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What Influences Shooter Bias? The Effects of Suspect Race, Neighborhood, and Clothing on Decisions to Shoot: Suspect Race, Neighborhood, and Clothing on Decisions to Shoot
Abstract
Police shooting deaths of unarmed Blacks and African Americans led to psychological research on the influence of racial stereotypes on decisions to shoot, an effect called shooter bias. This article investigates how contextual cues signaling threat or safety interact with the race of the target to moderate shooter bias. Across two experimental studies using a first person shooter task, participants viewed Black or White male targets who held either a neutral (wallet or cellphone) or dangerous (gun) object. Study 1 manipulated the perceived safety or threat associated with the neighborhood context these shooting decisions occurred in, and Study 2 manipulated the perceived safety or threat associated with the targets’ clothing. Participants made quick decisions to “shoot” or “not shoot” the presented target, with error rates serving as the dependent variable. Across both studies, results confirmed that racial bias in shooting decisions against Blacks was present in perceived threatening neighborhoods and in perceived threatening clothing, and it was reduced in perceived safe neighborhoods and when wearing perceived safe clothing. Results help to identify contextual factors that may lead to mistaken shooting decisions, which can be used to improve police training and decision making to reduce bias.
... Clothing is a major way to activate schemas with the presence of specific clothing having the potential to alter perceptions (Kahn & Davies, 2017). For example, college students rated models wearing formal business attire as more authoritative, credible, responsible, competent, knowledgeable, reliable, intelligent, trustworthy, willing to work hard, efficient, approachable, courteous, friendly, and businesslike as compared to models wearing semiformal or informal clothing (Kwon & Johnson Hillery, 1998). ...
... The threatening clothing was stereotypical for gangs. Participants reported low prejudicial racial bias when targets wore "safe clothing" (i.e., a light button up shirt and a tie) and were in a "safe neighborhood" (i.e., Beverly Hills; Kahn & Davies, 2017). Given it is clear that some forms of clothing lead to positive perceptions, we explored if clothing could also reduce prejudice. ...
... Stimuli. We reviewed the literature to establish what has previously been used to operationalize "stereo typical clothing" for African Americans (Kahn & Davies, 2017). The pictures and clothing we picked satisfied these criteria (i.e., ball cap, bandana, baggy shirt, and baggy jeans or black shirt, gold chain, and baggy jeans). ...
... In one well-replicated area of research, psychologists have studied "shooter bias" -the tendency to mistakenly shoot unarmed Black targets more often than unarmed White targets, and more quickly shoot at armed Black suspects compared to armed White suspects [10]. Shooter bias has been demonstrated across multiple populations, such as civilians [10,26,23] and police officers [11,13,51], and with different experimental materials, such as static images [10,11,51,26,23] and short videos [24,13]. Currently police officers are using virtual reality (VR) simulators to address racial bias [1], however to date no published research has studied the feasibility of immersive virtual environments (VEs) for studying shooter bias. ...
... In one well-replicated area of research, psychologists have studied "shooter bias" -the tendency to mistakenly shoot unarmed Black targets more often than unarmed White targets, and more quickly shoot at armed Black suspects compared to armed White suspects [10]. Shooter bias has been demonstrated across multiple populations, such as civilians [10,26,23] and police officers [11,13,51], and with different experimental materials, such as static images [10,11,51,26,23] and short videos [24,13]. Currently police officers are using virtual reality (VR) simulators to address racial bias [1], however to date no published research has studied the feasibility of immersive virtual environments (VEs) for studying shooter bias. ...
... Those findings have been extensively replicated [11,12,13,23,37], finding that shooter bias exists across a variety of groups and with varied methodologies. Although police officers are often the prototypical perpetrator of shooter bias, evidence of shooter bias has been found in non-police participants [10,22,26]. This is of note because armed civilians can also utilize deadly force (for example, in the case of Trayvon Martin). ...
... These events have highlighted research efforts at understanding the interpersonal dynamics between police officers and people of color. Research conducted in this Special Issue highlights the racial bias in police shootings from both an experimental approach (Kahn & Davies, 2017) and through Department of Justice data on police shootings spanning two decades (Scott, Ma, Sadler, & Correll, 2017). Further, Charbonneau, Spencer, and Glaser (2017) conduct an indepth analysis comparing mistaken police-on-police shootings and examining the racial bias in the number of off-duty police officer of color who are misperceived as a threat. ...
... Racial bias has been found to influence police behavior in a number of ways. For instance, studies have supported that race influences misperceptions of weapons in split-second decision making with police (Payne, 2001) and civilian samples (Kahn & Davies, 2017) and police response speed in decisions to shoot (Correll, Urlan & Ito, 2006). Similarly, racial bias may also affect racial profilingor the assumption that people of color would be more dangerous or criminally deviant than Whites. ...
While scholars have documented the contentious relationship between law enforcement and communities of color, most studies tend to compare perspectives of specific communities of color (e.g., Black Americans, Latina/os, Asian Americans) to White Americans—without examining between-group differences of the historically marginalized racial groups. In Study 1, 543 participants of diverse racial/ethnic groups (e.g., Black, Latina/o, Asian, White) completed the Perceptions of Police Scale (POPS)—a measure of general attitudes toward law enforcement and beliefs about police bias. Findings demonstrate that Black participants were more likely than Whites and Latina/os to view police negatively. While there were no significant gender differences in participants’ perceptions of police, Black men were more likely to have negative perceptions of police than White and Asian men. In Study 2, we extracted 222 participants from the larger sample who were asked about the number of times police had unlawfully stopped them, while providing a guided narrative to explore their reactions to these experiences. A total of 61 participants (or 27.8% of the total sample) reported being unfairly stopped by police officers. Using the Consensual Qualitative Research method, three domains emerged: (a) Perceived Reasons for Police Stop, (b) Types of Responses, and (c) Perceived Characteristics of Multiple Stops. Implications for community relations and improving the relationship between law enforcement and communities of color are discussed. We also explore the psychological implications for participants who perceive being mistreated or discriminated by the police, particularly for those who are racially profiled. Finally, recommendations are provided to address systemic ways that racial bias can be monitored or minimized in training and hiring processes in police departments.
... What leads to these fatal false perceptions? One contributing factor could be the influence of stereotypes on decisions to shoot, such as the race of the subject one is making a decision about (Correll et al. 2016;Kahn and Davies 2017). People are more likely to misperceive a Black person or a Muslim person as holding a gun than a White person (Essien et al. 2017;Hall et al. 2016;Kahn and Davies 2017). ...
... One contributing factor could be the influence of stereotypes on decisions to shoot, such as the race of the subject one is making a decision about (Correll et al. 2016;Kahn and Davies 2017). People are more likely to misperceive a Black person or a Muslim person as holding a gun than a White person (Essien et al. 2017;Hall et al. 2016;Kahn and Davies 2017). However, it is unlikely that the influence of stereotypes completely explains these fatal false perceptions. ...
