"American Horror Story" in Real Life: Understanding Racialized Views of Mental Illness and Stigma

By Sunidhi Ramesh

Racial and ethnic discrimination have taken various forms in the

United States since its formation as a nation. The sign in the image

reads: "Deport all Iranians. Get the hell out of my country."

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

From 245 years of slavery to indirect racism in police sanctioning and force, minority belittlement has remained rampant in American society (1). There is no doubt that this history has left minorities in the United States with a differential understanding of what it means to be American and, more importantly, what it means to be an individual in a larger humankind.



Generally, our day-to-day experiences shape the values, beliefs, and attitudes that allow us to navigate the real world (2). And so, with regards to minorities, consistent exposure to these subjective experiences (of belittlement and discrimination, for example) can begin to shape subjective perceptions that, in turn, can mold larger perspectives and viewpoints.

Last spring, I conducted a project for a class to address the reception (3) of white and non-white, or persons of color (POC), students to part of an episode from American Horror Story: Freak Show. The video I asked them to watch portrays a mentally incapacitated woman, Pepper, who is wrongfully framed for the murder of her sister’s child. The character’s blatant scapegoating is shocking not only for the lack of humanity it portrays but also for the reality of being a human being in society while not being viewed as human.

Although the episode remains to be somewhat of an exaggeration, the opinions of the interview respondents in my project ultimately suggested that there exists a racial basis of perceiving the mental disabilities of Pepper—a racial basis that may indeed be deeply rooted in the racial history of the United States.

The premise behind my project was the understanding that past experience informs perception. What, then, are the different circumstances (in regards to mental illness/disabilities) that white and POC Americans are facing? Current public health research suggests that there exist racial differences in the field of mental health.

In 2010, for example, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that internalized stigma among African Americans had a direct relationship with attitudes towards their mental heath treatment (4); in general, African Americans in this study reported more negative attitudes toward mental health treatment, and, as compared to their white counterparts, African Americans were less likely to seek out mental health treatment and were more likely to hold negative views about themselves if they were diagnosed with a mental illness (4).

Another study conducted in 2012 validates these results, finding that African Americans are significantly less likely than other race-ethnic groups to have received mental health services (5); although the article begins to tie this trend to education differences among the different racial groups, a definitive explanation for the relationship between race-ethnicity and the receipt of mental health services could not be found (5).

Beyond studies regarding the specific treatment of mental illness is research that questions the root of mental illnesses such as depression; one such study found a “clear, direct” relationship between perceived discrimination (which arises from “formative social experiences”) and symptoms of depression in Mexican-origin adults in California (6).

The conclusions drawn in these studies as well as those in other similar research imply that mental illness does not stand on its own; it, in fact, is a factor that is intertwined (rather strongly) with race as well as elements that underlie race such as discrimination and education.

Because the subjective experiences faced by minorities formulate differential understandings and subjective perspectives, these perspectives (according to these studies) can then go on to create different attitudes towards mental health. Ultimately, this cascade can form bigger more personal feelings such as internalized and public stigma.

With this comes a question: what if the differences in the way POC and White Americans are treated (either for mental illnesses or in general) manifest themselves in how different racial groups perceive mental health?

A photo of a freak show exhibition, taken around 1941. The 

sign at the top reads: "Human Freaks Alive." 

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Before getting into my project, I must mention that Pepper, throughout American Horror Story, is part of a “freak show”—a term that the dictionary defines as “a display of people with unusual or grotesque physical features as at a circus or a carnival show."As I was watching the show for the first time a few years ago, I was appalled at how it presented the reactions of people who interacted with the “freaks.” There was shock, amusement, fear, and even a sense of superiority. In one scene, the circus actors went out to a diner and were immediately kicked out on the grounds of “disturbing and scaring the other customers.” More often than not, the families who attended the circus would disrespect and taunt the performers.

I later realized that this scene illuminated the major difference between physical disability and mental illness. Physical disability can be seen; it is outward and apparent to a point where it can be identified and acknowledged as easily as it can be mocked and ridiculed.

Mental illness cannot. It is invisible, an uninvited guest that only the patient can feel, describe, and identify. It is silent. Quiet. Unseen. (This distinction regarding mental illness is why hundreds of articles with titles such as “I Don’t Believe in Mental Illness” and “9 Signs Why Your Mental Illness is Made Up for Attention” plague the Internet.)

