14: Nilanjana Dasgupta
Welcome to Episode 13, where I’m talking with NILANJANA DASGUPTA about how young women interested in STEM disciplines can benefit from women teachers and mentors. We also talk about Nilanjana’s fascinating family history that for generations has combined science and social activism. Nilanjana is Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she also serves as Director of Faculty Equity and Inclusion. In Part 1 of this episode, Nilanjana talks about the origins of her work on women in STEM—how she discovered the effect of women mentors for young women in these disciplines—and gets us up to date on her latest attempt to use this knowledge to develop targeted interventions designed to encourage young women interested in STEM to stick with it! In Part 2, Nilanjana tells the story of her family history—a history of science and social activism that begins in India and influences her choices step by step to the work she’s doing today. We’ll also hear about some of her earlier work on what psychologists call implicit biases — the attitudes, beliefs or stereotypes thought by some to be guiding our actions unconsciously. As you’ll hear, Nilanjana’s contribution to this research radically changed how we understand it. * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
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Jim Coan
From VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship, this is episode 13 of Circle of Willis, where I'm talking with Nilanjana Dasgupta about how young women interested in STEM disciplines can benefit from women teachers and mentors. We also talk about Nilanjana's fascinating family history that for generations has combined science and social activism.
Jim Coan
So what did you do first?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
The first study, which I'm going to actually present here-
Jim Coan
Yeah
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-looked at whether in gateway courses that are required for all STEM majors like calculus?
Jim Coan
Yeah, like, yeah, the initial Chem series or something like, those kind of...
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah, so this was the initial Calc 123 - Calculus 123 series. Does the gender of the professor teaching the class have an effect on female students differentially than male students? Does it affect how much these students like mathematics? Does it affect how much they identify with it? Does it affect this efficacy, what grade they think they'll get in the class? Does it affect how much they identify with the professor? All of these things.
Jim Coan
You're listening to Nilanjana Dasupta, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she also serves as Director of Faculty, Equity, and Inclusion. I spoke with Nilanjana at a small conference in upstate New York about how learning environments affect whether women who enter college interested in the STEM disciplines actually stick with those disciplines or decide to do something else instead. Many of you will know that STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math. And you may also know that women are underrepresented in STEM by huge margins. Here in part one of this episode, Nilanjana talks about the origins of this work. How she discovered the effect of women mentors for young women in these disciplines. And she also gets us up to date on her latest attempt to use this knowledge to develop targeted interventions designed to encourage young women interested in STEM to stick with it. Later, in part two Nilanjana tells the story of her family history! A history of science and social activism that begins in India and influences her choices step by step to the work she's doing today. We'll also hear about some of her earlier work on what psychologists call implicit biases, the attitudes, beliefs or stereotypes, thought by some to be guiding our actions unconsciously. Alright, okay, let's get back to the conversation.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It took us three years to get enough women from these classes. And we found these robust effects where the gender of these calculus professors had no effect on male students, in terms of their implicit attitudes towards mathematics-
Jim Coan
Towards math? Okay.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
How much they liked, how much implicitly how much they identified with math, their self efficacy, their predictions about what grade they would get. No effect on men.
Jim Coan
No effect at all, didn't matter.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
But it had a huge effect on women. So women who were in sections taught by female professors identified with math significantly more than if their professors happened to be male. They liked mathematics much more when the professor was female than when the professor was male. They predicted they would get a better grade in calculus when the professor was female than male. In terms of actual grades, women actually outperformed male students.
Jim Coan
When there was a female instructor?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Regardless of the instructor.
Jim Coan
Oh my God.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So essentially that showed that performance was not what was affected by being a small minority in your class. Rather, it was confidence that was fragile. It was confidence that was bumping up and down, depending on whether you saw someone like you in front of the class. But your actual performance wasn't affected. But the reason why confidence matters is if you don't- if you think you're an imposter, even if you're doing pretty well, you're not going to stick around-
Jim Coan
Beacuse it feels bad.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Because you think it's an accident, yeah. And you think that you did well because it's a fluke, because you got lucky, because the exam was easy. You don't trust that it has something to do with your ability. So the likelihood of somebody who feels like an imposter, switching out of that major into a different major, is really high.
Jim Coan
This is, this... I mean, it brings to mind a bunch of things but it almost sounds a little bit, you know, Schachter and Singer-ish, right?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Oh that's interesting.
Jim Coan
You know, it's like, you're having this. You're having this sense of this feeling. And you've got to explain the feeling. And so your explanation is "I must not be very good at this," rather than something that's in fact far more complicated. Which is that, you know, "I am in this sort of sociocultural moment, and I'm having a male instructor who is behaving in a way..." that I mean, I don't know, what is, what is it about male instructors and female instructors that's making this difference?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Two things. One, we couldn't tell from that experiment, but from future, subsequent experiments, what we know that it's doing is that, in a context where you are the only one - or one or very few - and everybody else is very different from you - like these calculus classes - the critical ingredients it looks like are two things, feelings of belonging. So this is the social connectivity.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So feelings of belonging plummet, when it's a difficult class, and there are very few people like you. And that increases the likelihood that you will make internal attributions for difficulty rather than external attributions to the material, or external attributions, and everybody else, everybody is having difficulty. So feelings of belonging is one mechanism. And self efficacy is another mechanism. If there's nobody like you, or very few people like you, and stuff is tough, self efficacy becomes really shaky. And at some point of time, that sort of fragile self efficacy, predicts switching out into another major.