The gun embodiment effect is the consequence caused by wielding a gun on judgments of whether others are also holding a gun. This effect could be responsible for real-world instances when police officers shoot an unarmed person because of the misperception that the person had a gun. The gun embodiment effect is an instance of embodied cognition for which a person’s tool-augmented body affects their judgments. The replication crisis in psychology has raised concern about embodied cognition effects in particular, and the issue of low statistical power applies to the original research on the gun embodiment effect. Thus, the first step was to conduct a high-powered replication. We found a significant gun embodiment effect in participants’ reaction times and in their proportion of correct responses, but not in signal detection measures of bias, as had been originally reported. To help prevent the gun embodiment effect from leading to fatal encounters, it would be useful to know whether individuals with certain traits are less prone to the effect and whether certain kinds of experiences help alleviate the effect. With the new and reliable measure of the gun embodiment effect, we tested for moderation by individual differences related to prior gun experience, attitudes, personality, and factors related to emotion regulation and impulsivity. Despite the variety of these measures, there was little evidence for moderation. The results were more consistent with the idea of the gun embodiment effect being a universal, fixed effect, than being a flexible, malleable effect.
... When critical pieces of information in the decision environment are missing from laboratory tasks, conclusions that can be drawn about such decisions outside the laboratory are limited and potentially misleading. For example, the dangerousness of the neighborhood Kahn & Davies, 2017; but see Cox, Devine, Plant, & Schwartz, 2014;Pleskac et al., 2017), social class as indicated by clothing (Kahn & Davies, 2017;Moore-Berg, Karpinski, & Plant, 2017), officer fatigue (Ma et al., 2013), and racial prototypicality (Ma & Correll, 2011) all influence racial bias in laboratory shooting tasks. One additional limitation of laboratory shooting tasks that has not been examined is that participants often know nothing about a target until he appears on screen. ...
... When critical pieces of information in the decision environment are missing from laboratory tasks, conclusions that can be drawn about such decisions outside the laboratory are limited and potentially misleading. For example, the dangerousness of the neighborhood Kahn & Davies, 2017; but see Cox, Devine, Plant, & Schwartz, 2014;Pleskac et al., 2017), social class as indicated by clothing (Kahn & Davies, 2017;Moore-Berg, Karpinski, & Plant, 2017), officer fatigue (Ma et al., 2013), and racial prototypicality (Ma & Correll, 2011) all influence racial bias in laboratory shooting tasks. One additional limitation of laboratory shooting tasks that has not been examined is that participants often know nothing about a target until he appears on screen. ...
Social psychologists have relied on computerized shooting tasks to test whether race influences decisions to shoot. These studies reveal that under some conditions untrained individuals shoot unarmed Black men more than unarmed White men. We modeled the decision to shoot as a sequential sampling process in which people start out with prior biases and accumulate evidence over time until a threshold is reached, prompting a decision. We used this approach to test how prior information (a proxy for police dispatch information) and police experience influence racial bias in shooting decisions. When no prior information was given, target race biased the rate at which untrained civilians accumulated evidence, leading to a greater rate of shooting Black targets. For sworn police officers, the race of the target impacted prior bias, but not evidence accumulation. Moreover, officers showed no race bias in the observed decision to shoot. For both untrained civilians and sworn police officers, prior information about a target's race was sufficient to eliminate racial bias in shooting decisions both at the process and behavioral level. These studies reveal that factors present in real-world shooting decisions (dispatch information and police experience) can moderate the role that race plays both in the underlying cognitive processes and ultimately on the observed decision. We discuss the benefits of using a dynamic cognitive model to understand the decision to shoot and the implications of these results for laboratory analogues of real-world decisions.
... Correll et al. (2007) found that police officers were on average more accurate than community participants in their shooting decisions, whereas community members made more errors by setting a lower decision threshold for shooting a Black target. Decisions to shoot, however, were influenced by a number of other factors such as the mode of the presentation (video vs. picture, Cox et al., 2014), training (Correll et al., 2007), and contextual cues (neighborhood safety) (Kahn and Davies, 2017). ...
... When the environmental context predicts that a cue will be paired with the US, then participants have a larger CR, compared to when the environmental context predicts that the cue is not associated with receiving the US, though in both conditions, participants receive the same number of USs (Indovina et al., 2011). In the case of decisions to shoot, one recent study found that participants were more likely to make decisions to shoot in perceived threatening neighborhood compared to a perceived safe neighborhood (Kahn and Davies, 2017). Other contextual factors that appear to impact fear conditioning include semantic similarity and conceptual connections. ...
In this paper, we review basic findings from experimental studies in judgment and decision making that could contribute to designing policies and trainings to enhance police decision making. Traditional judgment and decision-making research has focused on simple choices between hypothetical gambles, which has been criticized for its lack of generalizability to real world contexts. Over the past 15 years, researchers have focused on understanding the dynamic processes in decision making. This recent focus has allowed for the possibility of more generalizable applications of basic decision science to social issues. We review recent work in three dynamic decision-making topics: dynamic accumulation of evidence in the decision to shoot or not shoot, how previous decisions influence current choices, and how the cognitive and neurological processing of fear influences decisions and decision errors. We conclude this review with a summary of how basic experimental research can apply in policing and training.
... Nevertheless, even today, as maintained by recent research, "how clothing style and race are used in forming impressions and making attributions about the social class has great implications for understanding and challenging prejudice and discrimination" (Kahn & Davies, 2017;Mcdermott & Pettijohn II, 2011: 64). However, we should also note that the primary use of differences from nature to explain social reality will create the problem of over-determinism and lead to the concealment of social effects. ...
One of the codes used by individuals to define their identity and convey it to others is clothing. Clothing, which is an instrument that can draw symbolic boundaries between people, must have a strong link between individuals’ real social identities and externally perceived hints in order to be read in common by observers. The major problem to be investigated in this research is to analyze the relationships between identity and clothing, which have been going on since ancient times and will continue in the future. In order to understand these relationships, a theoretical framework needs to be established, and a broad, holistic perspective on the social dimensions of clothing should be developed. The main purpose of this article was to draw on the relationship between clothing and major components of identity. Based on the fact that alternative clothing codes transform those who wear certain clothes into effective symbolic subjects in terms of directing them to a certain behavior politically, culturally, and socially, it was analyzed that this subject constitutes the basis of class struggle.
... Freeman et al. (2011) followed up on these findings by showing that a reverse pattern can occur as well: when targets' clothing is experimentally manipulated to be high-SES (i.e., a business suit) rather than low-SES (i.e., a janitorial outfit), perceivers become more likely to categorize them as White and less likely to categorize them as Black. Research examining the implications of these patterns for implicit biases corroborates the importance of the SESconnotations of a target's clothing; for example, Kahn and Davies (2017) found that racial bias in the shooter task is exacerbated when targets are depicted wearing stereotypically lower-class clothing (baggy sweatshirt and baseball cap), compared to more middle-class attire (a buttondown shirt and tie). The upshot of these findings is that SES serves as an important cue to prototypic Blackness. ...
Scholars have long recognized that successful prediction of behavior on the basis of explicit attitudes depends on the correspondence between the attitude measure and the focal behavior. Fishbein and Ajzen (2010) argued that behaviors vary in terms of their action, target, context, and time, and that the prediction of specific behaviors is greatly enhanced when explicit attitude measures reflect these features of the to-be-predicted behavior. We argue that the same principle applies in the case of predicting behavior from implicit attitudes, and we review relevant evidence relating to each of Fishbein and Ajzen’s parameters. Special attention is paid to the target parameter, given increasing awareness of the intersectional nature of bias. A global race bias may not extend equally to all members of a particular racial identity, and cross-cutting factors such as gender, age, or sexuality may qualify the extent to which global measures of race bias predict discriminatory behavior toward particular individuals.
