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Racism Psychologist
Jennifer Eberhardt is a social psychologist, born
in 1965 in the United States.
Eberhardt explores the mechanisms and effects
of racial prejudice in criminal justice, that is, the
different ways in which people judge and see
others on the basis of race and difference,
focusing her research primarily within the
context of crime.
Some of her findings have proved to be particularly disturbing. According to Eberhardt, stereotypical association between race and crime
directly impact how individuals behave and
make decisions. These associations also influence the extent to which people are capable of
perceiving important visual details in images
related to a crime, as well as their capacity to
distinguish features in African-American faces.
Using statistical analysis to examine how the
skin colour and hair texture of the accused
relate to the judgements that the members of a
jury issue to the accused. Her science has
proven that accused black people are more
likely to receive a death sentence if their facial
features are
stereotypically black and their victims are white.
With her work Jennifer tries to improve relations
between the police and the communities that
they serve, by increasing their mutual trust.
Jennifer received the MacArthur Award in 2014
for her work on how a group's stereotypes
affect the type of penalty imposed for an offence.
She currently works as a professor at the
University of Stanford.