Race stereotypes can lead people to claim to see a weapon where there is none. Split-second decisions magnify the bias by limiting people's ability to control responses. Such a bias could have important consequences for decision making by police officers and other authorities interacting with racial minorities. The bias requires no intentional racial animus, occurring even for those who are actively trying to avoid it. This research thus raises difficult questions about intent and responsibility for racially biased errors.
PayneB.K. (2001). Prejudice and perception: The role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon. Journal of Personality Social Psychology, 81, 181–192.
2.
PayneB.K.JacobyL.L.LambertA.J. (2005). Attitudes as accessibility bias: Dissociating automatic and controlled components. In HassinR.BarghJ.UlemanJ. (Eds.), The new unconscious. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
3.
AmodioD.M.Harmon-JonesE.DevineP.G.CurtinJ.J.HartleyS.L.CovertA.E. (2004). Neural signals for the detection of unintentional race bias. Psychological Science, 15, 225–232.
4.
CorrellJ.ParkB.JuddC.M.WittenbrinkB. (2002). The police officer's dilemma: Using race to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1314–1329.
5.
CorrellJ.ParkB.JuddC.M.WittenbrinkB.SadlerM.S.KeeseeT. (2006). Across the thin blue line: Police officers and racial bias in the decision to shoot. Unpublished manuscript, University of Chicago.
6.
CorrellJ.UrlandG.L.ItoT.A. (2006). Event-related potentials and the decision to shoot: The role of threat perception and cognitive control. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 120–128.
7.
GollwitzerP.M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54, 493–503.
8.
GovorunO.PayneB.K. (2006). Ego depletion and prejudice: Separating automatic and controlled components. Social Cognition, 24, 111–136.
9.
GreenwaldA.G.OakesM.A.HoffmanH.G. (2002). Targets of discrimination: Effects of race on responses to weapon holders. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 399–405.
10.
JacobyL.L. (1991). A process dissociation framework: Separating automatic from intentional uses of memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 513–541.
11.
JuddC.M.BlairI.V.ChapleauK.M. (2004). Automatic stereotypes vs. automatic prejudice: Sorting out the possibilities in the Payne, 2001 weapon paradigm. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 75–81.
12.
MuravenM.BaumeisterR.F. (2000). Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources: Does self-control resemble a muscle?Psychological Bulletin, 126, 247–259.
13.
PayneB.K. (2001). Prejudice and perception: The role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon. Journal of Personality Social Psychology, 81, 181–192.
14.
PayneB.K. (2005). Conceptualizing control in social cognition: How Executive Functioning Modulates the Expression of Automatic Stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 488–503.
15.
PayneB.K.LambertA.J.JacobyL.L. (2002). Best laid plans: Effects of goals on accessibility bias and cognitive control in race-based misperceptions of weapons. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 384–396.
16.
PlantE.A.PerucheB.M. (2005). The consequences of race for police officers' responses to criminal suspects. Psychological Science, 16, 180–183.
17.
PlantE.A.PerucheB.M.ButzD.A. (2005). Eliminating automatic racial bias: Making race non-diagnostic for responses to criminal suspects. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 141–156.
18.
StewartB.D.PayneB.K. (2006). Counterstereotypical thought plans reduce automatic stereotyping. Unpublished manuscript, Ohio State University.