... In particular, those who report the greatest knowledge of stereotypes that link Black people with violence are also most likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed Black men more often than unarmed White men (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002;Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2007). Moreover, these laboratory shooter biases are even more pronounced when there are contextual cues associated with threat such as particular neighborhoods or attire (Kahn & Davies, 2017). Thus, the perception of threat, and in particular the threat associated with Black people, may be particularly relevant to the split-second decisions that officers are forced to makeespecially when the ability to exert cognitive control is low, such as when one is highly aroused by fear (Correll, Hudson, Guillermo, & Ma, 2014). ...
Across the United States, acquittals of White police officers who have killed Black men have spurred clashes between those who see such situations as manifestations of racism and those who see them as race-irrelevant acts of officer self-defense. In this research, we explore the relationship between participants’ racial prejudice and construal of an event that leads to the death of a Black man. In Study 1, we found that participants’ racial prejudice predicts lower perceived guilt for a White officer who killed a Black man. In Study 2, we found evidence that the relationship between racial prejudice and guilt judgments is driven by increased perceptions that the officer was in danger and decreased perceived relevance of officer prejudice. Finally, Study 3 demonstrated that these patterns hold when the victim is Black, but not White. We conclude that racial prejudice shapes perceptions of legal responsibility for lethal interactions with Black men.
... Contextual cues that prime this stereotype influence the magnitude of the shooter bias. Participants made fewer mistakes when the targets were associated with safe rather than threatening neighborhoods or appeared in safe (i.e., business suit) versus threatening (i.e., hoodie) clothing (Kahn & Davies, 2017). ...
Racial disparities in the criminal justice system are well documented and widespread. The present review examines racial disparities in three areas of the system: policing, prison populations, and participation on juries. Some, but not all, of these disparities may be the result of implicit racial bias. Even if the disparities are caused by implicit racial bias, given the number of people involved in the decision making that results in these disparities and the difficulty in training people to overcome implicit bias, interventions designed to eliminate disparities by reducing implicit racial bias may fail. Instead, policies designed to constrain the operation of implicit and/or explicit bias or that eliminate (or at a minimum reduce) problematic outcomes for everyone, regardless of race, may be more effective at reducing racial disparities than are interventions designed to eliminate implicit bias.
... In contrast to most other articles in this issue, we do not directly study antecedents and consequences of blatant aggressive behaviors by the police (e.g., Bryant-Davis, Adams, Alejandre, & Gray, 2017;Charbonneau, Spencer, & Glaser, 2017;Kahn & Davies, 2017;Scott, Ma, Sadler, & Correll, 2017). This is due to the fact that our research was conducted among immigrant minority members in three European countries (i.e., Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden). 1 For cultural and legal reasons, examples of blatant police violence are less frequent in Europe than in the USA. ...
Previous research has shown negative effects of discrimination on ethnic minority members’ health and well-being. In this study, we examined cross-sectional and longitudinal effects of discrimination by members of the police and security personnel over and above other types of discrimination and ethnic victimization on the health of immigrant minority students from three different European countries (N = 4,334 immigrant students from 580 ethnically mixed school classes in Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden). Results indicate that perceptions of ethnic victimization in the school (measured via social network data) as well as three types of discrimination outside school (discrimination in clubs, public transportation as well as by the police and private security) are associated with current and future negative health outcomes (i.e., psychosomatic problems) in immigrant minority students. Among the different types of discrimination, discrimination by the police and private security personnel was most common and had the most negative effect on immigrant minority students’ health. Practical and political implications of our findings as well as differences in discrimination and violence by the police between the United States and Europe are discussed.
... Past research on shooter bias has provided evidence that, due to Black individuals being perceived as more threatening, they are more likely to be shot incorrectly and more quickly when compared to White individuals. Additionally, perceived socioeconomic status has been shown to contribute to shooter bias and has been amplified for low socioeconomic presenting individuals [4]. However, these simulations have been criticised for lacking ecological validity since a static image and keyboard click is a loose proxy for aiming and pulling the trigger at a moving person in a complex environment. ...
... Student evaluations of an African American professor were more positive when he was formally dressed as compared to when he was casually dressed and compared to a European American professor (Aruguete et al., 2017). Similarly, racial bias in shooting decisions is lower for well-dressed targets (Kahn & Davies, 2017). ...
We examined the effect of different clothing styles on the perceptions of African American men. Using a between-group design, we tested whether participants perception of African American models wearing sweatpants and sweatshirts (“swagger”), clothing showing they won an event, or formal clothing, would vary. Participants (N = 143) viewed four African American models in one of three conditions. Multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVA) with Symbolic Racism Scale scores as a covariate revealed that participants rated models in Formal clothing significantly higher than models in winning clothing in intelligence, p <.001, trustworthiness, p <.001, and warmth p =.005. Models wearing formal clothing or winning clothing were also rated significantly higher than models wearing swagger clothing on several traits. Participant’s Symbolic Racism Score significantly affected their ratings of models. Results suggest that the clothing that an African American wears, as well as viewer prejudice, affects the impression that the viewer makes.
... Racial minorities can also hold this implicit association, and as such, can also be affected by shooter bias (Correll et al., 2002). Racially biased shooting decisions are more likely in contexts perceived as dangerous that prime racial stereotypes, and similarly by perceived "racialized" clothing, like sweatshirts and hoodies (Kahn & Davies, 2017). In rare shooter-bias studies with police, officers can demonstrate this same bias, at least initially (Plant & Peruche, 2005), but not inevitably (Correll et al., 2007), particularly with good training (Sim et al., 2013). ...
Police killings of unarmed African Americans, such as George Floyd in 2020, continue to cause nationwide protests and calls for change. Psychological science knows much about biased policing and can inform policy to promote equitable policing. Social psychology’s extensive findings on stereotyping, attitudes, and intergroup relations help clarify the role of officer racial bias. This article reviews implicit and explicit bias, race-crime stereotypes, intragroup bias, ingroup favoritism, stereotype threat, and dehumanization in policing interactions, all of which can lead to racially disparate use of force. Based on this science, some policy responses can mitigate bias: Officer level de-biasing training, body-worn cameras, automatic license plate readers, and federal policing reform legislation are discussed. The lack of a coordinated, national effort to collect and analyze police use of force data undermines tracking fatal incidents and bias therein, which are therefore harder to remediate.
There is ample evidence demonstrating intergroup biases on cognition and emotion. However, it remains unclear how exactly group identification influences these processes, with issues of context sensitivity and goal dependence remaining open to scrutiny. Providing a range of interdisciplinary material, the current review attempts to inform understanding of these issues. Specifically, we provide evidence revealing that individuals show enhanced attention for stimuli associated with an ingroup compared to an outgroup. At the attentional level, such biases can be explained by the assignment of different levels of saliency to ingroup versus outgroup targets. Critically, however, salience assignment is not fixed, but varies as a function of context and goal-directed behavior. We suggest that the network in the brain previously associated with social and emotional saliency and attention — notably the anterior insula, posterior superior temporal sulcus, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — underpins these effects. Moreover, although attention typically favors ingroup targets, outgroup members can be prioritized on occasion. The implications of this viewpoint and future lines of investigation are considered.
