“We may hold biases we’re not even aware of”

Awarded with the 17th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences, the researcher Mahzarin Banaji explains how implicit biases—unconscious prejudices—help to understand the gap between the egalitarian values we profess and the real inequalities in education, employment, or healthcare. She notes that these biases begin in early childhood, are present even in large language models, and can change, but not through mandatory training; rather, by sparking curiosity and data-driven analysis that encourage voluntary and lasting change.

The 17th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences has gone to social psychologists Icek Ajzen, Dolores Albarracín, Mahzarin Banaji, Anthony Greenwald and Richard Petty for “revolutionizing the way we understand and measure attitudes” with an influence that extends to “psychology, sociology, political science, education, health, economics and other areas.”