Jim Coan
And it almost seems like they could be linked, in a way, you know?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah.
Jim Coan
This is part of, you know, our perspective from our lab might suggest that the feeling of belonging can support efficacy.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
You're right, yeah.
Jim Coan
In part by reducing cognitive load in a way, you know, by getting all of this rumination out of the way, so you can just focus on what you're doing.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So-
Jim Coan
I mean, I don't know if that's true but-
Nilanjana Dasgupta
You're, you're right, that belonging and self efficacy are correlated. But when we do these multiple mediation tests, this is from a different study on mentoring the recent PNAS paper, where we looked at the effect of mentors, same gender versus other gender mentors, on outcomes like career aspirations and engineering, mediated through self efficacy and belonging. Both were independent mediators.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So nothing trumped the other, but they are correlated.
Jim Coan
Can we talk about that?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes, yeah.
Jim Coan
Can you walk us through it a little bit?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah, yeah. The gist of this whole program of research is something I call social vaccine hypothesis, or stereotype inoculation. The idea is, just as a biomedical vaccine, protects and inoculate our physical body-
Jim Coan
Yeah. I love this.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-against noxious bacteria. So to exposure to experts and peers from one's own group, inoculate one's mind against noxious stereotypes. So those experts and peers function as social vaccines for the self.
Jim Coan
It's so interesting, because it carries forward. I mean, if it's really acting like a vaccine, it's something that alters you internally, as you go forward. That's what you're suggesting. It's not just about the current context, or the current context probably also has an effect just like being exposed to an illness. Yeah, might might have an effect.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes. So we did. So this PNAS paper, we wanted to test social vaccines, but we wanted to test their long term effects. So we already had these papers showing that professors, experts, people in the field, who are already successful, can act as a social vaccine and inoculate women in mathematics and engineering and science. We had that.
Jim Coan
Simply by being-
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Simply by being there in person-
Jim Coan
There in person interacting...
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-or by reading a biography of a person on the website.
Jim Coan
Stop it. Come on.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes.
Jim Coan
What are you talking about?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes.
Jim Coan
So I'm listening to you tell me the story. And I cannot help but think about your grandmother, and your mother, right off the bat, in your personal history.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It's not an accident that kids of scientists are more likely to become scientists-
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-than kids who don't have a scientist in the family. Right?
Jim Coan
Right.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And so women who have scientists or engineers as parents or siblings are more likely to succeed in this field. Now, social environment is one who knows what other maybe biological influences there might be. But I think that social vaccine idea is a big one. But the interest... so the reason I call them you know, I don't call them role models is because when I asked these women in the calculus study, how much do you like or whatever your your professors, they liked their male and female professors equally.
Jim Coan
Equally.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Equally.
Jim Coan
There's good people out there.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
They were good professors.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
They were, they were great. We observed them in class. They were great.
Jim Coan
But it's not about liking. It's about identification.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It's about identification.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Can I be like that, can I be that.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah. So the more the identified with their female professors, the more they felt that they were confident in mathematics, but for students in sections taught by male professors of calculus, identifying with him had no bearing on their confidence flatline. So one line goes up nice correlation between their identification with the female math professors and their own confidence in mathematics, their own self efficacy, a flatline for male professors.
Jim Coan
Wow
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So fast forward, fast...
Jim Coan
Fast forward.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So now we're talking about this longitudinal social vaccine.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
One question was, can peers function as social vaccines? So somebody who is just a year older than me, so I'm a first year student in engineering, I have a student who is I have a mentor who is a junior or senior, can that person be a social vaccine?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Question number one.
Jim Coan
Right.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Two, is mentoring enough? As long as it's good mentoring? Or does the gender similarity matter? My prediction was that it would matter. Question number three, once the vaccine is done, does the effect last beyond that?
Jim Coan
These are great questions.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So the answer to these questions was that the same, the mentoring by itself was not necessarily where the action was. It was, question number two, same gender mentoring for women in engineering where the action was. We measured their multiple variables, so feelings of belonging, self efficacy, career aspirations, we got that grades looked at retention in engineering, all of that stuff.
Jim Coan
Right.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
We randomly assigned these women in August or September when they walked into UMass
Jim Coan
As freshmen? Freshmen.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes, first year students.
Jim Coan
Get them right then, yeah that's great.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Sometimes it was during orientation.
Jim Coan
Oh, good.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Classes hadn't even started. That was our baseline.