This concluding article situates the police violence against persons of color in an historical context, suggesting that the current wave of killings replicates historical trends. A social science explanation is proposed to better understand the antecedents and consequences of police violence. A major strength of the articles in this volume is their delineation of causes of police violence and their consequences. The underlying and recurring explanation for police violence is stereotypical racial attitudes and their behavioral consequences. Effects of police violence extend beyond immediate victims to include communities of color. Comparisons with European police suggest that while lethal actions by police in Europe are far fewer, patterns of brutality and its justification mirror the U.S. context. The problem of police violence against persons of color is multidimensional and complex. This article concludes that there is no easy overarching solution or “fix” to this violence. Rather, each facet must be carefully examined—as this volume has done—and approaches focused on causes and consequences of specific problems should be developed and pursued.
This article questions the widespread use of experimental social psychology to understand real-world group disparities. Standard experimental practice is to design studies in which participants make judgments of targets who vary only on the social categories to which they belong. This is typically done under simplified decision landscapes and with untrained decision makers. For example, to understand racial disparities in police shootings, researchers show pictures of armed and unarmed Black and White men to undergraduates and have them press "shoot" and "don't shoot" buttons. Having demonstrated categorical bias under these conditions, researchers then use such findings to claim that real-world disparities are also due to decision-maker bias. I describe three flaws inherent in this approach, flaws which undermine any direct contribution of experimental studies to explaining group disparities. First, the decision landscapes used in experimental studies lack crucial components present in actual decisions (Missing Information Flaw). Second, categorical effects in experimental studies are not interpreted in light of other effects on outcomes, including behavioral differences across groups (Missing Forces Flaw). Third, there is no systematic testing of whether the contingencies required to produce experimental effects are present in real-world decisions (Missing Contingencies Flaw). I apply this analysis to three research topics to illustrate the scope of the problem. I discuss how this research tradition has skewed our understanding of the human mind within and beyond the discipline and how results from experimental studies of bias are generally misunderstood. I conclude by arguing that the current research tradition should be abandoned.
Police violence against racial and ethnic minorities by law enforcement is an international social justice issue that has elicited substantial societal attention, both historically and more recently since the death of Michael Brown in 2014 in the United States. This volume of the Journal of Social Issues integrates theoretical and empirical research to examine police violence (i.e., disproportionate physical and psychological injury and maltreatment) against racial and ethnic minorities and provides policy recommendations directed at reducing this violence from a multidisciplinary perspective. Organized across two substantive sections, one section is devoted to evidence of and factors contributing to police violence against racial and ethnic minorities, including racial stereotyping, implicit bias, and contextual factors. The other section focuses on societal-level, downstream consequences of exposure to this violence for both individual targets and their community, including attitudinal, physical, and mental health consequences. A concluding chapter integrates the special issue articles’ findings and provides new perspectives on policing and race. This opening article to the special issue reviews existing literature and outlines the unique contributions of the included articles on this topic. © 2017 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues
Die Polizei ist als gesellschaftliche Konfliktlösungsinstanz, allgemeine Ordnungsmacht und unmittelbare Manifestation des staatlichen Gewaltmonopols wie kaum eine andere Institution mit der Frage der Gewalt verknüpft. Einerseits werden Polizist*innen bei der Erfüllung ihrer Aufgaben regelmäßig mit konflikthaften Situationen konfrontiert und können dabei zum Ziel von Gewalt werden. Andererseits gehört gerade das eigene Ausüben von Gewalt zu den zentralen Funktio-nen der Polizei und daher zum polizeilichen Berufsbild und Alltag. Die Polizei ist unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen zur Anwendung von Gewalt rechtlich legitimiert, unter Umständen sogar verpflichtet. Die hieraus resultierende polizeiliche Praxis macht Polizist*innen selbst zu Beteiligten gewaltsamer Auseinandersetzungen. Dabei darf Gewalt nicht als monolithischer Akt missverstanden werden, sondern ist stets als interaktives und dynamisches Geschehen zu begreifen.
Between 2006 and 2007 an average of one Iraqi civilian was killed or injured at a coalition checkpoint each day. In many cases, civilians were shot because soldiers had misinterpreted their behaviour as hostile or as a demonstration of hostile intent. In other words, the soldiers responsible thought that they were acting in self-defence against an imminent threat. Some analysts have argued that these killings can be explained by ambiguities in the rules of engagement, but such explanations wrongly assume that the decision to kill is a purely rational calculation. Drawing upon the work of Sara Ahmed, William Connolly and George Yancy, I will argue that the interpretation of hostile intent and the decision to use lethal force are affective judgements rather than purely conscious decisions and, as such, are shaped by feelings, moods and intuitions. Moreover, I will argue that these judgements are never entirely neutral but clouded by a set of pre-existing assumptions that mark certain bodies as dangerous before they even have a chance to act. Drawing upon an archive of incident reports filed in the aftermath of these shootings and interviews with former soldiers, this article will show how seemingly innocuous behaviours were so readily mistaken for hostile acts with decidedly deadly consequences for the local population.
Am 11. November 2020 wurde der zweite Zwischenbericht des Forschungsprojekts KviAPol veröffentlicht. In diesem Bericht werden sowohl quantitative Befragungsdaten von Betroffenen als auch qualitative Interviews mit Expert*innen aus Polizei und Zivilgesellschaft zusammengeführt und im Hinblick auf „Rassismus und Diskriminierungserfahrungen im Kontext polizeilicher Gewaltausübung“ ausgewertet. Es wurde untersucht, inwiefern sich die Erfahrungen von Personen mit Migrationshintergrund sowie People of Color von Personen ohne Migrationshintergrund bzw. weißen Personen unterscheiden. Wichtige Befunde ergeben sich außerdem aus der Gegenüberstellung der Perspektive von Betroffenen und der polizeilichen Perspektive. Die Auswertung macht Tendenzen im Hinblick auf Diskriminierungserfahrungen von Personen mit Migrationshintergrund und PoC bei Kontakten mit der Polizei sichtbar. Diese Erkenntnisse sind jedoch weder umfassend noch abschließend. Vielmehr können sie nur als Ausgangspunkt für weitere Forschung dienen, die dringend erforderlich ist.
Cross‐cultural competence can be conceptualized both as a set of attributes (personal qualities characteristic of certain individuals) or as a kind of expertise (level of proficiency in the learning, application, and creation of cross‐cultural knowledge). This chapter introduces both approaches, explicates the relation between cultural immersion and expertise development, and discusses the implications of the expertise approach for the conceptualization, measurement and training of cross‐cultural competence. Characteristics that mark the transition to higher levels of cross‐cultural expertise are: accuracy in the cognitive representation of the distribution of cultural knowledge between cultures and within a culture; flexibility in the use of context‐appropriate cultural tools to guide behaviors; selection of context‐appropriate goals and their effective means, automaticity in the choice of context‐appropriate goals and means; and the ability to combine knowledge from diverse cultures to generate new knowledge. There is consistent evidence that cultural immersion can help individuals improve on these characteristics.
Race impacts perceptions of crimes, perpetrators, and victims. Although statutory rape generally receives little empirical or media attention, it has important implications for victims and offenders across the United States and appears to be enforced in a haphazard way. This study used a between-subjects experimental survey design at two universities (n = 1,370) to assess the impact of respondent race, perpetrator race, and victim race on attitudes toward statutory rape. Results of a repeated measures analysis of variance indicated that respondents viewed both White victims and their perpetrators as bad, blameworthy, deserving of punishment, harmed, and likely to commit crime in the future, judgments suggesting that the respondents take this sexual activity seriously. In contrast, analyses revealed that respondents were significantly less concerned about Black victims than White victims. Consistent with the liberation hypothesis, these differences in attitudes may contribute to the law being enforced inconsistently, providing differential access to justice based on a variable that is not legally relevant.
