Interview | The Perks of Looking at the Wallpaper

Kolkata: Ever so often, you come across a post on social media that runs something like this:

"Me: Everything is falling apart.

"Wellness influencer: Have you tried going to bed at 10pm?"

If it is a truth universally acknowledged that things have never fallen apart as much as they have now, then it is also true that late-stage capitalist messaging has convinced us that the problem is us; that somehow, we are, at an individual level, responsible for not talking, for talking more, for not fitting in and for trying too hard.

A dictator at the helm? Why didn't you vote hard enough for the other guy?

Casteism in public policy? Did you consider changing you mentality?

A genocide afoot? Did you pause to condemn Hamas?

A climate disaster unfolds as more land is given up for mining? Have you tried swapping the plastic bag you buy fish in for a cloth bag that will get soggy each time?

But as society hurtles towards ascribing individual blame to those with the least individual agency, Nilanjana 'Buju' Dasgupta, Provost Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst finds that it is remarkably easy to shift focus and look at the background instead. Dasgupta's book Change the Wallpaper is an argument on the fact that once you do look at the wallpapers lining the room of your existence, it is easier to affect change. Armed with the knowledge of this recognition, the individual, she finds, is not without agency.

'Change the Wallpaper', Nilanjana Dasgupta, Yale University Press, 2025.

Advertisement

As the founding director of the university's Institute of Diversity Sciences and a lifelong researcher into the role of bias, Dasgupta has a ringside view of how inequality shapes people and their communities. But this acute immersion has not affected her belief in human capacity for collective change. Her book, therefore, acts as a gentle nudge towards change – pointing out the layers of a serious social problem but also giving hope to the reader.

Speaking to The Wire, Dasgupta points out exactly how societies can get a little bit closer to justice. Our email conversation is as follows:

Hi professor, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? What is an average day in your life like?

My day starts with feeding our cats who wake me up bright and early, morning meditation, and freshly brewed coffee. Then, an hour or two of writing or exercise before I drive to the university to meet with graduate students, teach class, and meet with my staff team at the Institute of Diversity Sciences that I founded at the University of Massachusetts. Sprinkled in-between are research seminars and committee meetings. My day flies by in a blur with few breaks between appointments. As evening falls, my day slows down as I head back home, cook dinner (my husband and I take turns cooking) and we catch up with each other about our respective days. Cooking is my favourite way of switching off my analytical brain and switching on my sensory and tactile brain. Cooking and conversation make an excellent pairing. On a typical weekday, after dinner I go back to my study at home to wrap up emails and prepare for the next day. I’m trying to train myself (not easy!) to limit working in the evening. Sometimes I unwind with my husband over a TV show before bedtime. On some weekdays we forgo cooking at home and go out to eat at a local restaurant. A couple times a month we catch a live music show in the evening. We both love a variety of music – blues, jazz, rock, folk, world music, and other fusion music that blends global genres. We are lucky to live in a town with many local live music venues. 

For readers who may be under the impression that your book is about interior design, would you want to walk them through what the wallpaper is and why you believe there are four varieties of them?

Change the Wallpaper is a book on the psychology of culture change. Wallpaper is my metaphor for the elements of culture that are in the background, rarely get our attention, and yet are ever-present in our neighbourhoods, workplaces, educational settings, and social settings. They signal who and what is valued and respected and what is not. For culture change to happen, we first must notice these elements of culture (the metaphorical wallpaper) that create inequality in small cumulative ways before we can learn how to avoid the negative elements and harness the positive ones in coordination with other people to move toward social justice. In the book I talk about four varieties of wallpaper and show how they work. Some types of wallpaper are material and observable while others are symbolic. 

Let me explain.

The first wallpaper I invite readers to notice is the physical layout of one’s local environment and ask the question, does the physical set-up segregate people by social class, caste, religion, power, or does it bring people together across group lines and encourage mixing? The physical design of places people are immersed in influences who knows whom, relationships, and access to information networks. When people are near others, relationships form organically. If one person has valuable information that gets shared with others in the network, which lifts all boats. In contrast, when people are segregated from others, relationships are harder to form, and information doesn’t get shared. This means some people are in the know while others are in the dark.