Jim Coan
Excellent.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Then we had recruited over the summer- juniors and seniors in engineering to be mentors.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
We didn't tell them that the study had anything to do with gender. The mentors were 50% men, 50% women, we train them. We told them, they would get what, like three mentees each that we wanted to meet with them one on one, we train them on with a random focus group on the host of stuff that they could do. We told them that their primary goal was to be their friend. And that in being their friend and helping them adjust to college, they would probably find out things that their mentee needed, and they could use any of these options that we had taught them about based on what their mentee needed. And they were asked to meet once a month, keep this online diary, talking about what... where they met how long they met for, what did they talk about? What was their perception of their of their mentee? This went on for a year-
Jim Coan
A year?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
A year. So they met no more than eight times. Actually most of them met only four times, twice in the fall and twice in the spring
Jim Coan
Stop it.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And other than that, it was some texts, some emails. That's it. We tracked the mentees progress middle of their fall semester, end of their spring semester, three times in the first year. Then the mentees graduated from college.
Jim Coan
The men-mentors?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
The mentors graduated from college. So the mentoring relationship ended.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
We kept track of the mentees once a year till graduation. So the PNAS paper-
Jim Coan
Unbelievable.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-is the first two years of data.
Jim Coan
Okay.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And what we find is that from year one, from the beginning to end of year one, feelings of belonging in engineering for women with female mentors hold steady. There's no change. Those with male mentors or no mentors, feelings of belonging dropped sharply.
Jim Coan
Oh my god.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Self efficacy? Same. Self efficacy or confidence in their own engineering ability, if you have a female mentor remain steady, self efficacy for the other two groups drop.
Jim Coan
Oh my god.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Career aspirations, same thing, threatened challenge. So the ratio of anxiety to motivation, anxiety remains steady for those with female mentors. Anxiety relative to motivation goes up for those with male mentors and control condition. What's interesting is that on some outcome variables, for example, thoughts about switching majors, any mentors makes a difference, but on most dependent variables, retention, belonging, anxiety, the male mentor condition is no different from the control condition. The flashiest numbers are in retention. 100% retention at the end of their first year in college, for the students who had women mentors.
Jim Coan
100%?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
82% in the control conditions.
Jim Coan
You're killing me now. That's-that you're talking about effect si- So 89%?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So I'm sorry, 89% in the control condition 82% in the male mentor condition, no difference between 82 and 89. Both are significantly different from 100%.
Jim Coan
So I'm going to just pretend I'm a upper level college administrator, you know, or maybe a dean of an engineering department.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Exactly the person I want to influence.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah, I'm gonna freak out. If I see those numbers, are you getting... freaking out?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I'm getting freaking out from my Provost.
Jim Coan
Good.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
From The University Provost
Jim Coan
High-five Provost.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes. So I gave this talk at this, this distinguished faculty lecture where both the Chancellor and the Provost were there. And both of them commented on it. And then the Provost said to me that she wants to have the dean of computer science, engineering and natural sciences, she wants me to do a little mini presentation for those three Dean's. And have me identify sort of the best interventions that I think would make a difference in terms of recruitment, retention, student success, and then have these Dean's essentially, adopt them for all three colleges.
Jim Coan
So you're moving now toward a real intervention?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
That's right.
Jim Coan
But you know, you kind of did it.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I did it as a-
Jim Coan
You kind of did an intervention. I mean, it's random, randomly assigned, right? Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
But now it wouldn't be... It wouldn't be, it would be essentially scaled up.
Jim Coan
Right, yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
To the whole college of engineering, instead of 150 participants.
Jim Coan
Oh my God. I want to do it at UVA. First of all, the fact that you're getting these effects with women, in stem, we all know that women in STEM are underrepresented, systematically. And there's been lots of debate.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yup.
Jim Coan
Larry Summers - kind of dumbass quote.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah.
Jim Coan
And sorry, Larry.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I was going to say! You can't talk like this! Good thing that you have an editor.
Jim Coan
I'll leave it in. But what strikes me as particularly exciting about this is that... because you looked at women in STEM, you're not just looking at it all over, you're targeting a specific domain where we know there's a problem.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And even more specifically, not in the life sciences-
Jim Coan
Right.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-where women are 40, 45% of the student body. Not the faculty, but the student body, and sometimes 50%. So I'm specifically targeting physical science and engineering departments. So engineering, mathematics, physics, computer science. I'm targeting departments and colleges - or engineering is a college at UMass - where the percentage of women is less than 20%. So in engineering, 16% of students nationwide are women. And that's the same percentage at UMass. In computer science, the number is worse. It's like 15, 14% are women. This is 50% of the population. 56% of college students are women. And 16% of engineering students are women. The gap is-
Jim Coan
And it didn't start out that way. I read somewhere that early in the early days of computer science it didn't-
Nilanjana Dasgupta
In computer science it didn't start out that way.
Jim Coan
-it was very equitable in terms of numbers, and it's sort of tumbled off at some point.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah, computer science was seen as, if you've seen Hidden Figures, computer science, that movie-
Jim Coan
I haven't.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-computer science was seen as a women's field. Because computers were sort of seen as-
Jim Coan
Secretary work
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-secretarial work. And then when it became a nonsec- when it became sort of more masculine-
Jim Coan
More macho.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-then suddenly. So that's actually the history of computer science and who's in it is a great example of why it's a social psychological question of how, who occupies that space is a function of what gender stereotype- gendered stereotypes we have about computer science.
