A recent experiment conducted by a Portland State University psychologist with college students at UCLA confirms and expands upon existing research on racial stereotypes and their influence on “shooter bias.”
The results show that not just race but also the clothes a victim wears and the neighborhood they’re in may contribute to unintended shooting decisions and may affect police reacting to these situations.
PSU psychology professor Kimberly Kahn published her findings in an article titled “What Influences Shooter Bias? The Effects of Suspect Race, Neighborhood, and Clothing on Decisions to Shoot.” The article, co-authored with Paul Davies, psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, is part of the December 2017 issue of the Journal of Social Issues Kahn co-edited.The issue includes other articles exploring the causes of increased police harassment, maltreatment, shootings and other violence against racial and ethnic minorities.
Implicit bias is when people have attitudes toward or stereotypes about people or things without even realizing it because they are held at an unconscious level. Shooter bias refers to the tendency for implicit racial stereotypes to influence decisions to shoot, such that unarmed racial minorities are more likely to be mistakenly shot than unarmed whites, according to Kahn.
“One kind of implicit bias is around race,” she said. “Everyone regardless of background can have implicit bias and it is pervasive across society. Both community members and police can hold these implicit stereotypes.”
In two experiments conducted at UCLA, Kahn and Davies asked 136 college students to participate in a video simulation in which they reacted to pictures of black or white male subjects holding neutral objects such as cell phones or dangerous objects such as guns. She asked them to make quick decisions to shoot or not shoot the subjects by pressing keys on a keyboard. She varied the clothing each subject was wearing and the neighborhood each was in to see if that would influence their likelihood to shoot or not shoot.
Across both scenarios, black subjects wearing stereotypically threatening clothing associated with criminality and in perceived dangerous neighborhoods were more likely to be mistakenly shot in the mock computer study than white subjects. In photos where black subjects were pictured in stereotypically safe clothing and in perceived safer neighborhoods, the number of incorrect shooting responses was reduced.
“Although this study was done with college students, it points to implicit bias and unconscious human behavior that is common across many sectors of society, including law enforcement,” said Kahn, whose research focuses on contemporary and hidden forms of bias and prejudice. “The shooting deaths of unarmed racial minorities can also involve community members, such as in the case of Trayvon Martin. It’s important to understand the underlying psychology that can affect these quick decisions to shoot, and more importantly, learn how to counteract them."
Kahn stated that: “In the U.S., unarmed blacks are more than twice as likely to be killed by law enforcement than their white counterparts. Even though it is not a new phenomenon, the death of Michael Brown in 2014 brought the issues of police violence against blacks front and center here in the United States. My research shows how implicit stereotypes about clothing and location interact with race and can have a negative influence on how minorities are treated by police and other citizens.”
Kahn plans to use her findings in her work with police training programs with agencies such as the Portland Police Bureau.