Implicit Bias: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and the Psychology of Racism

This class explores the psychology and sociology of prejudice, asking a deceptively simple question: what is race? From here follows a second question: what is racism? We'll explore implicit bias, and equip students to understand it, recognize it, and critically evaluate it. We'll start by outlining early colonial theories of scientific racism and the ongoing myths around race and intelligence, including phrenology, eugenics, and discussions of stereotype threat and IQ. We will question how race can be at once not based in any evolutionary, demographic, or biological reality and yet be a driving force in many social and political arenas. We will then examine stereotypes more widely, and how they can persist in society despite the decline of overt prejudice, through mechanisms of implicit bias, microaggression, and institutional racism. Students will take from this course a much deeper understanding of how prejudice shaped the contemporary world and how different approaches to understanding our own and others' implicit bias have implications for social policy and social justice.