Jim Coan
It's amazing work. It also, it also really illustrates how direly important I mean, I'm just finishing up my tenure, and my department is the Director of Diversity and Inclusion and we have meetings all the time you know about, about, you know, how to change the system. That's one set of questions, but my God, whether the system needs to be changed. It's so important to have top down representation in terms of diversity, but the, you know, there's something really hopeful and what you've got going here too, it's, because that change in the faculty is going to take-
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Exactly
Jim Coan
-twenty, thirty years.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It's going to take a long time.
Jim Coan
But the mentors-
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Mhm-
Jim Coan
-is so lovely. The student mentors is such a lovely, lovely idea.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So, there are like six takeaways for organizations and universities that care about diversity and inclusion.
Jim Coan
Let's hear 'em.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
One is increased contact between entering students in fields where they're way out numbered with faculty like them. Or whether it be female faculty for female students, or faculty of color for students of color and so on. Two it is true, and this is a long slog, that that sort of contact between female professors and new students is particularly likely to be effective if we hire more women in those fields.
Jim Coan
If we hire.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
That's two. Three, even when the numbers are small, leverage peers as mentors, and foster mentoring relationships. But in doing those mentoring relationships, ensure that the mentors have are similar to the mentees, especially if the mentees are, are underrepresented. So mentoring is three. Four, when the numbers are small, use other ways to showcase the success of technical women. It may be through having guest speakers in class, it may be by faculty, male faculty, showcasing the research of a particular female scientist or engineer. And incidentally, sort of showing a picture of her and just describing her work as a case study of what they're teaching. But the fact that they show her, not him, essentially isn't very incidental, small way of saying that the person who did the science is a woman. So that's, that's four. And five is teamwork, which we didn't talk about, that for classes that involve team science or, or team projects, avoid teams with a solo woman in STEM. And finally, six, a lot of these interventions seem to be particularly effective during these developmental transitions, where students are coming in from high school.
Jim Coan
Just starting college.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Just starting just yeah.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
The pipeline leaks at the joints, the joint is in those transition points. So when you're going from one part of the pipe to another, it's the joint that leaks. So if we can intervene at the joints, that's when we're most effective. I came into social psychology, I chose social psychology over neuroscience, in the choice to go to a PhD program in social-
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-rather than a PhD program in neuroscience, because I wanted to do research, but that had social justice implications.
Jim Coan
So from the very beginning, you were thinking in those terms.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Right.
Jim Coan
And so that's so interesting, though, because you chose social psychology to address social justice concerns, because, you know, we're talking about- Well, it wouldn't strike me as obvious that there was a social-psych domain of research that's applicable to policy at that early stage.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
No, so there wasn't. So when I went to graduate school. When I went to Yale, I studied initially with Bob Abelson and then with Mahzarin Banaji. And both of them were very basic social cognition people.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So the first two years, I wondered if, if the choice if I had made a right choice.
Jim Coan
"What am I doing?"
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It felt too basic.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It felt too basic, too, micro. And it felt like there was a big chasm between the research I was doing in graduate school, and what I wanted to do, which is where I could see its relevance to some problem.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And in the end, I made my peace sometime around my third year in graduate school, and, and sort of the peace I made was that "I'm good at this. I like the stuff, I understand the reason for the method and the causation and ruling out alternative explanations. And I trust that one day, I will come back and be able to apply this to domains where the relevance is obvious."
Jim Coan
So what's interesting to me immediately about that, is that it suggests to me two commitments at least two commitments. One is to sort of, issues of social policy and from in social justice, is that fair to say?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah, yeah.
Jim Coan
And two is a commitment to science as an approach for understanding what to do.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
As a mode of inquiry.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So the commitment to science, I think, was why I got into graduate school rather than becoming a grassroots organizer, or all these other things I can do.
Jim Coan
That are all wonderful thing. Wonderful, important things to do.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So I actually gave this distinguished faculty lecture at UMass and I made two points that, that there are two themes that run through my family and that I think, I sort of generally inherited the run through my work. One is the value of science. My parents are scientists.
Jim Coan
Both your parents are scientists?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
One is a scientist, one is an engineer.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And the other is that the commitment to social justice, both of my grandparents worked very closely with Gandhi.
Jim Coan
Stop it.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And my great-grandmother was a feminist writer.
Jim Coan
Oh, come on.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I'm serious!
Jim Coan
What are you talking about. Okay, I mean, wait, we can just skip over that.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
All right.
Jim Coan
So tell me, tell me a little bit about your grandparents. Do you mind?
Jim Coan
No, not at all.
Jim Coan
Do you mind? Can we go into that history a little bit?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes, yes.
Jim Coan
Tell me about that.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So my grandparents were very active in the Indian Freedom Movement. My grandfather was an administrative judge, sort of the first generation of non-British Indian civil servants. Indian civil service. ICS.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So the first gen- the menage first generation people were all white Britons and then suddenly the British Raj decided to allow this group of people, Indians, to become ICS officers. So my grandfather was part of that.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And my grandma-
Jim Coan
When was that?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
This was 1930 something.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah. So I think the early 30s or the mid 30s. My grandmother was a mathematics master's degree, a person with a master's degree-
Jim Coan
You're kidding!
Nilanjana Dasgupta
No, she was really-
Jim Coan
In India? In the 30s?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
She was very Yeah, she was a, she was a she was very smart.
