Shooter Task Research Articles

To shoot or not to shoot?: Examining biased eye movements during a shooter task

ABSTRACT We examined potential biases in decisions to use force in a unique way using the shooter task (shoot/don’t shoot a Black or White target as quickly as possible) while tracking eye movements. Results showed that participants shot an unarmed White target faster and more often than an unarmed Black target. When examining participants’ eye movements, the results showed that when a target was armed, participants may have utilized the stereotype that Blacks are dangerous. On the other hand, when unarmed, the data suggests a story that goes against the stereotype that Whites are safe. This data suggests that biased eye movements may be important in decision-making, which helps us identify what may need to be taught to eliminate shooter biases. This information could assist in police training exercises to reduce bias or “unlearn” stereotypical responses and, thus, have beneficial consequences on the decision to shoot.

Cool under fire: Psychopathic personality traits and decision making in law-enforcement-oriented populations.

Compared with other jobs, the law enforcement profession is a high-stakes occupation that has the potential to greatly impact public safety, and officers must face daily dangers not experienced in other professions. Previous research indicates that many law enforcement officers exhibit varying degrees of psychopathic traits, which suggests that it may be useful to examine police officer performance, specifically proxies of excessive use of force, through the lens of the triarchic psychopathy domains. We predicted that high boldness and high meanness would be associated with greater justification of excessive use of force, whereas low boldness, high meanness, and high disinhibition would relate to greater errors in high-stakes decision making ("trigger bias"). We employed criterion profile analysis to elucidate optimal profile configurations in both law enforcement and undergraduate samples in relation to justification of use-of-force scenarios and decision making in high-pressure situations (i.e., police officer's dilemma shooter task). In general, combinations of triarchic psychopathy traits accounted for similar variance in performance criteria as individual psychopathy trait domains. In particular, trait elevations in meanness were associated with ratings of unjustified-use-of-force vignettes, and disinhibition was associated with commission errors on the shooter task (although effect sizes were small for the latter). The findings of this study support the conceptual validity of the separate dimensions of the triarchic psychopathy model and substantiate the moderate utility of personality indicators (e.g., antagonism, difficulties with impulse control) in relation to career-related performance in law enforcement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Shooter biases and stereotypes among police and civilians

The present research assesses potential correlates of discriminatory police behavior, comparing police and civilian participants in a first person shooter task (FPST) as well as on various self-report measures of intergroup contact, intergroup attitudes, and ideological beliefs in three preregistered studies. Study 1 (N = 330), using a FPST with a short response window (630 ms), did not observe shooter biases in reaction times, error rates and signal detection parameters in neither police nor civilian participants. Study 2a (N = 290), using a longer response window (850 ms), observed a shooter bias in reaction times, error rates, and response criterion in both civilian and police participants. These shooter biases were largely driven by faster reactions, fewer errors, and more liberal shoot decisions for armed Arab (vs. White) targets. Study 2b (N = 191; 850 ms response window) closely replicated shooter biases in reaction times, error rates, and response criterion in a sample of civilian online participants. Across studies, we observed similar results in the shooter task for police and civilian samples. Furthermore, both police and civilian participants expressed anti-Muslim and anti-Arab attitudes across a variety of self-report measures. However, compared to civilians, police participants reported higher levels of anti-Muslim attitudes on some measures as well as higher levels of social dominance orientation, which might pose additional risk factors for discriminatory behavior. Lastly, while we observed reliable individual differences in self-reported intergroup attitudes, ideologies, and intergroup contact, none of these characteristics correlated with shooter biases.

Fight or flight: The role of context on biased intergroup shooting behaviors.

Work using the First-Person Shooter task (FPST, also referred to as the "Police Officers Dilemma") shows that cultural stereotypes play an integral role in influencing decisions to engage in shooting behaviors during a mock shooter simulation. Knowledge of the Black-violent stereotype typically leads White participants to have a quicker response to "shoot" armed Black target and falsely shoot unarmed Black targets, compared with White targets. Because this task constrains response options to shoot or not shoot, it is unclear what role structural and environmental factors may play in modulating biased shooting behaviors. In this study, participants played a variation of the FPST in which they made speeded shoot/flee decisions in response to armed and unarmed targets. In this variation, participants could "flee" in half of the trials regardless of whether the target was armed. Additionally, participants were primed with instructions that mirrored Stand Your Ground (SYG) law, traditional self-defense laws, or a set of control instructions. Across three studies, participants displayed racially biased behavior only on trials in which they were not allowed to flee from armed targets. In Study 3, EEG was recorded during the task to assess activation of an inhibitory brain network, which differentiated between Black and White targets. Decreased activation of this inhibitory network was associated with increased racial biased behavioral responses for those in the SYG condition. These studies highlight the ability for structural and environmental factors to exacerbate race-based disparities in the use of aggressive force as they pertain to the FPST. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Horror Videogame Sound Effects, Cardiovascular Arousal, and Ethnic Bias in the Decision to Shoot