People who bear mental illnesses are told that their symptoms are not real, that “laziness explains 100% of mental disorders,” or simply that their illnesses “does not exist.” These kinds of perceptions build up and begin to create stigma around mental illness.

Statistically, three out of four people who experience mental illness today have reported experiencing stigma. This stigma leads to feelings of shame, hopelessness, distress and misrepresentation in media. It discourages patients from seeking necessary help. It frames mental illness as a shameful blemish and weakness.

And in many cases, stigma and discrimination come hand in hand; often, those with mental illnesses and disabilities are denied employment, housing, insurance coverage and general social interactions such as friendship and marriage (7).

Worst of all, this very stigma throws mental health patients into a dangerous cycle of social isolation and harm.

According to a 2002 research paper written by Allison J. Gray, “Discrimination alters how patients see themselves, their self worth and their future place in the world. The immediate psychological effects of a psychiatric diagnosis include disbelief, shame, terror, grief, and anger” (8). She then argues that these patients eventually face social isolation, which directly leads to high rates of self-harm and suicide.

So, how and where do we go from here? Can we work toward destigmatizing mental illness?

Or is this a lost cause? Could the racial discrepancy between perceiving disabilities be too deeply rooted to change how these conditions are perceived? And where does this racial difference come from?

For this small preliminary class project, I asked ten respondents (five white and five POC) to watch the aforementioned 30-minute clip. This episode covers the experiences of a young woman, Pepper, who suffers from microcephaly, a rare neurological condition “in which the brain does not develop properly, resulting in a smaller than normal head” as well as intellectual disability, poor speech abilities, and abnormal facial features. In the clip, Pepper is introduced into the care of her older sister and her brother-in-law, a couple that later gives birth to a deformed child. Although Pepper cares for and loves the child as her own, her caretakers appear to be overtaken by “the burden” of having to deal with two individuals who are unable to fully look after themselves. In response, Pepper’s brother-in-law (with permission from his wife) murders the infant and places the blame on Pepper, who is unable to speak for herself but seemingly unaware of the injustice done to her. At the end of the clip, Pepper is placed in an insane asylum, forced to live there due to her supposed involvement in the brutal murder of her sister’s child.

A comparison between head sizes for a child with microcephaly

and a normal child. This change in head shape is often attributed

to abnormal brain development. Image courtesy of Wikimedia 

Commons.

Following the viewing, I asked each respondent seven questions regarding their overall feelings as well as what characters and parts of the plotline resonated with them the most. In the end, I found three general categories of responses—each of which was clearly divided racially.

The most striking of these categories was, by far, how the white and POC respondents referred to Pepper’s microcephaly. I should preface with the fact that the episode never directly labeled her condition, and Pepper’s mental and physical statuses were not referred to as a disability in the scenes the respondents viewed. Still, every white interviewee spoke of Pepper’s condition as a “disability”—a handicap that allowed her to be bullied by her family and the justice system. These students seemed to dwell on the idea that Pepper was subordinated in the minds of those around her. To them, she was bullied for and handicapped by her mental state.

The POC respondents, on the other hand, did not use the words “disability” or “handicap.” Instead, they speak of her as an “outsider,” a deviation from what it means to be “normal.” This word, “normal,” was raised by every POC respondent. These students chose to discuss Pepper’s experiences in light of their own by drawing parallels between what it means to be a functioning, “normal” member of this society and the consequences of being the opposite, when an individual deviates from those norms (discrimination and outcasting).

Although these data are just preliminary, the implications, if these results held true with a larger pool or participants, are tremendous. At the least, these outcomes suggest that human perceptions of mentally and physically compromised individuals are racially based— that there may exist a socially constructed phenomenon for why white respondents viewed Pepper as “disabled” and POC respondents saw her as simply “not normal.”

If anything, the tendency for the POC individuals in my interviews to focus more on the aspects of being “normal” (rather than being discriminated) suggests something about the more personal aspects of the minority experience. It is possible that this theme was so salient because the question asked for the interviewees to relate the clip to their own personal lives (9); perhaps the notion of mental disabilities is not as prominent to these POC individuals as it may have been to the white respondents (as was suggested by the public health studies on POC Americans and mental health). Again, the validity of this statement should be explored through further research.