Second, notice the tacit knowledge that some of us have, to navigate important institutions (school, college, workplace) and get ahead in life with little friction. This tacit knowledge includes the hidden rules of the game, understanding how to bend rules, who to ask for help, and when. I call this having a “roadmap” to a maze. When individuals have the “roadmap” it helps them navigate school, college, work life, to get ahead. In contrast, others who don’t have the roadmap get lost in the maze, miss opportunities, get frustrated, and fall behind. Knowledge of this roadmap isn’t equally distributed among people. Some learn the roadmap through parents, mentors, and teachers, while others, by accident of birth, never know about it. This creates inequality.

Popular stories swirling around us in the culture are the third type of wallpaper the book invites us to observe. Stories are important because they offer interpretations of social reality, provide morals and takeaways, train our minds and guide our behavior. In many cultures a popular story arc is that of a brilliant talented hero. This type of narrative sends the message that the formula for success comes from a combination of inner talent, hard work, and making the right choices. Which of course implies that failure or struggle comes from a combination of less talent, less hard work, and making wrong choices. Notice that the moral of this type of story is one that says success and failure are the result of one’s personal responsibility and agency. But there’s a different type of story that we can elevate, which says the formula for success includes talent and hard work. This is true, but there’s more: knowledge of the roadmap to navigate institutions, access to information-rich social networks, and luck. The moral of this type of story is that success and failures are the rest of both individual responsibility and external circumstances, some of which are not controllable. Hearing the first type of story versus the second creates different mindsets that shape how individuals understand their own successes and failures and that of others. These mindsets also shape organisational leaders’ assumptions, policies, programs, actions and inactions.

Finally, the book invites readers to notice who the people are in their local culture who are valued and respected. And ask – who is missing from these roles? The “missing people” are tacitly understood to be less valued in that culture. When young people see individuals in high places they relate to, they often imagine themselves in similar roles in the future, increasing inspiration, motivation and persistence. In contrast, when young people see individuals in high places they can’t relate to, they might admire them from afar but can’t imagine themselves in similar roles in the future, reducing their inspiration, motivation, and persistence to strive for these respected and valued roles. This keeps inequality alive. 

These four types of situational nudges don’t act alone. Oftentimes they interact to compound advantages for some and disadvantages for others. In the book, I unpack these four types and point to research evidence showing them in action woven with stories of ordinary people as illustrations.

Illustration: The Wire, with Canva.

You speak of the Bon Appétit episode of racial discrimination in the introduction to the book. Staff of the celebrated magazine had famously described embedded and systemic racism in the way it was run, leading ultimately in the editor’s resignation. But I wonder if there was something in particular (other than the unstoppable and daily supply of inequality in this world) that led you to decide on this topic and dedicate yourself to it. Can you recount a specific trigger?

Two triggers birthed this book. I started thinking about writing this book after giving countless presentations and workshops on the science of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging to students, educators, leaders of schools, universities, businesses, policymakers, lawyers and judges, and various other groups across the past 25 years. I got the impression that the people who invited me to give these talks and many in the audience believed that greater knowledge and awareness of these issues by listening to me would translate into effective action and culture change on the ground in the organisations and communities in which they were embedded. 

But as an academic scientist whose research is on implicit bias – rapid assumptions about people based on group membership – and psychological interventions to promote greater equality, I knew that knowledge and awareness by itself doesn’t change culture. The old strategies we’ve used in the past in an effort to promote social change haven’t stuck and, in some cases, have backfired. My expertise tells me this is because we made some wrong assumptions about the levers needed to change behaviour and culture. And nobody was talking about that. For example, we assume that facts would change people’s beliefs. But psychological research shows that’s not always the case. Stories are often more persuasive. We assume that beliefs need to change first, and behaviour change will follow. So, we spend a lot of time appealing to individuals’ hearts and minds through various types of training. But research shows social norms and customs, the roles people occupy, expected behaviours that come with those roles, opinions of others around us, and stories people hear all shift their behaviour independent of their private beliefs. We equated diversity, equity, and inclusion with identity groups rather than conceptualising DEI as building relationships across groups to promote greater understanding. This created siloes. Some people felt left out and resentful. To make real social change toward inclusion and justice we need a different approach by first understanding what types of situational nudges (“wallpaper”) actually change behaviour and culture, what doesn’t, and then harness the strategies that work to make targeted shifts to our local culture. That’s why I wrote this book.