Jim Coan
What a superstar.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
But she didn't pursue math. And she essentially became sort of my grandfather's host. But this was in the midst of the Quit India Movement and the World War Two was about, had just, was about to begin. And I think Gandhi came to Calcutta, where my grandparents were, and they both got very involved in essentially the civil disobedience movement. My grandfather had to be involved in a very pa- in a passive way, because he worked for the British Raj.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
But my grandmother could be very active. So she ended up-
Jim Coan
But still risky.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Still risky. So during the Hindu Muslim riots of 1945, she went to- so she and all these other colleagues asked Gandhi, you know, "we want to be involved, what should we do?" And he essentially said, "you have to live the life of civil disobedience of this life, you, you have to be involved in, in areas where there are these riots." So she took my, her infant, my aunt, and went and lived for six months, in this in this village where there were these massive riots going on.
Jim Coan
Oh my God.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And eventually-
Jim Coan
What did you- what did your grandpa do during that time?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
He stayed at home and looked after the rest of the kids and went to work.
Jim Coan
Holy shit.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And then he had to send her a letter because India got independence while she was in this, in this village. So she here to send her a letter saying, "you should come back home, we are now independent." So anyway, they were very active in that. And my great-grandmother, who was widowed at, I don't know, 30? Maybe younger than that. Her husband died of cholera became, surreptitiously, this feminist writer who initially wrote anonymously, about the poor treatment of women in Indian society in the 1920s. And then later on, started using her name and started writing public.
Jim Coan
What was her name?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Her name is Jyotirmoy Davey. Yeah, so she wrote initially in Bengali, and now those books, the short stories and novels have been translated in multiple languages, including English. So anyways, so that thread of social justice and the thread of a family- of parents who was a scientist, an engineer, I think, in some ways, was sort of in the air and affected.
Jim Coan
So your mother was their child?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes.
Jim Coan
Okay.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
My maternal grandparents.
Jim Coan
So your, your mother grew up to go into the sciences?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes. She was a biologist.
Jim Coan
Wow, what kind of- where was... where did she do her biology work?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
She got a degree and at the University of- Calcutta University- she was a physiologist who was, she was an animal physiologist.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
She did all kinds of-
Jim Coan
So in the '50s, '60s?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Her degree was, I think, in the 1950s. Let's see, she got married in 1961. So around then her degree was probably a '60 or '61.
Jim Coan
Okay.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Also before her time, and many more her time.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Before her time, and yeah.
Jim Coan
I mean, I've talked to I've talked to people of that age group who entered, you know, science during that time, and it was not an easy scene, even you know, over here or any place for women during that...
Nilanjana Dasgupta
That's true. I think my maternal side of the family was very intellectual. So it's a family of academics or civil service.
Jim Coan
I see, yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So one uncle was a history PhD, one aunt was an economics PhD, one, another aunt was a civil servant.
Jim Coan
Right.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So it- that side of the family were, it was sort of in the family.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So it wasn't a surprise. I mean, it was it was unusual nationally, but in the context of the family, it was sort of probably normative that you would be, you would go and get a degree beyond your bachelor's degree.
Jim Coan
Okay. And your dad?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
My dad has his own business... he's now retired. He was an electrical engineer.
Jim Coan
Electrical engineer.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah.
Jim Coan
So he got his degree, went to work.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
He got his degree. No, he went to Glasgow.
Jim Coan
Went to Glasgow?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah. And it was too cold and too dark.
Jim Coan
Yeah, it's too cold and too dark there, to hell with that palce!
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So then he, then he moved down to the University of London, got a master's-
Jim Coan
Where it's bright and sunny all the time.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It's brighter and sunnier than Glasgow apparently. And then he got his degree. And then he went to Yugoslavia for a year and worked there-
Jim Coan
Wow.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-and he came back home and got married. And then started his own business.
Jim Coan
Yeah. So you were born in India?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I was born in India.
Jim Coan
In Calcutta?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
In Calcutta.
Jim Coan
Wow. And how long did you live there?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I lived there till I was 18. I came... my entire primary and secondary education was in India, and then I came to college in the US.
Jim Coan
And that was at Smith?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
That was at Smith. 1988. August.
Jim Coan
So we're all caught up?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
August 21, 1988.
Jim Coan
1988. How about that? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So, okay, so you've got this family tr-, multiple family traditions informing, not only a sort of political worldview, assuming the lineage coming from Gandhi and civil disobedience and all that is relatively what we would call liberal. You know, he's sort of, you know, progressive kind of worldview. But also this grounding in this appreciation for empirical inquiry and for science.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
That's why we went on this detour, in the story.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I think the value of science really came from my parents.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It was all about evidence and ideas. We had more books than we ever had toys. But from my grandparents and great grandmother came this thing about social justice.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And I should say, I'm making the story up in retrospect. That was not, this was not what I knew in 1988 or '92 or '97.
Jim Coan
No, right. But, but that's what's part of what's fascinating about those kinds of influences is that they just sort of, they just sort of reside in you. I mean, we could ask the question, why would you be so interested in science and social justice? And it's gotta involve this, this pathway, this, this story, whether it was whether it was a sort of deliberate, intentional conscious thought or not.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And it wasn't, you know, there's a famous Steve Jobs quote, that says, something he was talking about his his life where he said, "it's only in retrospect, when I look back, that I can connect the dots."
