Nilanjana Dasgupta

Nilanjana Dasgupta is a social psychologist whose work focuses on the effects of social contexts on implicit stereotypes - particularly on factors which insulate women in STEM fields from harmful stereotypes about their ability in those areas. Dasgupta is a Professor of Psychology and the Director of Faculty Equity and Inclusion in the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst^[1]

Education and career

Prior to joining the Psychology faculty at the University of Massachusetts in 2003,^[2] Dasgupta (b. 1969) received an A.B. from Smith College in 1992 in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience.^[2] In 1998, she received a PhD in Psychology from Yale University.^[2] Dasgupta then became a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, Seattle and, afterward, an Assistant Professor at the New School for Social Research from 1999-2002.^[2]

Dasgupta has held several leadership positions in national and international professional societies. She is serving on the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (2015–17).^[3] She is an elected member of the executive committee of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and was elected to be President of the society in 2017.^[4] Dr. Dasgupta serves on the Training Committee of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology,^[5] and on the steering committee of the International Social Cognition Network.^[6] Dasgupta was an elected member of the council of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (2012–14).^[7]

Research

Dasgupta proposed the Stereotype Inoculation Model ^[8] which explains how, for women in STEM fields, experts ^[9] and peers ^[10][11][12] from one's own group in a working or learning environment can help individuals become more successful despite the pervasiveness of stereotypes casting doubt about their ability.^[13][14]

Dasgupta has also conducted research on situational influences on unconscious stereotyping and prejudice. One project, a collaboration with David Desteno, indicates that anger, but not sadness tends to increase bias against people in different social groups than their own ^[15][16][17] and that feeling a specific emotion can make people more biased against groups whose stereotypes are associated with that emotion.^[18] Dasgupta and her colleagues have also found that being exposed to counterstereotypic ^[19] or well-liked ^[20] members of groups like African-Americans or women can reduce unconscious bias against those groups on the Implicit Association Task. She theorized that four things influence stereotypes and prejudice, and should be taken into account when trying to change implicit biases: 1) self- and social-motives, 2) specific strategies, 3) the perceiver's focus of attention, and 4) configuration of stimulus cues.

Awards and honors

In 2011, Dasgupta and her collaborators received a Smashing Bias Research Prize awarded by the Mitchell Kapor Foundation and Level Playing Field Institute^[21] She also received the Morton Deutsch Award from the International Society for Justice Research.^[22]

References