This article examines an eleven-module interdisciplinary cultural competence (ICC) training adapted for a local law enforcement agency in the wake of police-community violence. A mix-methods designed was utilized to explore the applicability of the ICC training for two cohorts of law enforcement. Quantitative findings indicate that the ICC training significantly improved participants’ cultural competence. Qualitative analyses illustrated that the training significantly influenced participants’ professional perspectives; empowered them; enhanced their awareness; and was beneficial for institutionalizing cultural competence into the overall organization.
Media attention relevant to law enforcement use of force in the last decade finally alerted the scientific community to the need for more research regarding law enforcement discretion and decision making. The purpose of this study was to synthesize the existing literature to explore the motivating factors for law enforcement use of force. This study will utilize a social–ecological framework to systematically examine factors that impact officer decisions to use force at the individual and community levels. The paper includes recommendations for research and practice through an equity lens that highlights the disparate use of force against men of color in particular. Interventions, trainings, education, and research to stop the promotion of perceived safety over justice will be highlighted.
Highlights
• Social‐ecological framework is used to examine use of force at the individual and community level.
• We discuss recommendations for research through an equity lens that highlights community organizers.
• Interventions, trainings, and education to stop the promotion of perceived safety over justice are highlighted.
Predictive policing is the newest innovation in the field of law enforcement. Predictive policing programs use algorithms to analyze existing crime data in an attempt to make predictions about future crimes: What crimes are likely to be committed, where crimes are likely to be committed, and a list of potential victims and offenders. Proponents of predictive policing champion the practice as an effective, proactive form of law enforcement that is free from bias due to its data-driven nature. However, as a matter of justice policy, predictive policing is just as discriminatory as traditional police practices, such as stop and frisk: Both are relatively ineffective; both have the potential to disproportionately target minorities; both are challenging forms of surveillance that create several important ethical and legal issues; and both are presented as objective, impartial, and equitable. This article has three primary goals: Highlight the potential and problematic similarities between stop and frisk and predictive policing; present the problems associated with predictive policing, including its questionable effectiveness, biased foundation, and faulty legal and ethical footing; and discuss the ways in which discriminatory criminal justice programs, such as stop and frisk and predictive policing, are presented to the public as objective, non-discriminatory policies.
We develop and analyze a multilevel model of fatal police shootings to better understand the interplay between individual-level and contextual-level factors in incidents of police use of deadly force. We use a three-level hierarchical logistic regression model to identify Census tract-, city-, and state-level predictors of fatal police shootings and a four-level model to identify predictors of fatal police shootings of black victims at the incident, Census tract, city, and state levels. We find that higher levels of concentrated disadvantage and interpersonal firearm violence in a Census tract are significant predictors of the likelihood of any fatal police shooting occurring in that tract. We also find that conditional upon a fatal police shooting having occurred in a Census tract, knowing that the victim was unarmed is a significant predictor of the likelihood that the victim was black. Three other predictors of a police shooting victim being black were a higher proportion of black residents in the Census tract, a greater presence of police officers in the city, and a higher level of black-white residential segregation in the state. We conclude that reducing excessive police use of deadly force requires consideration of not only the individual interactions between officers and citizens, but also the quantity of interactions and the characteristics of the place in which these interactions occur. Special consideration must be given to ameliorating the consequences of structural racism, including racial segregation, over-policing of predominantly black neighborhoods, concentrated disadvantage in segregated neighborhoods, and racial inequalities in income and wealth.
The shooter bias effect reveals that individuals are quicker to “shoot” armed Black (vs. White) men and slower to “not shoot” unarmed Black (vs. White) men in a computer task. In three studies (N = 386), we examined whether being observed would reduce this effect because of social desirability concerns. Participants completed a “shooting” task with or without a camera/live observer supposedly recording behavior. Cameras were strapped to participants’ heads (Studies 1a/1b) and pointed at them (Study 1b). In Study 2, a researcher observed participants complete the task while “filming” them with a smartphone. We replicated the shooter bias, but observation only reduced the effect in Study 2. These results reveal that being observed can reduce the shooter bias effect.
We analyze data from 213 metropolitan areas over a 21-year period, and examine two possible reasons for the disproportionately high number of Black suspects killed in police officer-involved shootings. One account suggests that such shootings reflect racial bias on the part of police. A second account suggests that Black suspects behave differently (perhaps more aggressively) than White suspects, and that police respond to suspects’ behavior (but not race). Our analysis statistically controls for racial differences in criminal activity (a proxy for behavior) and provides a statistical test of the effect of race on police shootings. Results suggest that officers are more likely to shoot Black suspects, even when race-based differences in crime are held constant.
Posthumous stereotypical media portrayals of Michael Brown and other racial and ethnic minority victims of police violence have sparked questions about the influence of racial stereotypes on public opinions about their deaths and criminal proceedings for their killers. However, few studies have empirically investigated how the specific type of information released about a victim impacts opinions surrounding such incidents. Participants (N = 453) read about an altercation that resulted in a shooting death where the race of the victim and shooter (Black vs. White) was randomly assigned. Participants learned either negative, Black male stereotypic or positive, Black male counterstereotypic information about the victim. Next, participants appraised levels of fault and blame, sympathy and empathy for the victim and shooter, and indictment recommendations for the shooter. Findings suggest that the type of information released about a victim can significantly sway attitudes toward the victim and the shooter. Implications for media portrayals of racial/ethnic minority victims of police violence and its impact on criminal sentencing are discussed.
Social psychologists have long demonstrated that people are stereotyped on the basis of race. Researchers have conducted extensive experimental studies on the negative stereotypes associated with Black Americans in particular. Across 4 studies, we demonstrate that the physical spaces associated with Black Americans are also subject to negative racial stereotypes. Such spaces, for example, are perceived as impoverished, crime-ridden, and dirty (Study 1). Moreover, these space-focused stereotypes can powerfully influence how connected people feel to a space (Studies 2a, 2b, and 3), how they evaluate that space (Studies 2a and 2b), and how they protect that space from harm (Study 3). Indeed, processes related to space-focused stereotypes may contribute to social problems across a range of domains-from racial disparities in wealth to the overexposure of Blacks to environmental pollution. Together, the present studies broaden the scope of traditional stereotyping research and highlight promising new directions. (PsycINFO Database Record
Racial bias in the decision to shoot can be minimized if individuals have ample cognitive resources to regulate automatic reactions. However, when individuals are fatigued, cognitive control may be compromised, which can lead to greater racial bias in shoot/don't-shoot decisions. The current studies provide evidence for this hypothesis experimentally using undergraduate participants (Study 1) and in a correlational design testing police recruits (Study 2). These results shed light on the processes underlying the decision to shoot and, given the high prevalence of fatigue among police officers, may have important practical implications.
Police officers make life-or-death shooting decisions in complex situations under extreme time pressure. If officers make a mistake, there are dire consequences-they could kill an innocent or be killed themselves. In contrast to prior work's near-exclusive focus on suspect race, the present study examined features of methodology, officers, suspects, and neighborhoods that may affect officers' shooting decisions. Empirical exploration of officers' shooting decisions and mistakes is still in its infancy, and given the seriousness and importance of this phenomenon-and the potential for this research to inform policy decisions-additional research is needed.
