Abstract
The biasing role of stereotypes is a central theme in social cognition research. For example, to understand the role of race in police officers’ decisions to shoot, participants have been shown images of Black and White males and instructed to shoot only if the target is holding a gun. Findings show that Black targets are shot more frequently and more quickly than Whites. The decision to shoot has typically been modeled and understood as a signal detection process in which a sample of information is compared against a criterion, with the criterion set for Black targets being lower. We take a different approach, modeling the decision to shoot as a dynamic process in which evidence is accumulated over time until a threshold is reached. The model accounts for both the choice and response time data for both correct and incorrect decisions using a single set of parameters. Across four studies, this dynamic perspective revealed that the target’s race did not create an initial bias to shoot Black targets. Instead, race impacted the rate of evidence accumulation with evidence accumulating faster to shoot for Black targets. Some participants also tended to be more cautious with Black targets, setting higher decision thresholds. Besides providing a more cohesive and richer account of the decision to shoot or not, the dynamic model suggests interventions that may address the use of race information in decisions to shoot and a means to measure their effectiveness.
Highlights
Be more cautious with Black targets, setting higher decision thresholds
The drift rates for gun objects were higher for Black targets than for White targets, suggesting that the race of the target individual is processed as evidence when deciding whether or not to shoot
This is a different understanding of the effect of race than the one provided by signal detection theory (SDT), where the effect is typically isolated to the response process of setting a lower, more liberal criterion to shoot for Black targets
Summary
To go beyond the behavioral data and better understand the race bias at the cognitive level, researchers have employed mathematical models to analyze the decision process in the FPST. The most common approach is to treat the decision as a signal detection process using SDT (Green & Swets, 1966; Macmillan & Creelman, 2005). From this perspective, on each trial, the shooter extracts a sample of information reflecting the degree to which the target appears to be holding a gun. A limitation of SDT as a model of the decision process is that it is silent in terms of response times This is problematic when it comes to explaining differences in race effects observed between experiments.
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