Schlitzie (born Schlitze Surtees) was an American 

sideshow performer; Pepper's appearance and 

story are said to be based on Schlitzie's life.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Whatever the case, the answers to these questions are not clear. They may never be clear or easy to address—unless we are somehow able to pinpoint exactly where these entangled differential perceptions stem from or whether or not they can be changed. What can change, however, is the stigma around mental illness.

If the relationship between subjective experience, differential understanding, subjective perception, different mental health treatment and attitudes, and stigma exists, can we tap into breaking the cycle? Can we try to change mental health treatment by better educating our doctors and mental health professionals? Can we change mental health attitudes by better explaining conditions to patients or the general public? Would changes in the initial subjective experience (reducing discrimination, for example) reduce mental health stigma down the line?

And would this stigma be alleviated with more evidence for a biological basis to mental illness? Possibly (10, 11, 12).

But this would require research as well—research that is deliberately designed to avoid reinforcing negative stereotypes. In other words, while bias is inherent to some degree in all research, specific biases such as gender and racial bias need to be consciously monitored in this research to avoid being implicitly implemented into the research process.



How can this be done? The Journal of European Psychology suggests engaging in introspection to acknowledge any biases before the research is conducted, including different types of people and viewpoints on the research team, standardizing procedures for data collection and checking for statistical significance—all while being aware of the errors and omissions that may be embedded in the research itself. Maybe, with these cautions in mind, we can work towards more direct, objective research that can lead to the lessening of stigma (especially towards specific races) around mental illness.

Until then, we must begin to realize that perception of mental illness is not black and white; it is socially directed, differentially interpreted, and variably understood. More importantly, it is profoundly engrained in experience and identity.

This understanding needs to come first.

Perhaps then we can begin to unravel the answers to the bigger questions we have.

Note: The students in my project were asked to watch two segments from Episode 10 of Season 4 of American Horror Story: 1) 31:53 to 37:20 and 2) 38:41 to 49:00.

References 



1) Piazza, James A. "Types of minority discrimination and terrorism." Conflict Management and Peace Science 29.5 (2012): 521-546.



2) Rokeach, Milton. The nature of human values. Vol. 438. New York: Free press, 1973.



3) Shively, JoEllen. "Cowboys and Indians: Perceptions of western films among American Indians and Anglos." American Sociological Review (1992): 725-734.



4) Brown, Charlotte, et al. "Depression stigma, race, and treatment seeking behavior and attitudes." Journal of community psychology 38.3 (2010): 350-368.



5) Broman, Clifford L. "Race differences in the receipt of mental health services among young adults." Psychological Services 9.1 (2012): 38.



6) Finch, B. K., Kolody, B., & Vega, W. A. (2000). Perceived discrimination and depression among Mexican-origin adults in California. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 295-313.



7) Office of the Surgeon General (US, & Center for Mental Health Services (US. (2001). Culture counts: The influence of culture and society on mental health.



8) Gray, A. J. (2002). Stigma in psychiatry. Journal of the royal society of medicine, 95(2), 72-76.



9) Trepte, S. (2006). Social Identity Theory. In J. Bryant & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Psychology of Entertainment (pp. 255-271). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.



10) Corrigan PW, Watson AC. At issue: Stop the stigma: call mental illness a brain disease. Schizophrenia bulletin. 2004;30(3):477-479.



11) Corrigan PW. Lessons learned from unintended consequences about erasing the stigma of mental illness. World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association. 2016;15(1):67-73.



12) Insel TR, Wang PS. Rethinking mental illness. Jama. 2010;303(19):1970-1971.

Want to cite this post?



Ramesh, Sunidhi. (2016). "American Horror Story" in Real Life: Understanding Racialized Views of Mental Illness and Stigma. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2016/11/american-horror-story-in-real-life_22.html

Racial Biases in Face Judgment- When You “Look” Criminal

By Carlie Hoffman

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Racial bias can, and often does, occur in several elements of the criminal justice process, including on initial police contact, during eye-witness identification, and in jurors’ decisions. This disparity of how people are treated throughout the justice system is likely influenced by the criminal black male stereotype that pervades our American culture (1). Some propose that this stereotype originated in the slavery and post-slavery eras, with the onset of Jim Crow laws and other post-slavery codes that instigated segregation and also sanctioned racially-biased punishments for blacks, and especially for black males. Racially-biased punishments are still present today, with a 2015 article in Slate magazine citing that black Americans are more likely to have their cars searched, to be arrested for drug use, to be jailed while awaiting a trial, and to serve longer sentences for the same offense as white Americans.

