Across the thin blue line: Police officers and racial bias in the decision to shoot.

Abstract

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.

History of Social Psychology: Insights, Challenges, and Contributions to Theory and Application

“…Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie, and Davies (2004) showed that priming police officers with crime-related words increased the attention they directed to Black faces relative to White faces. Correll et al (2007) conceptually replicated that result but then demonstrated that trained police officers were less likely to exhibit racial bias in a simulated shooting context than were community members-i.e., that implicit associations notwithstanding, behaviors toward members of stigmatized groups that are deliberate and explicitly executed may, through self-monitoring and/or training, prove to be relatively unbiased by such associations.…”

Racism in Soccer? Perception of Challenges of Black and White Players by White Referees, Soccer Players, and Fans

“…The main independent variable in Correll and colleagues studies was the skin colour of the target, either Black or White. Crucially, they did not constantly found a race-based discriminatory bias, which would consist in more hits and false alarms for Black targets (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002;Correll, Urland, & Ito, 2006;Correll, Park, Judd, Wittenbrink, Sadler, & Keesee, 2007;however, Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2007, using a strong priming procedure, and more recently, Correll, Wittenbrink Park, Judd, & Goyle, 2011, and Ma & Racism in soccer? 15 Correll, 2011 did find such discriminatory bias).…”

Racial Bias and Public Policy

“…Shooter-bias, too, has been replicated with multiple, large samples of police officers (Correll et al, 2007; see also Peruche & Plant, 2006).…”