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
"I could not connect the dots going forward."
Jim Coan
Sure, right. Of course.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And this is, this is exact, I think that that quote really resonates with me, because I didn't know these dots existed. I just sort of followed whatever interests seemed intuitively appealing.
Jim Coan
So you've got this broad sort of relatively abstract interest in using science for a social good, but what starts shaping it towards what specifically you're studying. So you go to Yale to study social psychology after getting your psychology major?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah.
Jim Coan
At Smith, and you're working with Masurian? Why? Why her?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I actually worked with Bob Fosse.
Jim Coan
Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. Right. Yeah, of course.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And I was I think his last student, he was-
Jim Coan
Ableton, right? Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So he was retiring, soon to retire, when I was around doing my master's thesis. And so he suggested that Masurian and he co-advise me, and I thought that was a great idea. So the two of them co-advised me. And then when Bob retired, I shifted over entirely too Mazure.
Jim Coan
And so yeah, go ahead.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So that's how I ended up working with her. So in, I was interested in working with her from the beginning and at Yale in those days, you didn't have to commit to an advisor or...
Jim Coan
I see. Wow.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So you want, you are admitted into the program. It was entirely up to you when you chose your advisor.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Right.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So that's sort of why I didn't have an advisor going in. And then I gravitated toward Abelton and then then worked with both both of them. And then when Bob retired, worked with Masurian, exclusively.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Wow. And so right away, were you becoming involved, in sort of interested in implicit-
Nilanjana Dasgupta
No.
Jim Coan
-influences and behavior and-
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Do you remember the weird term entitativity?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Okay. So I worked on entitativity.
Jim Coan
Stop it.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah, no, that's right. So I worked on how do people perceive groups as being these cohesive, like Don Campbell, Don Campbell-
Jim Coan
That's Don Campbell.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So how do perceptual qualities about groups make them seem like a unit rather than a collection of random individuals? So entitativity was my dissertation and then I got sick of it.
Jim Coan
Yeah. As will happen.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
As will, right.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So then I went to University of Washington to work with Tony, as his postdoc.
Jim Coan
Oh right.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And it is then that I completely retooled my area of research-
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-and started working on implicit bias.
Jim Coan
Another interesting guy. Tony Greenwald.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah, yeah. I think the combination of Masurian and Tony was really good for me. Because Masurian is sort of this big vision ideas person and Tony is all about method and rigoror and application.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So the combination was great. But they both believed that implicit attitudes, once formed, and once formed were formed early, and you couldn't change them. And I didn't believe that. And I sort of did some experiments with an n of one with myself as a participant to try and do these different mental exercises in my own head...
Jim Coan
So the IAT was really in development, right?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes. Yeah.
Jim Coan
There was a lot of wrangling about the right way to score it. And you know, and things like that.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So 1998 was the first GPSB paper on the Greenwald, McGee, and Schwartz.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And that was when I was Tony's postdoc.
Jim Coan
I see.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And Masurian and Tony had a grant together, and I I was funded on that grant. I was an international student, so I couldn't apply for an NRSA.
Jim Coan
Oh, yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So but I believe that I had this this hunch that implicit attitudes could be shifted around.
Jim Coan
That was not canon at that point.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
No, it was not, it was not it was not canon.
Jim Coan
And Tony doesn't do well, in my experience with with violations of canon.
Jim Coan
Yeah. It was anti-canon.
Jim Coan
I know!
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It was not, it was not neutral, it was anti-canon.
Jim Coan
That's great.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And so I would spend a lot of time trying to persuade Tony to allow me to test the idea that maybe under the right conditions, it could be, it could be changed.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And he wasn't very open to the possibility.
Jim Coan
You're kidding me!
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I know, right? So, so-
Jim Coan
All props to Tony Greenwald.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So I had a bet with- no, I went behind his back. And I collected 20 subjects, many people using this intervention, which I created, where I showed people these images of admired African Americans and disliked white Americans with these little two sentence bios, and found that the race bias on and IAT was significantly reduced. Well-
Jim Coan
Just like that.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Simply as a function of seeing those images, and then doing a task where, just to make sure they had paid attention, I showed them those images and then I had them say which description was true or false. So after doing this for about 10 minutes, then I measured did, had them do an IAT and it was reduced. So at a party, I approached Tony, and I said, "I have these, you know, I have something to tell you. I have these 20 subjects-"
Jim Coan
I love sneaking up on him at a party. That's good.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
No, because Tony was far more relaxed at a party.
Jim Coan
Of course!
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And much more, more likely to be open to these ideas that he didn't always buy.
Jim Coan
Sure, sure.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So he said-
Jim Coan
It's a good strategy, I like it.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
"I don't think it was whatever. I don't think it'll work. Okay. $5," he loves bet.
