Change the Wallpaper: Interventions to Reduce Bias and Increase Inclusion

The Hanson Center Visiting Scholar for 2025-26, Dr. Nilanjana (Buju) Dasgupta, will present on her research. Dr. Dasgupta is the Provost Professor of Psychology and founding Director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A pioneering scholar and nationally recognized leader in inclusive STEM education, she brings deep expertise, critical perspective, and scholarly insight to our campus community. Her new book published by Yale University Press is titled "Change the Wallpaper: Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities."

Using her new book as an anchor, Dr. Dasgupta’s talk offers a science-driven approach to culture change in service of greater equality and justice. Change the Wallpaper: Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities uses a classic social psychological concept—the power of situations—to show how situational forces nudge our thoughts and behavior in small ways that compound over time in one of two directions. Some forces increase unfamiliarity, exclusion, and inequality while other forces increase familiarity, inclusion, and equality. These situational forces operating in the background barely get our attention; they function like wallpaper in a room, hidden in plain sight. Yet, we are all affected by it. The talk shows people how to notice the "wallpaper," counteract the negative effects, and harness the positive ones by developing science-backed interventions and taking action at work, school, college, and in our communities. The book takes a deeper dive and synthesizes research across multiple disciplines in the social sciences and health sciences, weaving them with stories of ordinary individuals, to show what works and what doesn’t in the effort to create positive culture change that is actionable in the current climate in which we live. More at changethewallpaper.com.