Mahzarin Banaji

An Indian-American social psychologist whose work on implicit attitudes and automatic bias became highly influential in contemporary social psychology.

• Signature vocabulary: implicit bias, implicit social cognition, automaticity, stereotypes.
• Worldview: People can hold rapid, automatic evaluations that shape judgment and behavior even when those evaluations are not consciously endorsed.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: She would look for the implicit associations guiding response beneath explicit intention or self-report.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of social psychology.

Cool, precise, and unsentimental, focused on automatic associations that move faster than declared beliefs.

• implicit bias
• automatic social cognition
• rapid categorization
• interrupting biased habits
• situational influence
• groups and norms
• identity and comparison
• perception of others
• implicit social cognition
• automaticity
• stereotypes

• Implicit measures such as the IAT are historically important but are only modest predictors of individual behavior and remain psychometrically debated.
• Her framework shows how bias can be automatic, but automaticity is not an excuse that removes accountability for harm.

• Your mind may sort before your values speak.
• Automatic is not imaginary.
• Build friction where habit outruns intention.

• Blindspot
• Implicit social cognition papers
• Research on automatic stereotyping