Jim Coan
Oh, I didn't know that.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
"$5 bet, $5 bet. I don't think it'll work. But if it works, if it doesn't work, you give me five bucks. And if it if it works, I'll give you five bucks." I said, Okay. And he said, "even if it works, you can't, it's not going to it'll fade away really quickly." So he's in my first paper, actually, the second paper and my most cited paper, is this, Dasgupta and Greenwald 2001 paper in GPSB, which showed that you can use this counter stereotype exemplar manipulation, showing people positive racial exemplars of one group or a negative racial exemplars of another group, or do the same thing for age and reduce implicit race bias in one experiment, age bias in another experiment. I brought them back into the lab on day two, without any reminder of the intervention. And the and the reduction and bias was still there.
Jim Coan
How about that? I wonder if it was bound to context?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes, in that study, it could be. But in subsequent studies, once I finished my postdoc, we found that contact, so in another study, we found that people who had lots of contact with individuals who are LGBT, LGBT co-workers or friends or family members, that positive contact correlated beautifully with lower anti gay bias on an IAT.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
We also found that this media exposure manipulation, it really worked well with people who had no contact with the-
Jim Coan
The media exposure manipulation thing that you had done in the lab. Trying to reduce racial negative racial bias.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes, then we applied it to anti gay bias. And we found that for people who had no contact with gays and lesbians that media exposure to now admired gay and lesbian individuals reduced anti gay bias. But the media exposure had no effect on people who knew gay people in their, in their everyday life. They shared-
Jim Coan
Because there was a floor?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It wasn't a floor effect, but they were significantly lower in bias. And they didn't go down anymore. So they were sort of fixed, media exposure did nothing-
Jim Coan
Interesting.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-those who came in with no context or high bias and then they came down.
Jim Coan
Wow. So you got your five bucks?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I got my five bucks. Yeah, I got a paper-
Jim Coan
What did you do with it?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I love this story... because that was my, it actually really made me realize that you can be a new person in a field and have an intuition that can go completely against the canon-
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
-that can actually be right.
Jim Coan
Sometimes I even think that a little naivete is a really good thing.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I agree.
Jim Coan
Because you don't know what you're not supposed to ask.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
This is kind of partly why I like to talk to people who are not social psychologists, and sometimes not academics, because the questions they'll ask, sometimes send me on a path that I hadn't thought of before. And that's been gratifying. I mean, just to look back to the beginning of our conversation is gratifying to just disseminate our science to the general public because the practice of dissemination generates more science. And oftentimes, it generates the ability to do the science in the real world, because people will come up and say, "I really liked that but I wonder if it would work in a school with an adolescent population." And I'll say, Well, if you can find me that school, and oh, I'm a principal of so and so school, our school is a research school, if you want to do a study, and well, then that's that started the next grant.
Jim Coan
So wait, how long are you at Washington?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Two years.
Jim Coan
Two years, just two years?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Just two years. So
Jim Coan
So '98?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
'97 to '99.
Jim Coan
'97 to '99? And then you're at Amherst?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
No. And then I went to the New School for Social Research.
Jim Coan
Oh, in New York City.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
In New York City for three and a half years. And then I moved to UMass.
Jim Coan
And so by the time you get to UMass, you're still not doing this latest stuff.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It was in, at the New School, I had a student who said, The New School is an unusual thing. Students, graduate students essentially have real regular jobs.
Jim Coan
Right.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And they're trying to make a career shift. And so the classes are all in the evening.
Jim Coan
Right.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
The reason I'm telling you the story is I had a graduate student who was essentially a counseling psychologist at a women's college. And she had this idea that the same sort of seeing positive counter stereotypic exemplars could reduce gender bias or gender stereotyping. Stereotypes about who is a good leader.
Jim Coan
Who's a good leader?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah. If first for women who went to a women's college, more so than women who went to a co-ed college, because you're more likely to see women in positions of leadership,
Jim Coan
You're not seeing that, it has its own organic dynamic.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
And the president of the college is more likely to be a woman. So we took our laptops, they did IATs, but they did it, but they did it in their- on their campus on our laptops.
Jim Coan
Wow. That's fascinating.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So if you wanted to measure this coming into a college environment, where there are women in leadership, change these women's implicit beliefs about gender and leadership? And does that change over time as a function of how long they are in college?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So we- so we compare women's college and a co-ed college, only women.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
At time one, when they came into the college, the first week- the first month of college, there was no difference in gender stereotypes.
Jim Coan
The first month, looking at the different colleges?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Looking at the two different colleges. So these are first year students just walking into college.
Jim Coan
Right, right.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
The students at the co-ed college, their gender stereotypes went up, the kids or the Women's College, their gender stereotype went down. But the reason I came upon the STEM work, is because we found this weird effect that for students for these women at the co-ed college, the more math and science courses they took, the more, the stronger the gender stereotypes. And I thought that's weird. That doesn't make any why would that be?
Jim Coan
Why would it be that specific kind of course?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So then I looked at who was teaching those courses, and disproportionately their faculty in STEM courses were men. So then I thought, Oh, this is interesting. So we put that in the paper. But then I was ruminating on it and thinking, if seeing male faculty, mostly male faculty, strengthens gender stereotypes, would that spill over and affect what they thought they think that they can do themselves? And so I was thinking about that. That, do our professors affect what we do? Does our similarity with them then bleed over into what we feel we can do? If we're very different from them, do we think that we can do it? None of this showed up on our explicit measures, they only showed up on these IATs. And when we did a frequency count of who their professors were by gender.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So I was, so then I started thinking about about stereotypes and how it might unknowingly affect the course of someone's selection of major, their self efficacy, their motivation, their career trajectory, and, and...