The current research was designed to assess the content of the criminal stereotype from a Hispanic population. In Study 1 participants were asked to provide general information about the concepts associated with criminals. Study 2 used this information to develop a questionnaire that assessed specific perceptions of criminals, criminal behavior, and criminal activities. In addition, stereotypes for Hispanic, White, Black, and Asian criminals were assessed. Results present a picture of the typical criminal, as well as uncovering differences in people's stereotypes of criminals of varying ethnicities. A brief review of the criminal stereotype literature is provided along with a discussion on the potential impact criminal stereotypes may have on eyewitness memory and identification.
The current work explored law enforcement officers' racial bias in decisions to shoot criminal suspects as well as their self-reported beliefs about Black versus White suspects. In addition, this work examined what factors contribute to officers' racial biases and the likelihood of having these biases eliminated. Examination of the officers' explicit attitudes toward Black people and their beliefs about the criminality and difficulty of Black suspects revealed strong relationships with the quality of their contact with Black people on the job and in their personal lives. In addition, officers with negative compared to more positive beliefs about the criminality of Black people were more likely to tend toward shooting unarmed Black suspects on a shooting simulation. However, officers with positive contact with Black people in their personal lives were particularly able to eliminate these biases with training on the simulation. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the training of law enforcement personnel.
Explanations of police coercion have been traditionally embedded within sociological, psychological, and organizational theoretical frameworks. Largely absent from the research are examinations exploring the role of neighborhood context on police use-of-force practices. Using data collected as part of a systematic social observation study of police in Indianapolis, Indiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida, this research examines the influence of neighborhood context on the level of force police exercise during police-suspect encounters using hierarchical linear modeling techniques. The authors found police officers are significantly more likely to use higher levels of force when suspects are encountered in disadvantaged neighborhoods and those with higher homicide rates, net of situational factors (e.g., suspect resistance) and officer-based determinants (e.g., age, education, and training). Also found is that the effect of the suspect's race is mediated by neighborhood context. The results reaffirm Smith's 1986 conclusion that police officers “act differently in different neighborhood contexts.
In three studies, we examined how training may attenuate (or exacerbate) racial bias in the decision to shoot. In Experiment 1, when novices read a newspaper article about Black criminals, they showed pronounced racial bias in a first-person-shooter task (FPST); when they read about White criminals, bias was eliminated. Experts (who practiced the FPST) and police officers were unaffected by the same stereotype-accessibility manipulation. However, when training itself (base rates of armed vs. unarmed targets in the FPST, Experiment 2a; or special unit officers who routinely deal with minority gang members, Experiment 2b) reinforced the association between Blacks and danger, training did not attenuate bias. When race is unrelated to the presence/absence of a weapon, training may eliminate bias as participants learn to focus on diagnostic object information (gun vs. no gun). But when training actually promotes the utility of racial cues, it may sustain the heuristic use of stereotypes.
The role of Implicit Motivation to Control Prejudice (IMCP) in moderating the effect of resource depletion on spontaneous discriminatory behavior was examined. Cognitive resource depletion was manipulated by having participants solve either difficult or easy anagrams. A "Shooter Task" measuring unintended racial discriminatory behavior followed. Participants then reported their subjective experiences in the task. Finally, IMCP and an implicit race-weapons stereotype were measured, both using Go/No-go Association Tasks (GNATs). IMCP moderated the effect of depletion on discriminatory behavior: Depletion resulted in more racial bias in the Shooter Task only for those who scored low in our measure of IMCP, while high IMCP participants performed comparably in both the low and high depletion conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract)
The current work proposes an approach for eliminating automatic bias by repeatedly exposing people to social stimuli where group membership (e.g., race) is unrelated to stereotypicality (e.g., being a violent criminal). Participants completed a computer program where they pretended they were police officers and decided as quickly as possible whether to shoot at Black and White suspects. Although initial responses to the program were biased by the race of the suspect, extensive practice with the program where race was unrelated to the presence or absence of a gun eliminated race biases immediately after practice (Study 1) and 24 h later (Study 2). However, this elimination of bias did not occur when race was related to the presence of a gun (Study 3). The final study (Study 4) revealed that extensive practice on the program led to the inhibition of racial concepts. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the elimination of automatic forms of bias.
Extensive work over the past decade has shown that race can bias perceptions and responses to threat. However, the previous work focused almost exclusively on responses to men and overlooked how gender and the interaction of race and gender influence decisions regarding use of force. In the current article, two studies examine the implications of gender (Study 1) and both race and gender (Study 2) for decisions to shoot criminal suspects on a computerized simulation. In Study 1, participants were biased away from shooting White female suspects compared to White male suspects. In Study 2, White participants showed a pronounced bias toward shooting Black men but a bias away from shooting Black women and White ingroup members, providing evidence of a behavioral threat-related response specific to outgroup men stereotypically associated with aggression. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
People encountering deviants who violate a stereotype try to maintain the stereotype by subtyping the deviants. They use the deviants' additional attributes to justify subtyping them. Participants read about counterstereotypic targets. Participants who were given no additional information about targets, and so had no grounds for subtyping them, did generalize from them and changed their stereotypes. However, participants who were told that targets had an additional, neutral attribute appeared to use it as grounds for subtyping them; their stereotypes remained unchanged. Participants came to view the neutral attributes as atypical of the stereotype and as associated with deviance, that is, as good reasons for subtyping the deviant. Neutral attributes blocked generalization from truly counterstereotypic targets but not from overly stereotypic ones, suggesting that their effect was due to participants' attempts to explain away individuals who strongly challenge their stereotypes.
The goal of the research reported in this article was to examine whether automatic group attitudes and stereotypes, commonly thought to be fixed responses to a social category cue, are sensitive to changes in the situational context. Two experiments demonstrated such variability of automatic responses due to changes in the stimulus context. In Study 1 White participants' implicit attitudes toward Blacks varied as a result of exposure to either a positive (a family barbecue) or a negative (a gang incident) stereotypic situation. Study 2 demonstrated similar context effects under clearly automatic processing conditions. Here, the use of different background pictures (church interior vs. street corner) for Black and White face primes affected participants' racial attitudes as measured by a sequential priming task. Implications for the concept of automaticity in social cognition are discussed.
Using a simple videogame, the effect of ethnicity on shoot/don't shoot decisions was examined. African American or White targets, holding guns or other objects, appeared in complex backgrounds. Participants were told to "shoot" armed targets and to "not shoot" unarmed targets. In Study 1, White participants made the correct decision to shoot an armed target more quickly if the target was African American than if he was White, but decided to "not shoot" an unarmed target more quickly if he was White. Study 2 used a shorter time window, forcing this effect into error rates. Study 3 replicated Study 1's effects and showed that the magnitude of bias varied with perceptions of the cultural stereotype and with levels of contact, but not with personal racial prejudice. Study 4 revealed equivalent levels of bias among both African American and White participants in a community sample. Implications and potential underlying mechanisms are discussed.
The current work examined police officers' decisions to shoot Black and White criminal suspects in a computer simulation. Responses to the simulation revealed that upon initial exposure to the program, the officers were more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed Black compared with unarmed White suspects. However, after extensive training with the program, in which the race of the suspect was unrelated to the presence of a weapon, the officers were able to eliminate this bias. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the elimination of racial biases and the training of police officers.