Abstract This study used a survival horror videogame to examine the impact of scary sound effects on cardiovascular and affective arousal and determine whether differences in cardiovascular arousal increased bias in shooting people of color (POCs) first in a shooter task. We expected that participants who played the horror videogame with scary sound effects would have higher cardiovascular arousal and fear than those who played without sound effects. We also expected that increased cardiovascular arousal would increase the likelihood of shooting a POC first (first shot bias) later in a shooter game. The hypothesis that playing the survival horror videogame with scary sound effects would result in higher cardiovascular arousal was supported. First shot bias was not correlated with cardiovascular arousal. However, first shot bias was significantly and positively correlated with enjoyment of the shooter game. A post hoc, exploratory analysis indicated that participants in the scary sound effects condition were significantly more likely to shoot a POC first in the shooter task than those in the no sound effects condition when enjoyment of the shooter game was used as a covariate but not when the covariate was not included. However, this effect was small.

When Practice Fails to Reduce Racial Bias in the Decision to Shoot: The Case of Cognitive Load

Practice improves performance on a first-person shooter task (FPST), increasing accuracy and decreasing racial bias. But rather than simply promoting cognitively efficient processing, we argue that the benefits of practice on a difficult, cognitively demanding task like the FPST rely, at least in part, on resource-intensive, cognitively effortful processing. If practice-based improvements require cognitive resources, then cognitive load should compromise the value of practice by depriving trained participants of the cognitive resources on which they depend. This experiment shows that inducing cognitive load eliminates the benefits of training, leading to an increase in racial bias, as predicted.

Oxytocin increases the social salience of the outgroup in potential threat contexts

A growing body of literature suggests that OT administration may affect not only prosocial outcomes, but also regulate adversarial responses in the context of intergroup relations. However, recent reports have challenged the view of a fixed role of OT in enhancing ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation. Studying the potential effects of OT in modulating threat perception in a context characterized by racial miscegenation (Brazil) may thus afford additional clarification on the matter. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, White Brazilian participants completed a first-person shooter task to assess their responses towards potential threat from racial ingroup (White) or outgroup (Black) members. OT administration enhanced the social salience of the outgroup, by both increasing the rate at which participants refrained from shooting unarmed Black targets to levels similar to White targets, and by further increasing the rate of correct decisions to shoot armed Black targets (versus White armed targets). In summary, our results indicate that a single dose of OT may promote accurate behavioral responses to potential threat from members of a racial outgroup, thus offering support to the social salience hypothesis.

Modeling Effects of Newspaper Articles on Stereotype Accessibility in the Shooter Task

Modeling Effects of Newspaper Articles on Stereotype Accessibility in the Shooter Task

Embodying the Police: The Effects of Enclothed Cognition on Shooting Decisions.

The theory of enclothed cognition proposes that wearing physical articles of clothing can trigger psychological processes and behavioral tendencies connected to their symbolic meaning. Furthermore, past research has found that increases in power are associated with greater approach orientation and action tendencies. In this study, we integrate these two literatures to examine how embodying the role of a police officer through wearing a uniform would affect responses on a reaction-time measure known as the Shooter Task. This first-person video game simulation requires participants to shoot or not shoot targets holding guns or objects. The task typically elicits a stereotypical pattern of responses, such that unarmed Black versus White targets are more likely to be mistakenly shot and armed Black versus White targets are more likely to be correctly shot. Based on the relationship between power and action, we hypothesized that participants who were randomly assigned to wear a police uniform would show more shooting errors, particularly false alarms, than control participants. Consistent with our hypotheses, participants in uniform were more likely to shoot unarmed targets, regardless of their race. Moreover, this pattern was partially moderated by attitudes about the police and their abuse of power. Specifically, uniformed participants who justified police use of power were more likely to shoot innocent targets than those who were wary of it. We discuss implications for police perceptions and the theory of enclothed cognition more broadly.

