Dr. Calvin Lai is an associate professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board at Project Implicit, a nonprofit for research and education about subtle or hidden biases. He studies implicit biases: spontaneous or unconscious mental processes that create a gap between what people value (e.g., equality) and what people do (e.g., discrimination). For his work, he has received a SAGE Early Career Trajectory Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology and the Association for Psychological Science’s Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. Dr. Lai completed his bachelor’s at Rutgers University, his PhD in Social Psychology at the University of Virginia, and his post-doctoral training at Harvard University.
Dr. Lai’s research has focused on preventing racial discrimination in law enforcement and studied topics such as officers’ opinions about race, racial disparities in police stops, selection and recruitment of officers, and diversity training. He currently serves on the American Psychological Association’s Presidential Task Force on Police Use of Force Against African Americans and was recently a member of an expert panel advising the State of California on the implementation of a law to screen peace officer candidates for racial bias in the psychological evaluation process.
- Lai, Lisnek – 2023. The impact of implicit bias oriented diversity training on police officers
- Ekstrom, LeForestier, Lai – 2022. Racial demographics explain the link between racial disparities in traffic stops and county level racial attitudes
- Lai, Drake, Beatty 2023 – Diversity training is just teaching
