Change the Wallpaper: Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities

by Nilanjana Dasgupta

Overview

A social psychologist reveals how to nudge local cultures toward positive structural change by moving people from individual action to collective action
 
How can ordinary people fight for social justice? Can individual actions change structural inequality? In this book, social psychologist Nilanjana Dasgupta offers a science-driven approach to achieving social change, arguing that small changes to the “wallpaper”—the local cultures around us—are far more effective in producing structural change locally than seeking change through bias awareness training, symbolic acts, or relying solely on good intentions.
 
By integrating knowledge across diverse fields—including psychology, neuroscience, education, sociology, economics, public health, urban studies, cultural geography, and landscape architecture—Dasgupta shows how attitudes and beliefs take root in our mind based on what we see and hear every day. This wallpaper nudges our behavior to create or reinforce small inequalities that go unnoticed and accumulate over time. Disrupting these patterns and habits requires creating opportunities for social mixing across lines of difference, allowing new relationships to form, and promoting a better understanding of unfamiliar others’ experiences, followed by organizing and collective action. Together, these types of experiences and actions bring real change within our reach—in workplaces, in neighborhoods, in cities and towns. Dasgupta provides fresh, actionable approaches for everyone interested in working toward justice for all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300270228
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	01/07/2025
Pages:	280
Sales rank:	237,936
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Nilanjana Dasgupta is provost professor of psychology and inaugural director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of many articles; the winner of the Hidden Bias Research Prize from the Kapor Foundation; and the recipient of multiple U.S. government research grants. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and other major outlets. She lives in Northampton, MA.

Editorial Reviews

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, Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale University and 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, coauthor of Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People

“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, 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, 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, Rutgers University

“Nilanjana Dasgupta’s hopeful book urges us to look carefully at our social environment and shows 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, Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs, University of California, Berkeley

From the Publisher