The presence of racial bias in the criminal justice system is irrefutable, and investigation into the elements fueling this bias has recently moved into the realm of neuroscience. In last month’s Neuroethics and Neuroscience in the News talk, Dr. Heather Kleider-Offutt from Georgia State University explained that not all black men are stereotyped in the same way. Instead, certain black men are subject to a higher degree of negative bias than other black men, and inclusion in this select subgroup is based on face-type and not skin color alone.

What is this face-type that engenders such a high degree of negative bias? In her article, “Black Stereotypical Features: When a Face-Type Can Get You in Trouble,” Kleider-Offutt stated that research participants judged faces with so-called “afro-centric” or “stereotypic” features as being more threatening than faces with non-stereotypic, or “atypical” black features. Previous studies performed in Kleider-Offutt’s lab also found that faces with afro-centric features were judged as being more criminal, aggressive, and violent than atypical faces, regardless of facial expression or attractiveness. This bias against afro-centric features also extended beyond the boundaries of race and sex: both white male and female faces with afro-centric features were viewed as being more aggressive than atypical faces (2). Kleider-Offutt explained that there is no particular feature or even a specific combination of features that underlies this negative bias. Instead, it is a combination of several features, such as full lips, a wide nose, eye color, coarse hair, and a dark complexion, that work together to influence face-type judgment. She further posited that these stereotypical features may represent the prototypical black male face and thus may more strongly elicit the criminal black male stereotype.

Decision makers in the legal system are also prone to this face-type bias: males with stereotypic features are given harsher sentences (including having a higher probability of being given the death sentence if convicted for murder) and are more vulnerable to misidentification for a crime than males with atypical features (2-4). One study performed by Kleider-Offutt’s group, which she also demonstrated for our audience, involved showing participants a series of stereotypical and atypical faces that were paired with certain careers (artist, teacher, and drug dealer). The study results indicated that a stereotypic face was more likely to be misremembered as a drug dealer than an atypical face. Similarly, people with stereotypic faces were more likely to be correctly remembered as drug dealers than were people with atypical faces. This effect held true for men and women as well as for black and white people with stereotypic features, indicating that the negative bias was associated with stereotypic features in general instead of solely with race or sex (2). Results were varied in our audience, with some members stating that they felt, understandably, self-conscious about shouting out answers openly in the group.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Alarmingly, this bias is difficult to suppress. Kleider-Offutt discussed a study that had participants read biological descriptions of people and then showed the participants a series of faces. Participants were told to avoid using race- or feature-based stereotyping as they judged whether the biological descriptions they read could have been about one of the faces they saw. Some participants also performed a secondary task while making these decisions, which introduced a “cognitive load,” or mental burden. The study found that when participants were not cognitively loaded, they were able to avoid making race-biased decisions. However, even without a cognitive load, participants were unable to avoid making feature-biased judgments. Thus, feature-bias was still present even when the participant was consciously attempting not to use it, indicating that this bias was both difficult to overcome and seemingly unavoidable (5). Furthermore, Kleider-Offutt pointed out that she and others have found that this bias is not just restricted to white participants, but is also seen in black participants (2).

Taken together, these studies indicate that bias against stereotypic facial features is engrained in our culture so much so that it has become almost a knee-jerk reaction. But, if everyone is biased, what should we do about it?

Integral to answering this question is understanding the fact that we, as Americans, are not born with a bias against stereotypic features. Instead, we are culturally conditioned to respond to stereotypic faces in a negative way. We have been taught, through our society, to perceive some faces as being threatening and others as neutral. But, because we have been taught both implicitly (and, unfortunately for some, explicitly) to think in such a way, this means that our bias is not inevitable and can be avoided--with effort on both the individual and the societal level.

