Racing to help: Racial bias in high emergency helping situations.

Abstract

The present work explored the influence of emergency severity on racial bias in helping behavior. Three studies placed participants in staged emergencies and measured differences in the speed and quantity of help offered to Black and White victims. Consistent with predictions, as the level of emergency increased, the speed and quality of help White participants offered to Black victims relative to White victims decreased. In line with the authors' predictions based on an integration of aversive racism theory and the arousal: cost-reward perspective on prosocial behavior, severe emergencies with Black victims elicited high levels of aversion from White helpers, and these high levels of aversion were directly related to the slower help offered to Black victims but not to White victims (Study 1). In addition, the bias was related to White individuals' interpretation of the emergency as less severe and themselves as less responsible to help Black victims rather than White victims (Studies 2 and 3). Study 3 also illustrated that emergency racial bias is unique to White individuals' responses to Black victims and not evinced by Black helpers.

Psychological response to an emergency in virtual reality: Effects of victim ethnicity and emergency type on helping behavior and navigation

“…This might be due to the fact that time taken to make a decision is affected not only by willingness, but most prominently by urgency. Ambivalent results in this variable are also reported by other studies (Fisher, Greitemeier, Pollozek, & Frey, 2006;Gaertner, 1982;Kunstman & Plant, 2008), suggesting that promptness does not seem a good, univocal index of discrimination in emergency.…”

“…A possible explanation is that prejudice was set aside in a fire because the risk is more serious than in the case of simple time pressure. However, the literature shows that risk severity per se does not increase likelihood of intervention, and black targets receive less help than white targets when at risk of suffering severe harm (Kunstman & Plant, 2008;Saucier et al, 2005).…”

Helping Intergroup Relations

“…The second review indicates that discriminatory nonhelping was likely only when not helping could be rationalized by the helpers (e.g., help involved high risk) (Saucier et al, 2005). Finally, consistent with the logic of aversive racism, White individuals who had failed to help a Black person defended against the negative implications of this discriminatory nonhelping by assessing the event as being less of an emergency than when they had failed to help a White person (Kunstman and Plant, 2008).…”

Explaining the Link Between Race and Violence With General Strain Theory

“…African American parents are more likely to be steered away from elementary schools (New York ACORN, 1996). White bystanders will frequently not respond to a Black person's call for help in a staged emergency situation (Kunstman & Plant, 2008). Blacks shopping for cars are quoted higher prices than Whites (Ayres, 1991).…”