The Police Officer’s Dilemma

Abstract. Correll and colleagues ( Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002 ) developed a first-person shooter task that simulates the police officer’s dilemma of whether to shoot or not a target that may present lethal danger. The present study examined the relationship between habitual violent video game play and responses in this shooting paradigm. Habitual violent video game play has been shown to increase the accessibility of aggressive thoughts. Previous research also demonstrated that action video game play has a positive impact on perceptual skills. Hence, it was hypothesized that players of violent video games would be more likely to mistakenly shoot a target and exhibit shorter reaction times in the shooting task. Results revealed that reaction times, but not error rates, were significantly associated with habitual violent video game play. These findings suggest that habitual violent video game play may have a positive impact on overall processing skills without limiting accuracy.

Effects of a companion dog on associations of danger and threat with oriental‐looking targets

AbstractIn the current study we extend previous findings on the shooter bias toward targets with Arab ethnicity. In an adapted shooter task, we presented stereotypically oriental‐looking targets without explicit symbols of Islam (e.g., a turban) and additionally tested if presenting a “harmless” companion dog, together with Arab versus White targets, would affect the shooter bias. Participants responded faster and made fewer errors for armed Arab than for armed White targets. Moreover, compared to the “neutral” no dog condition, the presence of a dog triggered fewer false alarms for White than for Arab targets and slowed down (correct) responses in general. Implications and potential underlying mechanisms are discussed.

The Decision to Shoot Black Suspects in Brazil: The Police Officer’s Dilemma

Reports of Amnesty International (2015) indicate that Brazilian police are among the most violent in the world, and that such violence victimizes, above all, black citizens. Using the “First Person Shooter Task” (FPST), developed by Correll et al. (2002), we analyzed in three studies the impacts of suspect skin color on the Brazilian civilian and military police decision to shoot. The first study involved 97 white college students. The results indicated the presence of racist shooter bias: participants shot a black armed suspect faster than a white one and took longer to shoot an unarmed black suspect than a white one, and also made more mistakes not shooting the armed white man than the armed black man. In the second study, 60 male military police officers (MP) participated, 10 of them were white, 41 brown and 9 black. All police officers had 3 months of police service. The results indicated again the presence of racist shooter bias, but only in the response times. There was no effect of the participant’s skin color. The third study was conducted with 58 male MPs, 11 of them were white, 37 brown and 10 black, all with more than 10 years of police service. The same pattern of study 2 was found. The general results demonstrate that levels of racist shooter bias of police officers are not higher than that of civilians. The data are discussed considering the risk of racism in making extreme life and death decisions.

The Shape of ROC Curves in Shooter Tasks: Implications for Best Practices in Analysis

Four experiments addressed the widely studied issue of the association between racial groups and guns, namely shooter bias, as measured in the first-person shooter task or the weapon identification task, in which participants judge whether a suspect has a weapon or some other item such as a phone (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002; Payne, 2001). Previous studies have employed various analyses that make conflicting, and indeed untested, assumptions about the underlying nature of the data: Analyses of variance and model-based analyses assume linear receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) and signal detection (SDT) analyses assume curved ROCs. The present experiments directly investigated the shape of the ROCs for the weapon identification task, demonstrating that they are curved, and that the majority of previous studies are at risk for inclusion of inappropriate analyses, because they assume linear rather than curved ROCs.

What Influences Shooter Bias? The Effects of Suspect Race, Neighborhood, and Clothing on Decisions to Shoot

AbstractPolice shooting deaths of unarmed Blacks and African Americans led to psychological research on the influence of racial stereotypes on decisions to shoot, an effect called shooter bias. This article investigates how contextual cues signaling threat or safety interact with the race of the target to moderate shooter bias. Across two experimental studies using a first person shooter task, participants viewed Black or White male targets who held either a neutral (wallet or cellphone) or dangerous (gun) object. Study 1 manipulated the perceived safety or threat associated with the neighborhood context these shooting decisions occurred in, and Study 2 manipulated the perceived safety or threat associated with the targets’ clothing. Participants made quick decisions to “shoot” or “not shoot” the presented target, with error rates serving as the dependent variable. Across both studies, results confirmed that racial bias in shooting decisions against Blacks was present in perceived threatening neighborhoods and in perceived threatening clothing, and it was reduced in perceived safe neighborhoods and when wearing perceived safe clothing. Results help to identify contextual factors that may lead to mistaken shooting decisions, which can be used to improve police training and decision making to reduce bias.

