The Basis of Shooter Biases

Abstract

White police officers and undergraduate students mistakenly shoot unarmed Black suspects more than White suspects on computerized shoot/don't shoot tasks. This bias is typically attributed to cultural stereotypes of Black men. Yet, previous research has not examined whether such biases emerge even in the absence of cultural stereotypes. The current research investigates whether individual differences in chronic beliefs about interpersonal threat interact with target group membership to elicit shooter biases, even when group membership is unrelated to race or cultural stereotypes about danger. Across two studies, participants with strong beliefs about interpersonal threats were more likely to mistakenly shoot outgroup members than ingroup members; this was observed for unfamiliar, arbitrarily formed groups using a minimal group paradigm (Study 1) and racial groups not culturally stereotyped as dangerous (Asians; Study 2). Implications for the roles of both group membership and cultural stereotypes in shaping decisions to shoot are discussed.

Are Multiple Minimal Outgroup Males Readily Associated with Threat?

“…Studies that have observed increased threat perceptions for outgroup males have typically used stimuli referring to existing racial categories (e.g., Correll, Wittenbrink, Park, Judd, & Goyle, 2011;Maner et al, 2005) and/or involved a weapon-detection task (Miller et al, 2012). In contrast, the current study involved minimal groups and a task of detecting facial expressions.…”

“…Signal detection paradigms have been used to investigate tendencies to perceive particular kinds of stimuli as threatening. As previous research suggest that outgroup males may be associated with threat even when the ingroup-outgroup distinction is minimal (Miller et al, 2012;Navarrete et al, 2012), both studies tested the hypothesis using a minimal group manipulation (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971).…”

“…There is a substantial amount of psychological research suggesting that outgroup males are often perceived as threatening (Fessler & Holbrook, 2013;Maner et al, 2005;Miller, Zielaskowski, & Plant, 2012;Navarrete et al, 2009Navarrete et al, , 2012Olsson, Ebert, Banaji, & Phelps, 2005;Payne, 2001). A collective of multiple outgroup males may be particularly threatening.…”

Brief Report

“…Consistent with the strong stereotypes that Black men are dangerous (Devine, 1989), the original shooter bias research found that both Black and White Americans displayed a bias to shoot Black targets over White targets (Correll et al, 2002). Prior research has reliably shown that perceived danger (in addition to ingroup bias) plays a critical role in biases to shoot (Correll, Urland, & Ito, 2006;Correll, Wittenbrink, Park, Judd, & Goyle, 2011;Miller, Zielaskowski, & Plant, 2012). For instance, participants show a greater bias to shoot targets superimposed on dangerous compared with safe backgrounds (Correll et al, 2011).…”

“…Western participants also show a stronger neural marker of threat (P200) to Black than White faces in the shooter task (Correll et al, 2006). Individuals who believe that the world is a dangerous place even shoot at outgroup members not stereotyped as dangerous more than ingroup members (Miller et al, 2012). Moreover, the shooter bias is not solely attributable to simple outgroup bias because Black Americans shoot more at Black than White targets, and men shoot more at male than female targets (Correll et al, 2002;Kahn & Davies, 2010;Plant et al, 2011).…”