A second reason I wrote this book is more personal. It’s the product of the family wallpaper that surrounded me as I grew up. My grandparents were deeply involved in India’s freedom movement against British rule and worked closely with Mahatma Gandhi; my great-grandmother was a feminist writer who wrote incisively about inequality through Bengali fiction. Collectively, their work nudged me toward social justice from childhood, although I’m not sure I was aware of it back then. My parents were scientists and engineers who instilled in me an appreciation for science, the scientific method and tools that allowed one to pursue answers to questions by gathering data, independent of one’s personal opinions or a handful of anecdotes. This book carries that intergenerational family legacy forward by combining science and social justice with the intention of making a positive impact on society in whatever small ways I can.

A lot of the case studies you highlight in your book appear to be people you have met in the course of your daily life in and around the university. Some have told you stories of deep injustice meted out to them. Did you have a process to get them to open up to you, or did you put yourself through the rigour of making notes of ordinary interactions until they became this book? Could you also tell us of the stories you did not include in the book?

As I wrote the book, I started collecting people’s stories with the intention of weaving them in between the scientific research findings. My goal was to translate abstract science into something concrete, human, understandable, and actionable. So, every time I wanted to introduce an abstract concept in the book – for example, meritocracy as a cultural myth, the falsity of stereotypes, status, the power of the situation, or implicit bias – I introduced the concept through a story of a person that would bring the topic close to the reader. Then I backed into the associated research. Some stories came from the lives of people I know, so I knew where they would fit in the book – my husband, son and his friend, and an acquaintance who talked about her early career in a public presentation. Other stories came from students who had been research participants in my studies, who I recontacted and asked if I could interview them about the part of their life when they had been in my study. I also stumbled on additional interesting stories of people simply by keeping my “mental antenna” up as I went through daily life. If someone casually told me about their friend, colleague, or acquaintance, whose life or work seemed relevant to the themes of my book, I would ask for an introduction so that I could talk to them. That’s how I found Patrick Chhetri, who worked as a community development project leader for an NGO working at the Mazdurpara slum in Kolkata.

In terms of the interview process, I usually came up with a small set of open-ended questions for each person tailored to what I knew about them and their life that was relevant to particular concepts in the book. Then I just let them talk. I found that people were happy to talk about their lives and appreciated someone’s interest in them. I’m a curious sort of person (that’s the psychologist in me!) so the conversations flowed organically. Occasionally I would probe deeper and ask a follow up question to get more details, more context. I would record these interviews with the person’s permission and write up a short summary of our conversation, with attention to the elements that illustrated the concept in the book that I was looking to humanise through the story. I would run this summary by the person I interviewed to ensure that I got the details right and ask them to edit anything that was inaccurate. Then, with their permission, I would insert a version of it into the relevant book chapters. There were a couple of people I interviewed very early on in the book-writing process, before I had a clear outline of each book chapter that didn’t fit anywhere, which is to say that these two interviews didn’t capture the concepts that I ended up writing about, so I didn’t include them.   

Yours is a rare book that does not just highlight the problem but also spends over half the book devising a solution to it. I am curious as to why you were moved to affect change through the same book where you were presenting your findings?

I think of writing as an act of hope, especially when it is directed at the general public, changemakers, and young people. This is my way of applying research insights to address real world problems and hope that practitioners will pick up the book, discover the evidence-based actionable steps and use it to make their work on the ground more impactful and enduring. Before writing this book, I noticed that there are lots of excellent books spelling out the problems of inequality and some that offer macro-level solutions that need to be enacted by policymakers and organisational leaders. But I also noticed two glaring gaps: I couldn’t find any books that spoke to problems of injustice and solutions in equal measure. And, importantly, no books offered solutions oriented toward culture change that can be put into action by ordinary people who are not CEOs and policymakers.

Illustration: The Wire, with Canva.

You speak of ‘changing the wallpaper’ through conversation, expansion of circles and through one’s own social network. We are uniquely cognisant of how social media reinforces divisions, to the point of killing inquisitiveness and exchange altogether for many. Do you see this as a tall task?

I strongly advocate for having conversations that are face-to-face, especially on topics that are sensitive, because in-person is private, more intimate, and allows us to communicate with each other through multiple channels. We read each other’s nonverbal body language and emotions while also hearing their words. Norms of politeness become more prominent in face-to-face conversation, which motivates us to temper our words even when we disagree with our conversation partner. In contrast, conversations on social media platforms can become edgy or polarised. While we can read what people write, we miss the nuances of what they are saying because their nonverbal signals are hidden from us, increasing the probability of misunderstanding, which only gets amplified when we disagree. Also, the physical separation between people in conversation on social media platforms creates psychological distance, reduces the prominence of politeness norms and with it, reduces the motivation to temper our words. Moreover, the public nature of conversations on social media gets in the way of intimacy. Communication through social media platforms becomes useful once people develop relationships of trust with someone. That’s when social media allows us to continue conversations with greater frequency by reducing the barrier of finding time to get together in person. 