For too long, our culture has associated black men (specifically) and people with stereotypic features (generally) with criminal behavior. This association between stereotypic features and criminality is perpetuated in part through the media and in part through the way in which we talk about black males and crime. This engrained bias has altered how we as a society interact socially, criminally, and legally with black men and with all people with stereotypic features. Thus, to start reducing and eventually removing these race- and feature-biases, we need to be more mindful of the way in which we talk about and present black males, people with stereotypic features, and other disenfranchised groups in the media and with each other. Furthermore, we need to start replacing stereotypes, engaging in counter-stereotype-imaging and perspective taking, and exposing ourselves to people from races, cultures, and perspectives beyond our own. Such techniques have been successfully used to reduce racial bias (6) and may also be able to reduce our bias against stereotypic features.

Moving forward, remember that we are not born this way (contrary to what Lady Gaga would say), and we are also not helpless products of our sociocultural environment. By being aware of our cultural bias against stereotypic features, we can now start working on changing our culture, taking pause with our biased responses, and challenging the automatic assumptions we make about individuals solely based on their face or skin color.

References



1. Smiley C, Fakunle D. From "brute" to "thug:" the demonization and criminalization of unarmed Black male victims in America. J Hum Behav Soc Environ. 2016;26(3-4):350-66. doi: 10.1080/10911359.2015.1129256. PubMed PMID: 27594778; PMCID: PMC5004736.



2. Kleider HM, Cavrak SE, Knuycky LR. Looking like a criminal: stereotypical black facial features promote face source memory error. Mem Cognit. 2012;40(8):1200-13. doi: 10.3758/s13421-012-0229-x. PubMed PMID: 22773417.



3. Blair IV, Judd CM, Chapleau KM. The influence of Afrocentric facial features in criminal sentencing. Psychol Sci. 2004;15(10):674-9. doi: 10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00739.x. PubMed PMID: 15447638.



4. Kleider HM, Knuycky LR, Cavrak SE. Deciding the fate of others: the cognitive underpinnings of racially biased juror decision making. J Gen Psychol. 2012;139(3):175-93. doi: 10.1080/00221309.2012.686462. PubMed PMID: 24837019.



5. Blair IV, Judd CM, Fallman JL. The automaticity of race and Afrocentric facial features in social judgments. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2004;87(6):763-78. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.87.6.763. PubMed PMID: 15598105.



6. Devine PG, Forscher PS, Austin AJ, Cox WT. Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A prejudice habit-breaking intervention. J Exp Soc Psychol. 2012;48(6):1267-78. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.06.003. PubMed PMID: 23524616; PMCID: PMC3603687.



Want to cite this post?



Hoffman, C. (2016). Racial Biases in Face Judgment- When You “Look” Criminal. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2016/10/racial-biases-in-face-judgment-when-you.html

Diversity in Neuroethics: it’s more important than you might think

By Nicholas Fitz and Roland Nadler**

Nicholas Fitz

Nick is a Graduate Research Assistant at the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia. 



Roland is a third-year J.D. student at Stanford Law School and previously worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia.



**equal contribution

Roland Nadler

The second decade of neuroethics is now well underway. Much like the human brain itself, some of its developmental “critical periods” have run out, but many others remain open. How will we use these remaining opportunities to shape the field?



Junior participants in these spaces should take the initiative to engage with unresolved questions about the nature and structure of neuroethics as a discipline. After all, those of us at the beginning of our careers have a particularly significant stake in the answers to those questions, with most of our academic and professional lives still ahead of us. As we work to integrate society’s growing technological power with best ethical practices and societal values, we must ask: whose practices, whose values?



Last year, in a bid to foster this discussion, we offered three visions for diversity in neuroethics. In that article, we devoted much attention to diversity along intellectual, disciplinary, and political lines.



Today, we offer a few more thoughts on the importance of diversity in neuroethics in the more familiar sense of having a wide array of identities and backgrounds represented in the field.



Chiefly, we hope to convince you that robust identity diversity is beneficial — indeed, crucial — to neuroethics. The field simply could not provide the kinds of insights that it promises if its practitioners were a homogenous group of people speaking comfortably from positions of social power and privilege.



To be sure, neuroethics is off to a strong start in establishing itself as a diverse field. The successes of Neuroethics Women Leaders, especially well-represented at this year’s Society meeting, deserve special recognition in this regard. While there is always room for improvement, we can be glad that neuroethics is not especially male-dominated as disciplines go.



