Mahzarin R. Banaji
(Pronunciation: maaz-uh-REEN buh-NAA-jee)
Short Biography
Mahzarin Banaji is an experimental psychologist at Harvard University who studies the disparities between conscious expressions of attitudes and beliefs and less conscious, implicit representations of the same.
She has primarily studied social group attitudes and beliefs in adults and children, relying on a diverse set of methods and instruments: behavior, neural signatures, and computational approaches involving large language corpora.
At present, she is studying the social and cognitive signatures of early LLMs.
The term “implicit bias” that she and her collaborators named in the 1990s has entered the vernacular.
In addition to research and university teaching, her efforts have focused on applying evidence from the science of implicit bias to improving organizational practices.
Banaji is co-author of Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People and instructor of the online course Make Better Decisions: The Psychology of Blindspots for Leaders and Teams, offered by Harvard Online.
Banaji taught at Yale from 1986-2001 where she was Reuben Post Halleck Professor of Psychology. Since then, she has been Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, a chair previously occupied by her intellectual grandfather, Gordon Allport. Banaji was named the first Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University from 2002-2008 and George A. and Helen Dunham Cowan Chair in Human Dynamics at the Santa Fe Institute, 2011-2015, where she is External Faculty. She served as Secretary and then President of the Association for Psychological Science, Chair of the Department of Psychology and Senior Advisor to the Dean of the FAS on Faculty Development for a decade at Harvard University. At present, Banaji serves as Vice-Chair of the governing board of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Banaji received Yale’s Lex Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence, was named Harvard College Professor for excellence in undergraduate teaching, elected Distinguished Member of the honor society Psi Chi, received the Constellation Award from SPSP for her broad influence on students and colleagues, and APS’s Mentor Award.
In 2005, Banaji was elected fellow of the Society for Experimental Psychologists, in 2008 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2009 was named Herbert A. Simon Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, in 2015 inducted as Fellow of the British Academy, in 2018 elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2020 elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Banaji has been awarded a James McKeen Cattell Award, the Gordon Allport Prize for Intergroup Relations, the Morton Deutsch Award for Social Justice, the Kurt Lewin Award for outstanding contributions to the integration of psychological research and social action, the Diener Award for Outstanding Contributions to Social Psychology, SESP’s Award for Scientific Impact, SPSP’s Campbell Award for Distinguished Scholarly Achievement in Social Psychology, and a Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association. Banaji has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Rockefeller Foundation and the Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship from the University of Melbourne.
In 2016 Banaji received the William James Fellow Award for “a lifetime of significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology” and 2022 the Cattell Award for “applications of research to society” from the Association for Psychological Science. In 2017 Banaji received the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution and in 2022 the National Academy of Sciences Atkinson Prize “to honor significant advances in the psychological and cognitive sciences with important implications for formal and systematic theory in these fields”. In 2025 Banaji was recognized by BBVA’s Frontiers of Knowledge Award. She has received honorary degrees from Barnard College (Medal of Distinction, 2014), Smith College (2015), Colgate University (2016), the University of Helsinki (2016) Carnegie-Mellon University (2017), Teachers College, Columbia University (2020) and Yale University (2024).