A video game tests racial bias - and the willingness to pull the trigger
Posted by: Diane Levin in Global and Cultural Awareness, Mind and Cognition, Online Games, Tools & Tests, Popular Culture, Politics, Society
Joshua Correll, a member of the University of Chicago Department of Psychology faculty, in conjunction with his work with the Stereotyping & Prejudice Research Laboratory, has created The Police Officer’s Dilemma, a video game that tests the effect of racial bias on decisions to shoot.
When you launch the game, you are presented with a series of images of young men against various backgrounds. Some of the men hold guns, while others hold innocent items like cellphones or soda cans. Half of the men are black and half are white. You must shoot all armed men but holster your gun at the sight of those who are unarmed. The game tests whether the target’s race influences the decision to shoot. The results are chilling:
Participants shoot an armed target more quickly and more often when that target is Black, rather than White. However, participants decide not to shoot an unarmed target more quickly and more often when the target is White, rather than Black. In essence, participants seem to process stereotype-consistent targets (armed Blacks and unarmed Whites) more easily than counterstereotypic targets (unarmed Blacks and armed Whites).
To play the game, you can test yourself with the beta version. You may be shocked by the results.
(Via On the Ground.)
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April 8th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
I just took it and I was quicker to shoot armed white kids than armed black kids.
My scores:
Average reaction time:
Black Armed:784.92ms
Black Unarmed:793ms
White Armed:757.52ms
White Unarmed:822.48ms
Definitely faster to differentiate for Black than White.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:12 am
My scores (rounded):
Black Armed: 611ms
Black Unarmed: 748ms
White Armed: 607ms
White Unarmed: 692ms
This numbers make sense to me. Armed times are the fastest because guns are relatively easy to recognize (at least in this test). Times for Black Armed and White Armed are essentially the same.
Unarmed times are considerably longer across the board because it took longer to process what the target was holding. My thought process probably went like this:
Find target
Find target’s hand
Is it a gun? If yes, shoot.
If no, what is it?
I only holstered after categorically figuring out what the target was holding, so deciding it wasn’t a gun wasn’t enough, I needed to know what it was (wallet, phone, etc).
Times for Black Unarmed is longer than White Unarmed for that reason. Dark hands and dark objects made it slightly more difficult to recognize the held object.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Average reaction time:
Black Armed:708.76ms
Black Unarmed:754.36ms
White Armed:727.36ms
White Unarmed:684ms
I’m clearly faster at determining an unarmed white guy. I’m not sure that 20 ms is sufficient for that sample to say that I’m quicker to pull the trigger on armed black guys than white guys.
My question is to formatting. I felt the way they led into pictures, and the backgrounds used led to quicker responses for certain scenes. I’d be curious to see how that skews results.
I’m pretty sure though the two times I got it wrong was the reverse of my scores. I let an armed black guy shoot me, and I shot an unarmed white guy.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Fantastic pictures on it and great sharing links !
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