Mahzarin R. Banaji

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Mahzarin R. Banaji studies thought and emotion as they unfold in a social context. In particular, she studies those mental processes that operate outside conscious awareness and intention. She asks how unconscious assessments of the self and others reflect knowledge and feelings (often unintended) about social categories: e.g., age, class, disability, gender, nationality, race/ethnicity, religion, and sexuality.

During the fellowship year, Banaji will integrate evidence on the evolutionary history of intergroup conflict, the developmental origins of intergroup preferences, and the neural mechanisms involved in self-other comparisons.

Banaji received her PhD from Ohio State University in 1986 and taught at Yale University, where she was the Reuben Post Halleck Professor of Psychology until 2001. In 2002, she moved to Harvard University, where she is the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics in the Department of Psychology and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has received Yale’s Lex Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence, the Gordon Allport Prize for Intergroup Relations, and the Morton Deutsch Award for Social Justice. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation.

Peering into Our Blind Spots (Harvard Gazette, 2/26/13)

Mahzarin Banaji Looks at Biology of Bias (Harvard Gazette, 10/11/07)

Making Case for Concept of "Implicit Prejudice" (Harvard Gazette, 12/16/04)