Threat is Distinct from Valence as a Source of Biased Shoot Behaviors toward Black Men

Florida State University, Tallahassee FL

Investigators

Abstract

Black men confront a higher relative risk of being shot by police officers than do Latinos, Asian-American men, or White men in the US. Addressing negative beliefs about Black men is an overly simplistic solution because negative beliefs exist about many groups, and yet police shootings disproportionally affect Black men relative to men of other races and ethnicities. This project examines whether the act of shooting occurs quickly and frequently against Black male targets because of an automatic mental association linking Black men and threat, rather than because of a general negative bias. This idea is guided by a model that distinguishes the role of threat (risk of harm) from negative valence (disliking) in reactions to others. The threat vs. valence distinction provides a more nuanced understanding of the maintenance, pervasiveness, and ultimate expression of reactions that contribute to anti-Black shooter behavior. A greater understanding of race-based shooter bias is vital in the present where recent events have made clear the potential deadly consequences of anti-Black prejudice. The project includes a series of studies that assess automatic mental associations that people have by using state-of-the-art judgment tasks, physiological responses, and shoot behaviors as assessed in an immersive virtual reality shooting task. Several of the studies measure the associations that people have of Black vs. White with threat vs. negativity and test how the relative strength of these associations directly predict shooting behavior. One study relies on the creation of novel associations about unfamiliar target groups to determine if threat associations drive shooting behavior more generally, beyond associations with Black men. A final study disrupts mental associations of Black men with threat (vs. disrupting general Black-negative associations) to determine whether this reduces race-based shooting behavior. The PI has established connections with several police stations to involve officers as research participants and to disseminate findings and feedback among police departments. The project provides a firm understanding of how threat associations contribute to race-based shooter bias and suggests a means by which to begin to redress the negative repercussions of such biases. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.