Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot seen through a stronger lens: experimental results from high-fidelity laboratory simulations

Transcription

1 Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot seen through a stronger lens: experimental results from high-fidelity laboratory simulations Lois James, David Klinger & Bryan Vila Journal of Experimental Criminology ISSN J Exp Criminol DOI /s

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3 J Exp Criminol DOI /s Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot seen through a stronger lens: experimental results from high-fidelity laboratory simulations Lois James & David Klinger & Bryan Vila # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Abstract Background Research on racial bias in the United States includes findings that Americans tend to view blacks as more dangerous than whites. Some have argued that this bias provides a likely explanation for the disproportionate number of ethnic and racial minorities shot by police. One piece of evidence for this proposition comes from experimental work in which research participants push shoot or don t shoot buttons when still images of people and objects that may or may not be weapons are presented in rapid succession. These studies have established that participants tend to subconsciously pair black individuals with weapons and white individuals with neutral objects. However, it is not clear from these studies that the subconscious racial bias identified by researchers affects actual decisions to shoot, perhaps because the techniques used to assess the bias-shooting link bear so little resemblance to real-world shootings. Methods This paper reports on the results of a novel laboratory experiment designed to overcome this critical limitation by using high-fidelity deadly force judgment and decision-making simulators to assess both subconscious and behavioral bias among 48 research participants, recruited from the general population. Results Study results suggest that subconscious associations between race and threat exhibited by participants are not linked to their shooting behavior. Conclusions The implications of this finding for understanding how race and ethnicity affect decisions to shoot, and for conducting empirical research on this important topic, are discussed. L. James (*): B. Vila Washington State University, 412 E. Spokane Falls Blvd., Suite 702, PO Box 1495, Spokane, WA , USA lois_james@wsu.edu B. Vila vila@wsu.edu D. Klinger University of Missouri-St. Louis, 1 University Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri-St. Louis, MO , USA KlingerD@msx.umsl.edu

4 L. James et al. Keywords Unconscious bias. Behavioral bias. Race/ethnicity. Decisions to shoot Introduction The Influence of suspect race on deadly force judgment and decision making racial and ethnic bias in American society is a source of continuing controversy. Concerns that this bias extends to criminal justice agents and institutions have received a great deal of attention by public officials, the news media, and academics across sociology, psychology, decision theory, neuropsychology, and other disciplines (e.g., Krivo and Peterson 2012; Rosich 2007). Concern about racial and ethnic bias in police officers use of deadly force is warranted because research indicates that minorities are proportionally more likely to be shot by the police than are whites (e.g., Geller 1982;Brown andlangan 2001;Smith2004). Two major criminological theories attempt to explain this pattern (Goldkamp 1976). The first holds that it is a result of the disproportionate involvement of minorities in criminal activity. In other words, minorities are shot more frequently because they more often engage in the types of behavior that lead to police gunfire (e.g., Brown and Langan 2001; MacDonald et al. 2001). The second theory asserts that minorities are more likely to be shot because police officers hold biased attitudes which lead them to perceive minorities as more threatening, independent of other situational variables (e.g., Sorensonet al. 1993; Jacobs and O Brien 1998). Takagi summarized this later perspective almost four decades ago with his statement that the police have one trigger finger for whites and another for blacks (Takagi 1974: 30). Until the turn of this century, research into the role that bias plays in police shooting behavior was based on aggregate counts of deaths by police gunfire at various jurisdictional levels and incident-level information drawn from police reports about instances in which officers fired their guns. A large portion of this research supported the notion that police decisions to shoot were influenced by race (Sherman and Langworthy 1979; Jacobs and O Brien 1998; Sorenson et al. 1993; Liska and Yu 1992). However, several studies in that era also demonstrated that minorities (particularly blacks) were no more likely to be shot than whites once criminal activities that threaten officers and other innocents were taken into account (Inn et al. 1977; Fyfe 1978;Fyfe1982; Brown and Langan 2001; MacDonald et al. 2001). Thus, the body of empirical research based on incident reports of officer-involved shootings has offered conflicting results about the influence of suspect race and ethnicity on police decisions to shoot. Moreover, studies based on incident reports depend upon the accuracy and completeness of those reports. Because deadly force encounters tend to be complex social interactions (see below), it is difficult to reliably distinguish between the effects of suspect race/ethnicity and other threat markers besides the presence of a weapon (such as suspect behavior, posture, and demeanor). More recently, inquiry into racial bias as a possible explanation for minority overrepresentation in police shooting statistics was expanded to include decision-making experiments in controlled laboratory settings. The vast majority of these laboratory studies have used non-police participants to examine this matter. The current experimental study follows the lead of these studies and uses research subjects with no law enforcement background to examine the question at hand: Does subconscious bias against a particular racial or ethnic group predict decisions to shoot in a laboratory setting?