Our purpose in this post, then, is not to allege that neuroethics is insufficiently diverse — though we should and surely can do better. Our aim, rather, is to highlight that our existing levels of diversity are not merely tangential goods. Heterogeneity is in no way incidental to the field’s ability to carry out its job effectively — much less mere window dressing, a matter of appearances.



Much more than simply insulating the discipline from charges of being exclusionary, diversity positively contributes to the mission of neuroethics. Its contribution can be understood in two senses: a generating sense and an inoculating sense.



Bringing a wide variety of personal experiences and worldviews — along the axes of race, gender, socioeconomic status, (dis)ability, and more — to bear on neuroethics acts as a generator for novel perspectives. If neuroethics is to help steer the responsible use of emerging technology and knowledge, it must acknowledge the ways in which that project touches on bias (from implicit identity biases to larger structural inequalities) and on the heterogeneity of lived experience. And it needs a maximally broad pool of perspectives to draw its critiques from: if that pool lacks, for example, the perspective of transgender people, we may go a long time without realizing how our conversations about the relationship between personal identity and the brain skate blithely over flawed assumptions about gender.



Concretely, then, those at the field’s power centers must reach out in support of investigators from a variety of backgrounds. There is much wisdom to be found in a diverse crowd.

From Phillips, 2014

Meanwhile, one of the greatest pitfalls for any meta-scientific discourse is the tendency to interpret seemingly neutral or objective facts in ways that serve established ideologies. This risk is heightened even more when the science under discussion has some claim to dealing with the “essence” or fundamental nature of human beings — as the history of research on race and IQ so chillingly reminds us. Diversity in the ranks of neuroethics helps inoculate us against this threat. Ideology has a characteristic way of quietly infecting the way we talk about “the big questions,” and bringing people who are ordinarily pushed to the edges of the discourse into the conversational spotlight is the first step towards immunity.



As we know all too well from recent work on biological essentialism, stereotyping, and the seductive allure of neuroscientific explanations, contemporary neuroscience does not operate in a vacuum, but rather can reinforce social categories. The fact that neuroscience is science — not pseudoscience like its predecessors, craniometry and phrenology — affords little defense against its potential to serve such unacknowledged agendas. As the late Stephen Jay Gould put it, “Shall we believe that science is different today simply because we share the cultural context of most practicing scientists and mistake its influence for objective truth?” By fostering a mosaic community of practicing neuroethicists, the field can help protect itself — and society — from these side effects of neuroessentialism.



Indeed, neuroethicists are especially well-situated to understand the value of diversity. Given that the literature on the causes and consequences of biased and motivated reasoning is an essential point of departure for neuroethical investigation, those in the field already have access to tools and techniques that reduce these biases. But we still have work left to do.



Our next step is to brainstorm ways to collectively wield these tools, and to do so effectively and responsibly. As we further diversify the field, we have a responsibility to convince rather than foist, and to seek grassroots engagement rather than tokenize. Having lent our voices in this call to action, the two of us writing here — hardly embodiments of the diversity we are extolling, after all — ought to step back and open up the space for underrepresented neuroethicists to helm the conversation. We hope our readers will join us in helping this happen!





Want to cite this post?



Fitz, N. and Nadler R. (2015). Diversity in Neuroethics: it’s more important than you might think. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2015/02/diversity-in-neuroethics-its-more.html

Now Available! Bias in the Academy Pre-Symposium Series Archives on YouTube

This year's Neuroethics Symposia, a partnership of Emory's Neuroscience Graduate Program, Laney Graduate School and the Emory Center for Ethics Neuroethics Program, is designed to discuss the complex influence of stereotype/bias on academia and apply advances in the science of stereotype bias to university policies and practices. Through a pre-symposia seminar series and symposia, a white paper will be produced to highlight challenges and to put forth practical solutions to move toward mitigating the detrimental influence of bias and stereotyping in academia.



The first of four pre-symposium seminars was led by neuroscience graduate student, Jacob Billings.  The video of this seminar is available below.

An Introduction to Bias: A Social Network Primer 

Jacob Billings, Neuroscience graduate student, Emory University 

Stay tuned for more videos! The next seminar series will be led by Chris Martin, a sociology graduate student at Emory University. He discussion is entitled, "Biased People or Biased Researchers? A Puzzle in Social Psychology." 




Find us on Facebook and Twitter #biasintheacademy.