John F. Dovidio, Ph.D. is the Carl Iver Hovland Professor of Psychology and Public Health at Yale University, and the director of the Intergroup Relations Lab. His work centers around issues of social power and social relations, both between groups and between individuals. He explores both conscious (explicit) and unconscious (implicit) influences on how people think about, feel about, and behave toward others based on group membership. He continues to conduct research on aversive racism, a contemporary subtle form of prejudice, and on techniques for reducing conscious and unconscious biases. His research further explores how the bias of health care providers and perceptions by members of traditionally disadvantaged groups of being stigmatized affects medical interactions, decisions, and outcomes.
“We have hundreds of years of showing that America is not a fair place. We know that what we’ve done hasn’t worked the way we wanted it to work so if we really want something to work better we should be doing something different.”
– Dr. John Dovidio