#HandsUpDon’tShoot: The Psychology of “Shooter Bias” Prof. Stephenie Chaudoir & Tyler Zeoli ‘15 Psychology Department

Caption 2 under the light skinned person: "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store..." Caption 1 under the dark skinned person: " A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans"

Implicit Stereotypes as Cognitive Residue Black Bad =

Automatic vs. Controlled Processing Implicit Automatic Process Behavior Explicit Controlled Process Inhibit Initial Bias

“Shooter Bias” Hypothesis: Unarmed Black Men will be shot at more often than Unarmed White Men.

Plant & Peruche, 2005

The “Take-Aways” 1.Shooter bias is a real behavioral phenomenon that can be overcome with training 1.We are ALL vulnerable to _____ bias when operating on “auto-pilot”

#factivism References and Further Reading Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C.M., & Wittenbrink, B. (2002). The police officer’s dilemma: Using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, [pdf][pdf] Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C.M., Wittenbrink, B., & Sadler, M.S. (2007). Across the thin blue line: Police officers and racial bias in the decision to shoot. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, [pdf][pdf] Eberhardt, J.L., Goff, P.A., Purdie, V.J. & Davies, P.G. (2004). Seeing Black: Race, crime, and visual processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, [pdf] [pdf] Payne, B. K. (2005). Conceptualizing control in social cognition: How executive functioning modulates the expression of automatic stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, [citation][citation] Plant, E. A., & Peruche, B. M. (2005). The consequences of race for police officer’s responses to criminal suspects. Psychological Science, 16, [pdf][pdf] See also: You can find this powerpoint on Prof. Chaudoir’s website, or for more details:

Additional Questions Does shooter race affect bias? – No. Black and White participants are equally likely to exhibit shooter bias (Correll et al., 2002; Study 4). Are law enforcement more biased than community members? – No. Community members make more errors than police officers (Correll et al., 2007).

Implicit Association Test (IAT)