Police officers were compared with community members in terms of the speed and accuracy with which they made simulated decisions to shoot (or not shoot) Black and White targets. Both samples exhibited robust racial bias in response speed. Officers outperformed community members on a number of measures, including overall speed and accuracy. Moreover, although community respondents set the decision criterion lower for Black targets than for White targets (indicating bias), police officers did not. The authors suggest that training may not affect the speed with which stereotype-incongruent targets are processed but that it does affect the ultimate decision (particularly the placement of the decision criterion). Findings from a study in which a college sample received training support this conclusion.
The goal of the research reported in this article was to examine whether automatic group attitudes and stereotypes, commonly thought to be fixed responses to a social category cue, are sensitive to changes in the situational context. Two experiments demonstrated such variability of automatic responses due to changes in the stimulus context. In Study 1 White participants' implicit attitudes toward Blacks varied as a result of exposure to either a positive (a family barbecue) or a negative (a gang incident) stereotypic situation. Study 2 demonstrated similar context effects under clearly automatic processing conditions. Here, the use of different background pictures (church interior vs. street corner) for Black and White face primes affected participants' racial attitudes as measured by a sequential priming task. Implications for the concept of automaticity in social cognition are discussed.
During a 29-year period studied by a government task force, 10 off-duty police officers were found to have been mistaken for civilians and fatally shot by another police officer. Eight of these officers were Black, one was Hispanic, and one was White. Given that at least 75% of U.S. police officers in this period were White, we estimate that there is a roughly one in one million chance that this disparity reflects a random deviation from a condition in which Black and White officers faced the same risk of being fatally shot by another officer while off duty. Estimates of the magnitude of this racial disparity must be interpreted cautiously, but the increased risk faced by Black officers while off duty compared to their White counterparts appears to be even larger than the racial disparity among civilians killed by police officers. The disparity is much less pronounced in mistaken-identity fatal shootings of on-duty officers, of which two were Black, one was Hispanic, and 12 were White. These incidents are rare, but they comprise an important subset of all police interactions because they are known errors that involve a misperception of threat, and because the differential patterns of racial disparities suggest that there are situational factors that vary systematically and contribute to the observed outcomes. We examine fatal, mistaken identity police-on-police shootings and explore potential explanations for the dramatic racial disparity among officers killed while off duty.
The shootings of Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown, and other unarmed African Americans by police officers propelled social psychological research regarding the influence of racial stereotypes on decisions to shoot. Using the full-cycle model as a frame, we contextualize the shootings of unarmed minorities and the empirical research on how racial stereotypes affect perception and behavior. Focusing on the “shooter bias” phenomenon, we detail what social psychological research knows about decisions to shoot in nonpolice samples and what needs further empirical research. We highlight the complexity and dynamic nature of shooting decisions and the need for more translational research with police officers to fully understand the potential effect. Next, we examine empirical interventions that aim to reduce the applicability of activated stereotypes on shooting behavior. Finally, we finish with a discussion of the practical implications that this research has for police, training, and community relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)
The acclaimed social psychologist offers an insider’s look at his research and groundbreaking findings on stereotypes and identity.Claude M. Steele, who has been called “one of the few great social psychologists,” offers a vivid first-person account of the research that supports his groundbreaking conclusions on stereotypes and identity. He sheds new light on American social phenomena from racial and gender gaps in test scores to the belief in the superior athletic prowess of black men, and lays out a plan for mitigating these “stereotype threats” and reshaping American identities.
There is a shocking dearth of scientific certainty about how to assess racial bias in policing. Specifically lacking is an examination of the causal relationship between officer psychological attitudes and their interactions with minority suspects. Do officer racial attitudes lead to more racially biased police behavior? Why do we, as psychologists and scientists, know less than we should about psychological attitudes and their effects on police behavior in the field? To answer this question, we first review what researchers have learned given the available types of existing data: crime data, officer data, and public opinion data. Next, we discuss how insufficient access and lack of rigorous design have detracted from thorough research on racial bias in policing. Finally, we detail how new opportunities for social scientists have the potential to overcome these barriers and conduct rigorous psychological research on equity in policing.
We examined implicit race biases in the decision to shoot potentially hostile targets in a multiethnic context. Results of two studies showed that college‐aged participants and police officers showed anti‐Black racial bias in their response times: they were quicker to correctly shoot armed Black targets and to indicate “don't shoot” for unarmed Latino, Asian, and White targets. In addition, police officers showed racial biases in response times toward Latinos versus Asians or Whites, and surprisingly, toward Whites versus Asians. Results also showed that the accuracy of decisions to shoot was higher for Black and Latino targets than for White and Asian targets. Finally, the degree of bias shown by police officers toward Blacks was related to contact, attitudes, and stereotypes. Overestimation of community violent crime correlated with greater bias toward Latinos but less toward Whites. Implications for police training to ameliorate biases are discussed.
In this experiment, group identification is examined as a potential moderator of the documented racial bias in a shoot–no shoot paradigm. Target race (Black or White) was manipulated within-subjects, and (White) participants’ strength of racial ingroup identification was employed as a continuous predictor. Using signal detection analyses, it was found that the criterion to shoot Black targets decreased as an increasing function of racial ingroup identification. This relationship held even after controlling for gender, social dominance orientation, a measure of cultural stereotyping, and the amount of contact with Blacks. Theoretical implications are discussed.
This article investigates whether within-group differences in perceived phenotypic racial stereotypicality can exacerbate implicit racial stereotyping for Blacks among both ingroup and outgroup members. Two studies with non-Black (Study 1) and Black (Study 2) participants confirmed that high stereotypical (HS) Black targets (i.e., those with darker skin, broader noses and fuller lips) elicited stronger implicit bias in split-second “shoot/don’t shoot” situations than low stereotypical (LS) Black targets or White targets. Specifically, a lower shooting criterion was adopted for HS Black targets, indicating a greater willingness to shoot HS Black targets, resulting in more pronounced bias. Results suggest that the perceived phenotypic racial stereotypicality of Black targets can increase the accessibility of stereotypes linking Blacks with danger, which intensifies racial bias. Further, the article provides the first empirical evidence that stereotypicality biases operate at implicit levels among Blacks when evaluating ingroup members. The implications for stereotypicality research and policing are discussed.
In this article, the authors identify three methodological short-comings of the classic Princeton trilogy studies: (a) ambiguity of the instructions given to respondents, (b) no assessment of respondents' level of prejudice, and (c) use of an outdated list of adjectives. These shortcomings are addressed in the authors' assessment of the stereotype and personal beliefs of a sample of University of Wisconsin students. In contrast to the commonly espoused fading stereotype proposition, data suggest that there exists a consistent and negative contemporary stereotype of Blacks. Comparing the data from the Princeton trilogy studies with those of the present study, the authors conclude that the Princeton trilogy studies actually measured respondents' personal beliefs, not (as typically assumed) their knowledge of the Black stereotype. Consistent with Devine's model, high- and low-prejudiced individuals did not differ in their knowledge of the stereotype of Blacks but diverged sharply in their endorsement of the stereotype.
