Nilanjana Dasgupta is Provost Professor of Psychology and founding Director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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How can we fight for justice as ordinary people? Can individual action change structural inequality? What works, what doesn’t? Change the Wallpaper answers these questions.

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NEWS & UPDATES

In the News

Venue: Forbes Library, February 18,2025

Book Discussion: Nilanjana Dasgupta in conversation with Carrie N. Baker

Utah Public Radio, January 10,2025

Undisciplined: Does DEI training work?

Thought Echoes Podcast, February 03,2025

Dr. Nilanjana Dasgupta: Driving Culture Change with Beth Bonness

SSIR, February 04,2025

Interiors That Welcome Everyone

Ms. Magazine (Op-Ed), January 18,2025

DEI in the Age of Trump: How to Build More Just Communities..

The Hill (Op-Ed), December 15,2024

Neither liberal nor conservative approaches to racism work..

Psychology Today, January 20,2025

What the U.S. Presidential Election Results Tell Us

Leadership Development News, February 10,2025

Nilanjana Dasgupta in conversation with Dr. Relly Nadler and Dr. Cathay Greenberg

Better Known, January 06,2025

Six things that should be better known.

Friends Like Us, January 29,2025

Changing the Wallpaper: A Conversation with Nilanjana Dasgupta.

The Rational View, January 26,2025

Dr. Nilanjana Dasgupta on how biases are like wallpaper.

The Strategy Skills, January 08,2025

Nilanjana Dasgupta on "Succeeding as an Immigrant."

The Roundtable, January 10,2025

Special Lockbox Panel: Building More Just Communities.

The Boston Globe, October 18,2022

Why a ‘Near Peer’ can be the Best Kind of Mentor.

The Atlantic, May 22,2017

How Women Mentors Make a Difference in Engineering.

Reviews of
Change the Wallpaper

" Change the Wallpaper is a provocative, enlightening read—Dasgupta’s lovely work sheds important light on the subtle biases that plague our society today and gives a hopeful glimpse into how we can do better. An indispensable guide for anyone ready for the challenge of fixing our unfair world."

Laurie Santos, Ph.D.

Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology, Yale University, & host of 'The Happiness Lab' podcast

" Change the Wallpaper provides the best reporting to date of research that forces us to move our attention away from ‘the individual’ and towards situations and environments as the drivers of change. As such, it offers up an old truth from the social sciences, but with the strength of evidence from today’s laboratories and organizations. Read it and you’ll want to change your wallpaper."

Mahzarin R. Banaji, Ph.D.

Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Harvard University, & Co-author of 'Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People'

" Inequality results from thousands of individual decisions: do I stick with this hard math class or give up, do I strive to become a doctor or conclude that people like me don’t belong in the occupation? Compounded over thousands of people making their individual decisions, we often miss the signals they are receiving from their social environment that lead them to conclude a worthy pathway is closed to them. Dasgupta’s hopeful but hardheaded book urges us to look carefully at that signaling system and understand how impactful it is and how easy it is to alter. Her scientific experiments show us that slight changes in messaging — that social wallpaper— can have durable positive impacts. Educators, counselors, employers, and policy advocates need to read this book."

Katherine S. Newman, Ph.D.

Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor, University of California, Berkeley & University of California System Provost & Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs

" The connection between individual and systemic levels of structural bias are critical but rarely made. Nilanjana Dasgupta has delivered an important guide on how to see these connections and leverage them for change."

Dolly Chugh, Ph.D.

Jacob. B. Melnick Term Professor of Management, New York University, & Author of 'The Person You Mean to Be' and 'A More Just Future'

" Focusing on some of today’s most difficult problems of diversity and inclusion, Change the Wallpaper is a readable, evidence-based analysis of how we can change structures (the wallpaper) to promote equality and fairness."

Jerry Kang, J.D.

Distinguished Professor of Law and Asian American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

" This compelling and content-rich book reveals how unrecognized or unseen norms, structures, and dynamics (the wallpaper) create obstacles and explains why traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have often failed."

Rachel Godsil, J.D.

Distinguished Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar, Rutgers University

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