5 Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot This study design allows for a greater level of control and precision in measuring racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot than analyses of incident reports (where it is challenging to pinpoint suspect race as a deciding factor in a decision to shoot due to the complex and interacting nature of confounding variables such as suspect behavior). The current study presented subjects with realistic, complex, and interactive simulations of deadly and potentially deadly encounters, while retaining the ability to control extraneous variables and thus isolate the effect of suspect race on subjects shooting behavior. In sum, the methodology used in this study advances the state of the experimental art; and therefore yields findings that provide fresh empirical insights informing the debate on what accounts for the overrepresentation of minority suspects in deadly encounters. Before addressing the current study s methodology, however, the existing experimental literature on racial bias in decisions to shoot is presented. Experimental research into racial bias in decisions to shoot Controlled laboratory studies of racial bias draw on psychological theories of stereotyping (Blascovich et al. 1997; Fiske and Neuberg 1990; Devine and Elliot 1995); in particular, the prevalent stereotype that blacks invoke perceptions of threat or danger. Payne (2001) launched this line of research with a study in which research participants drawn from the general population were briefly shown ( 200 ms) images of either weapons or hand tools and instructed to push one of two buttons depending on whether they believed the image they had seen was of a gun or a tool. Prior to being shown the image of the target objects, participants were presented with priming images of either black or white human faces. Payne reported that, when participants were primed with images of black faces, they more quickly identified guns as guns and were more likely to incorrectly identify tools as guns, compared to when they were presented with primes of white faces. In a follow-up study using a similar methodology, Payne and colleagues reported that non-police participants also were more likely to identify tools as guns following a black prime and more likely to identify guns as tools following a white prime (Payneet al. 2002). Correll et al. (2002) extended this line of laboratory research by conducting a series of experiments in which police and non-police participants responded to images of black and white individuals holding either guns or innocuous objects such as aluminum cans and cell phones. Participants were told to press a button labeled shoot if they perceived the object in the individual s hand to be a gun, and to press a button labeled don t shoot if they believed that the individual was holding something other than a gun. Correll and colleagues reported that their findings mirrored those of Payne (2001); with both police and non-police participants more quickly shooting armed blacks than armed whites. From these findings, they concluded that the results of these studies support the hypothesized effect of ethnicity on shoot/don t shoot decisions (Correll et al. 2002: 1325). 1 1 Since 2002, Correll and colleagues have extended their line of experimental shoot / don t shoot research to include police officers as research subjects and expanded the minority suspect category beyond blacks to include Hispanics and Asians (Correll et al. 2006, 2007a, b; Sadler et al. 2012).

6 L. James et al. Plant et al. (2005) further investigated bias in shooting decisions by conducting a series of experiments that sought to assess whether the race-based differences in decision making could be mitigated by experience, hypothesizing that race would become a less salient determinant of decisions to shoot as the number of times participants repeat the tasks increased. In these experiments, Plant et al. (2005) had police and non-police participants respond to images pairing weapons or neutral objects with black or white faces (using shoot or don t shoot buttons) across several trials. Both police and non-police participants showed significant error reductions following repeated exposure to multiple trials where the race of the suspect was unrelated to the object. This suggested that training in which suspect race is repeatedly unrelated to dangerousness can help overcome any implicit association between race and crime that participants may have. Despite the observed reduction in errors, the fact remains that both police and non-police participants did initially demonstrate the same sorts of biased actions reported in previous laboratory studies of shooting behavior. A second line of laboratory research on bias in police shootings has sought to examine the manner in which stereotypes influence decisions to shoot by examining participants neurophysiological reactions during simulated threat situations. These studies used event-related potentials (ERPs) fluctuations of electrical activity in the brain measured using electrodes placed across the scalp which are rapid and automatic responses associated with subconscious perceptions of threat (Carretie et al. 2001). Research has indicated that activation of one specific ERP known as P200 is more pronounced when people are presented with images of black individuals as compared to images of white individuals (Ito and Urland 2003). Curious to see whether this racebased arousal difference held in simulated shoot/don t shoot situations, Correll et al. (2006) conducted a study that measured non-police participants P200 responses to images of blacks and whites with and without weapons. These researchers reported that participants had more pronounced P200 responses to black as compared to white suspects. Furthermore, the degree of racial differentiation in P200 predicted racial bias in the simulation; participants were quicker to press shoot for armed black suspects, and quicker to press don t shoot for unarmed white suspects, suggesting that the implicit racial bias evidenced by the P200 levels predicts behavioral bias (Correll et al. 2006). Limitations with laboratory research on bias in shooting decisions The benefits of exploring the impact of suspect race and ethnicity on decisions to shoot in a laboratory environment are clear: by controlling other variables such as suspect clothing, position of hands, and threatening stance one can specifically pinpoint how suspect race affects decisions to shoot. As Correll and colleagues recently noted, however, the control in button-pushing experiments was achieved at the cost of external validity (Sadler et al. 2012: 309). Although Sadler et al. do not provide a detailed discussion of button-pressing designs limitations in terms of external validity, two seem quite apparent. The first limitation is that the modality used to indicate whether research participants have decided to shoot or not shoot has no resemblance to how a gun is shot. This applies generally, not just to how police officers in the field execute their decisions to