This study examined characteristics associated with the global racial category "Blacks" and with several subtypes of the racial category: "streetwise, `"ghetto," "welfare," "athlete, "and "businessman. " Subjects were provided with one label and were asked to generate chtaracteristics commonly associated with it. Subjects' responses were submitted to discriminant function analysis, which provides information concerning the relation of characteristics listed by subjects to dimensions that explain the variance in subjects' responses and provides measures of the degree of overlap among the subtypes. The analysis revealed three dimensions: a negative/positive dimension, an athletic dimension, and a unique characteristic dimension. There were many classification errors for the "streetwise," "welfare," and "ghetto" subtypes but few classification errors for the "businessman " and "athlete " subtypes. The global stereotype, with its partial overlap with many of the subtypes, produced a moderate number of classification errors. Discriminant function analysis as a tool for studying subtyping is discussed.
Does Islamic appearance increase aggressive tendencies, and what role does affect play in such responses? In a computer game, participants made rapid decisions to shoot at armed people, some of whom wore Islamic head dress. We predicted and found a significant bias for participants to shoot more at Muslim targets. We also predicted and found that positive mood selectively increased aggressive tendencies towards Muslims, consistent with affect-cognition theories that predict a more top-down, stereotypical processing style in positive mood. In contrast, induced anger increased the propensity to shoot at all targets. The relevance of these results for our understanding of real-life negative reactions towards Muslims is discussed, and the influence of affective states on rapid aggressive responses is considered.
Contends that social psychological investigators should begin work from naturally occurring instances of social phenomena. Progressive steps should then be taken to establish the power, generality, and theoretical/conceptual underpinnings of the phenomenon of interest. Examples of this orientation include (a) work on bystander intervention that was inspired by the Kitty Genovese incident and (b) research on obedience to authority, which was sparked by the Nazi concentration camp phenomenon. The actions of other people or one's own actions can also provide topics for research: An experience in which the author was persuaded to donate to a charity a second time through the use of the words "even a penny will help" was the impetus for his research on compliance. Another naturally occurring compliance strategy studied by the author was "throwing a low ball," a pricing technique used by car salespersons. It is argued that natural observation should not only be used to identify effects suitable for research, it should also be used to check on the validity of findings from that experimentation. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Experimental lab-based research has the ability to carefully control variables and establish causality, but also possesses accompanying weaknesses. Most prominent is its inability to determine the strength or prevalence of phenomena in the natural environment. As a solution, we present a full-cycle approach to social psychology, whereby researchers use naturalistic observation to determine an effect’s presence in the real world, theory to determine what processes underlie the effect, experimentation to verify the effect and its underlying processes, and a return to the natural environment to corroborate the experimental findings. We also discuss ways in which the full-cycle approach lends itself to applied research, how observing the lack of an effect where one is expected can lead to fruitful research, and how field research can offset some of the limitations of carefully controlled laboratory research.
Using a videogame to simulate encounters with potentially hostile targets, three studies tested a model in which racial bias in shoot/don't-shoot decisions reflects accessibility of the stereotype linking Blacks to danger. Study 1 experimentally manipulated the race-danger association by asking participants to read newspaper stories about Black (vs. White) criminals. As predicted, exposure to stories concerning Black criminals increased bias in the decision to shoot. Studies 2 and 3 manipulated the number of White and Black targets with and without guns in the context of the videogame itself. As predicted, frequent presentation of stereotypic (vs. counterstereotypic) targets exacerbated bias (Study 2) and—consistent with our process account—rendered stereotypes more accessible (Study 3). Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This research examines whether spontaneous, unintentional discriminatory behavior can be moderated by an implicit (nonconscious) motivation to control prejudice. We operationalize implicit motivation to control prejudice (IMCP) in terms of an implicit negative attitude toward prejudice (NAP) and an implicit belief that oneself is prejudiced (BOP). In the present experiment, an implicit stereotypic association of Blacks (vs. Whites) with weapons was positively correlated with the tendency to “shoot” armed Black men faster than armed White men (the “Shooter Bias”) in a computer simulation. However, participants relatively high in implicit negative attitude toward prejudice showed no relation between the race-weapons stereotype and the shooter bias. Implicit belief that oneself is prejudiced had no direct effect on this relation, but the interaction of NAP and BOP did. Participants who had a strong association between self and prejudice (high BOP) but a weak association between prejudice and bad (low NAP) showed the strongest relation between the implicit race-weapons stereotype and the Shooter Bias, suggesting that these individuals freely employed their stereotypes in their behavior.
Research shows that participants shoot armed Blacks more frequently and quickly than armed Whites, but make don't-shoot responses more frequently and quickly for unarmed Whites than unarmed Blacks. We argue that this bias reflects the perception of threat - specifically, threat associated with Black males. Other danger cues (not just race) may create a similar predisposition to shoot, and if these cues promote shooting when the target is White, they should attenuate racial bias. We embedded targets in threatening andsafe backgrounds. Racial bias was evident in safe contexts but disappeared when context signaled danger, and this reduction was largely due to an increased tendency to shoot White targets.
A general theory of domain identification is used to describe achievement barriers still faced by women in advanced quantitative areas and by African Americans in school. The theory assumes that sustained school success requires identification with school and its subdomains; that societal pressures on these groups (e.g., economic disadvantage, gender roles) can frustrate this identification; and that in school domains where these groups are negatively stereotyped, those who have become domain identified face the further barrier of stereotype threat, the threat that others' judgments or their own actions will negatively stereotype them in the domain. Research shows that this threat dramatically depresses the standardized test performance of women and African Americans who are in the academic vanguard of their groups (offering a new interpretation of group differences in standardized test performance), that it causes disidentification with school, and that practices that reduce this threat can reduce these negative effects.
Prior research has shown that within a racial category, people with more Afrocentric facial features are presumed more likely to have traits that are stereotypic of Black Americans compared with people with less Afrocentric features. The present study investigated whether this form of feature-based stereotyping might be observed in criminal-sentencing decisions. Analysis of a random sample of inmate records showed that Black and White inmates, given equivalent criminal histories, received roughly equivalent sentences. However, within each race, inmates with more Afrocentric features received harsher sentences than those with less Afrocentric features. These results are consistent with laboratory findings, and they suggest that although racial stereotyping as a function of racial category has been successfully removed from sentencing decisions, racial stereotyping based on the facial features of the offender is a form of bias that is largely overlooked.
Drawing on two alternative accounts of the affective priming effect (spreading activation vs. response interference), the present research investigated the underlying processes of how evaluative context stimuli influence implicit evaluations in the affective priming task. Employing two sequentially presented prime stimuli (rather than a single prime), two experiments showed that affective priming effects elicited by a given prime stimulus were more pronounced when this stimulus was preceded by a context prime of the opposite valence than when it was preceded by a context prime of the same valence. This effect consistently emerged for pictures (Experiment 1) and words (Experiment 2) as prime stimuli. These results suggest that the impact of evaluative context stimuli on implicit evaluations is mediated by contrast effects in the attention to evaluative information rather than by additive effects in the activation of evaluative information in associative memory.
Seeing Black: Race, representation, and visual processing
- Eberhardt
Demonstrations Across the Country Commemorate Trayvon Martin
- Joseph
Trayvon Martin case: Is young, black and wearing a hoodie a recipe for disaster
- Minchillo
Fox News's Bill O'Reilly blames Trayvon Martin's death on hoodie
- Wemple
Young black men killed by US police at highest rate in year of 1,134 deaths
- Swaine
The handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology
- J. A. Bargh
- T. L. Chartrand
The truth about Travyon
- Yankah
The police officer's dilemma: using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals
- Correll