a pro­fes­sor of Psychology at Stanford University, co-direc­tor of SPARQ, and on the board of direc­tors for the Innocence Project