Jim Coan
Which, which already, we're talking about.. You know, people talk about a lot, and especially in social psychology, they talk they talk about this sort of, you know, the the putative, or the theoretically relevant effect of cumulative small effects. But what you're talking about is leading to a decision. You're talking about, you're talking about putting people on the trajectory, down a decision tree.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes.
Jim Coan
And each branch of that tree is a major effect.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yeah. And that the person may be unaware.
Jim Coan
Unaware? They may tell themselves, whatever, right?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
They- I think their personal experiences that something like "my interest changed," or "this is too theoretical," or whatever it is.
Jim Coan
And did any, did you ever talk to these students at any point to figure out what what are they?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
No, I wish I had. It's because this was not what we were after.
Jim Coan
Yeah, sure.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
We were not looking at science and math. We- but we happen to measure what courses were they taking?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Who were their professors? What was the content of the courses. And it's only when we found this surprising effect that students who took more science and math showed stronger gender stereotypes at the co-ed college, not at the women's college. But by that time, our study had long finish, we were in the middle of analyzing the data and writing the paper, and this was sort of an unexpected finding, it was not the central piece of our paper.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Then we realized, "oh, actually, it's connected to the central thesis, because it's these women who have, who are more likely at the co-ed college, to have male professors." The students who are taking social science classes, humanities classes are more likely to have a mix of gender in terms of their faculty, but students who are taking math, science, computer science had mostly male professors. And so this was sort of a side story illustrating how who faculty are that students see in front of the class can affect their perceptions of who makes a good leader. But it was not connected to science and engineering.
Jim Coan
And this was still at New School?
Nilanjana Dasgupta
This was still a New School.
Jim Coan
Yeah, wow.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
This was, but this was when the-
Jim Coan
This is the seed.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
This is the seed. And so this-
Jim Coan
It's very exciting.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
This is 2004.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
So by now, I had just moved to UMass. I was thinking of writing a grant. And I had already decided that the grant had to do with something to do with essentially the malleability of implicit bias, but now applied to the self, not to perceptions of others. Which had been my prior work.
Jim Coan
I love that. Applied to the self.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Applied to the self.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Because that is a complete inversion.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
That's right.
Jim Coan
That doesn't show up anywhere in that literature until-
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Yes, and it didn't show up, then. I mean, there was a stereotype threat.
Jim Coan
Right. Yes. Right. That's a little bit different.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
It's different. Because in Claude Steele's hypothesis, stereotype threat is really all about somebody else's perception of you, which raises worries, anxieties, whatever, and then affects your performance, but you don't believe it.
Jim Coan
Right.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Whereas in what I wanted to pursue is that it gets internalized.
Jim Coan
What does the environment teach me about myself? Implicitly.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
How does the environment leave an imprint? On my self concept? And I don't even know that imprint exists?
Jim Coan
Wow.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I think I make- I'm the driver. I'm the captain of my ship. But actually, it's the context.
Jim Coan
Well, as a fellow scientist, and as a father of two small girls.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
Oh, you are!
Jim Coan
Four and six. This is one of my most inspirational conversations. And thanks so much for talking to me.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I'm very glad. I'm very glad. I hope your your daughters benefit from you and have your spirit.
Jim Coan
Well-
Nilanjana Dasgupta
I don't know how the heck you're doing this when you have a four and a six year old.
Jim Coan
Yeah, I don't either. But I'm glad I'm doing it. I wouldn't trade this for anything. All right, thanks.
Nilanjana Dasgupta
You're welcome.
Jim Coan
Okay, that's it. Thanks to Nilanjana Dasgupta for so candidly chatting with me at that lovely upstate New York Conference setting. For letting me ambush her really. I mean, when I realized she was there, I did not want to let her get away without recording something like this and she was very generous with her time. So thank you, Nilanjana. I owe you one. All right. Folks, the music on Circle of Willis is written by Tom Stauffer and Gene Ruley and performed by their band The New Drake's. For information about how to purchase their music check the about page at circleofwillispodcast.com. Circle of Willis is produced by Siva Vaidhyanathan and brought to you by VQR in the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. And Circle of Willis is a member of the TEEJ.FM network. You can find out more about that at teej.fm (now wtju.net). Special thanks to Nathan Moore, General Manager and swell guy at WTJU FM in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Lulu Miller, plucky genius, co founder of the podcast invisibilia, and reporter for NPR News. If you like this podcast, how about giving us a little review at iTunes, letting us know how we're doing. It's super easy, and we like it. Or send us an email by going to circleofwillispodcast.com and clicking the Contact tab. In any case, I'll see you all in Episode 14 where I talked with Susan Johnson, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Ottawa, in Canada, up there. Where she's also a member of the Order of Canada, which is Canada's highest civilian honor. She's going to tell us the story of developing Emotionally Focused Therapy, one of the most widely used and widely studied therapies ever developed for treating distressed romantic couples. Until then, bye bye