Are we equipped to beat cultural patterns of discrimination when so much of the world’s politics hinges on it? I am talking of Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Benjamin Netanyahu and their popularity among the very people who should know better than to lean into this.

Discrimination and inequality exist at multiple levels – on the global stage, national, state, local, and community levels. We are living in a period in history when persecution, discrimination, and inequality is in our face and growing in many nations and in the form of international conflict and mass migration of people across the globe. The global and national stages are ones where ordinary people have little immediate power. Yes, we should stay engaged by keeping ourselves informed, by speaking out publicly against injustice when possible, and by being actively informed voters. But the daily actions of ordinary people don’t have much impact on macro-level inequalities. That demoralises people, extinguishes hope, and demobilises them from future action. My book shows that there is a sweet spot where ordinary people’s actions can make a dent in reducing discrimination and increasing equality – that’s at the local or community level through collective action. Local action has more traction. Collective action has more traction. Individuals acting alone can be sidelined, and delegitimised. Individuals get exhausted. But individuals acting collectively with others toward a common goal that’s local, within their community or organisation, is far stickier and more resilient in the face of pushback from the status quo. Yes, change is slow, incremental, uneven, but it is possible as illustrated in the book with accompanying evidence. Therein lies hope, optimism, and call to action.

You are clear in the book that these observations are a scientific exercise, and yet you write in a language that is extremely easy to follow and which is entirely devoid of jargon. You refer to experiments and studies as if you are telling us an anecdotal story. It is only when one reaches the last 41 pages of notes and bibliography that one realises what a thoroughly researched volume this is. Was the easy language a choice you made? If yes, why?

There’s often a big divide between academic research and real-world issues, such that the insights from research don’t make their way to illuminate the public’s understanding of real-world concerns. Research takeaways are often not used by practitioners to design and implement solutions. The academic work stays siloed in journals, read by fellow academics, and there’s additional siloing among academic disciplines. Together, this makes research inaccessible to non-academics and practitioners. I wanted to be a translator and synthesiser of sorts. I wanted to write a book that brings together scholarly research across multiple fields, extracts the main takeaways and their relevance to culture change in a way that’s accessible to the general public, changemakers, practitioners, leaders and all people interested in big ideas for social good. That end goal informed all my intentional writing choices.

Specifically, I chose to write in plain-speak, without jargon, speak directly to the reader (using you and I, not third person pronouns), and to make abstract ideas human by pairing them with ordinary people’s stories and metaphors. I find that metaphors often create an “aha” experience in listeners and readers, increasing their grasp of abstract concepts. For readers who learn visually, I included illustrations that are like breadcrumbs; each chapter has an illustration that captures its key concept. And I show the cycle of positive change with illustrations as well. Finally, I wanted the book to instil hope and optimism, which I think is so important in these dark times. So I point readers to action-oriented strategies that are evidence-based and separate them from others that don’t work or are not evidence-based. Every chapter gives readers a call to action and evidence-based tools to act. Some readers have told me that my book is creative nonfiction that is both factual and experiential. I think that captures it well.

Who do you hope will read your book? And who do you hope will change the wallpaper?

Four groups stand out in my mind as people who I hope will read Change the Wallpaper or listen to it as an audiobook. First, formal and informal leaders, managers, coaches, trainers, consultants, and other professionals who want to be changemakers and to create inclusive teams and organisations. Second, young people who are frustrated with the way things are and are looking for actionable approaches to change that will work. This is the group that is energetic, idealistic, with potential to become changemakers of the future. I want to point them to actionable tools for change so that they can act on their idealism and not become disillusioned. Third, socially conscious people from all walks of life are looking for fresh new approaches to culture change in their communities. Finally, readers who are interested in big ideas about the human mind, behaviour, and society.

Who do I think will change the wallpaper? I think it will take many hands acting together. Of course, ideally, people who should bear the weight of structural change are those in power. Yet, the reality is that most people in power who benefit from the status quo are not interested in changing a system that gives them advantages. Realistically, change often bubbles up from the grassroots, from people most affected by an issue, in partnership with some well-placed people and organisations that have influence, legitimacy, and resources who act in solidarity and become gate-openers to change.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.