Quick to the draw: How suspect race and socioeconomic status influences shooting decisions

AbstractWe examined the role of both suspect race and socioeconomic status (SES) on shooting decisions during a first‐person shooter task. Two studies revealed that both suspect race and SES influenced shooting decisions. Non‐Black participants shot armed high‐SES Black suspects faster than armed high‐SES White suspects and responded “don't shoot” faster for unarmed high‐SES White suspects than unarmed high‐SES Black suspects. No race differences appeared in the low‐SES conditions—responses resembled high‐SES Black suspect. Signal detection, misses, and false alarm analyses revealed participants erred toward not shooting high‐SES White suspects. The current studies draw attention to considering both race and SES during shooting decisions.

Advancing Research on Cognitive Processes in Social and Personality Psychology

We provide a primer on a hierarchical extension of the drift diffusion model (DDM). This formal model of decisions is frequently used in the cognitive sciences but infrequently used in social and personality research. Recent advances in model estimation have overcome issues that previously made the hierarchical DDM impractical to implement. Using examples from two paradigms, the first-person shooter task and the flash gambling task, we demonstrate that the hierarchical DDM can provide novel insights into cognitive processes underlying decisions. Finally, we compare the DDM to dual-process models of decision-making. We hope this primer will provide researchers a new tool for investigating psychological processes.

Assuming the Role of a Racist and an Egalitarian Both Decreases Spontaneous Discriminatory Behavior

This study employed the first-person shooter task(FPST: Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002) paradigm to examine racial bias toward Blacks in a population unrelated to the Black-White racial context. We tested whether having Korean participants play the role of a White police officer portrayed as nonracist (vs. racist) would attenuate the bias to shoot Black suspects. Participants were told that they would perform a police simulation task as a White police officer, who was described as racist or nonracist, or was presented without a description. They then performed the FPST. Although nonracist description lowered shooter bias, racist description weakened it even more, contrary to our prediction. The latter result is interpreted as due to activation of an egalitarian goal after reading about racism-related description, especially as the description was about someone who was to be incorporated to the self. Supporting this interpretation, a mediation analysis involving Racist and Control conditions revealed that the racist description was associated with stronger perception of the officer’s racial bias, which in turn was correlated with weaker shooter bias.

Implicit Motivation to Control Prejudice and Exposure to Counterstereotypic Instances Reduce Spontaneous Discriminatory Behavior

We examined joint influences of Implicit Motivation to Control Prejudice (IMCP) and exposure to counterstereotypic stimuli on spontaneous racial bias. Participants performed a Shooter Task (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002) wherein the ratios of stereotypic (i.e., armed Black) and counterstereotypic targets were manipulated. Then all participants performed the standard Shooter Task with equal ratios of targets. Those higher in IMCP showed less bias, as did participants in the Counterstereotypic condition. The pattern of results also suggests that the counterstereotypic exemplar effect on Shooter Bias was larger for those relatively high in IMCP.

Reducing the Expression of Implicit Stereotypes: Reflexive Control Through Implementation Intentions

The authors tested the effectiveness of implementation intentions as a strategy for limiting the behavioral expression of implicit stereotypes. Implementation intentions are if-then plans that link an intended response to an anticipated situational cue, thereby enabling a reflexive form of control. The authors examined whether two different types of implementation intentions could improve response accuracy on the Shooter Task, a reaction time measure of implicit stereotyping. In Study 1, participants used a distraction-inhibiting implementation intention designed to engage control over the perception of goal-irrelevant stimuli (e.g., race). In Study 2, participants used a response-facilitating implementation intention designed to promote goal-directed action. Across studies, implementation intentions improved accuracy, thereby limiting the behavioral expression of implicit stereotypes. Furthermore, process dissociation analyses indicated that the distraction-inhibiting implementation intention increased controlled processing while reducing automatic stereotype activation, whereas the response-facilitating implementation intention increased only controlled processing. Implications for goal strategy approaches to reducing prejudice are discussed.

Implicit Racial Attitudes and Law Enforcement Shooting Decisions

Recent cases of police shootings of unarmed Black men have led to a flurry of research on how race may affect the decision of police to shoot. The current study examines how levels of implicit racial bias in samples of both police cadets and college students predict performance on a simulated shooting task. Police cadets had stronger implicit biases against Blacks than college students. Cadets also displayed higher levels of explicit racial bias (as measured by the Modern Racism Scale). Results from the simulated shooter task replicated past results, with armed Black targets yielding the fastest reaction times across groups. However, IAT scores did not predict reaction times on the shooter task, but did predict the number of mistakes made when the target was Black and unarmed. Explicit racial bias correlated with reaction time and mistakes made on the task. These results suggest that future research on implicit bias in law enforcement officers may be fruitful, especially as it relates to shooting decisions.