7 Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot either shoot or to hold fire. The decision to shoot is executed by pulling the trigger, and the decision to hold fire is executed by not pulling the trigger. This means that, following the un-holstering and drawing of the weapon, no action is required if the decision is made not to shoot. This contrasts with manipulating a don tshoot button, which requires action rather than inaction. This distinction is critically important because there are major neurophysiological differences between choosing between two entirely equivalent actions and choosing to act or not to act. The natural inclination is not to act, particularly under conditions of uncertainty or personal moral dilemma (Greene et al. 2001). Thus, the artificial nature of the decision execution in previous laboratory research raises questions about the extent to which the findings are valid with regard to how individuals make actual decisions to shoot. The second obvious external validity concern is rooted in the simple fact that viewing static images of people either paired with or holding objects (e.g., weapons or cell phones) bears little relationship to real world encounters. Again this applies generally to anyone making decisions to shoot, including situations in which police officers must make choices about the use of deadly force. There are at least three critical aspects to the disparity between button-pushing laboratory experiments and actual police work: a b c Police officers are not trained to shoot people merely because they possess a deadly weapon, and the law does not give them the authority to do so. They are permitted to shoot for just two reasons: (1) to protect themselves or other innocents from what they reasonably construe to be threats of serious injury or death, and (2) to stop the flight of violent felons under certain circumstances. Many people in American society possess deadly weapons for legitimate purposes, so the mere fact that someone is armed is not enough for an officer to reasonably conclude that the person presents a threat warranting the application of deadly force. The person must do something with his or her weapon such as attacking or menacing someone with it that constitutes a legally valid threat to life before an officer may justifiably shoot. Thus, equating the presence of a weapon with a shoot situation is unrealistic. Research has shown that in most situations during which police officers fire at people, they shoot only after some appreciable social interaction has transpired during which they were able to gather considerable information about the nature of the situation (Scharf and Binder 1983; Klinger 2004; Collins 2008). Indeed, Scharf and Binder (1983) noted that most encounters in which police officers shoot, or could shoot but decide to hold fire, involve three distinct phases prior to the point where the decision regarding whether to shoot is made; the last of these three phases they call dialogue and information exchange (Scharf and Binder 1983: 117). In this way, police shootings (and situations in which officers hold their fire) are not much different from other types of violent and potentially violent interactions between human beings (Collins 2008). Thus, the momentary, static representations of people and objects used in previous laboratory studies miss critical aspects of the sorts of real-world interactions in which police officers make choices about shooting a person. Research has shown police officers do not shoot in the vast majority of situations in which they confront armed individuals, even when they have a clear lawful basis to use deadly force (e.g., Klinger 2004; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal

8 L. James et al. Justice Information Services Division 2006). This strongly suggests that working police officers do not respond to the presence of weapons in the manner that research subjects are directed to react when participating in the button-pushing laboratory experiments on deadly force decision making. In sum, the first wave of laboratory-based experiments that looked at the role that racial bias plays in how actual decisions to shoot are made (including how police officers exercise this power) had only limited relevance to the real-world social encounters they sought to explain. Advances in experimental design Recently, a group of researchers at Washington State University pioneered a novel methodology for the laboratory-based study of deadly force decision making, which affords a substantially higher degree of experimental realism. Based on 30 years of official data on officer-involved shootings in the United States (Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division 2006), they developed and filmed 60 realistic, high-definition deadly force scenarios using professional actors to play the roles of suspects and other people (e.g., crime victims and witnesses) in real-world settings. The suspects in these scenarios were white, black, and Hispanic. Until Sadler et al. s (2012) recent work, which included black, white, Asian, and Hispanic suspects, all of the button pushing experiments had included only black and white suspects. Thus, the scenarios developed at Washington State University are consistent with the recent move toward more expansive consideration of minority status in experimental research on deadly force decision making. Some of the filmed scenarios depict suspects who are armed with deadly weapons of some sort, while in others the suspects hold innocuous objects such as wallets or cell phones and thus present no threat. The scenarios filmed were then integrated into state-of the-art simulators similar to those used by law enforcement agencies in the United States and around the world to conduct deadly force judgment and decisionmaking training. These particular simulators employ real handguns that have been modified to fire pulses of infrared light when their triggers are pulled (see additional detailsbelow).thesimulators,whichhavealsobeenmodifiedtoincreasesoundand visual fidelity, have since been used successfully for human performance studies in a highly controlled laboratory environment. In a recently published study from this research, James et al. (2013) reported racial and ethnic bias results that largely run counter to the findings from the push-button studies. They conducted three experiments where the research participants were active police officers, active duty military personal, and people with neither police nor military backgrounds. In each of these experiments, participants ability to make deadly force judgments and decisions was tested using scenarios with white, black, and Hispanic suspects. James et al. (2013) used techniques that permitted them to precisely measure the amount of time in each scenario between when a threat was presented and when a participant fired (see below for details), finding that participants took longer to shoot black suspects than white or Hispanic suspects. In addition, they reported that

9 Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot participants were more likely to shoot unarmed white suspects than unarmed black or Hispanic suspects. Participants were also more likely to fail to fire at armed black suspects than armed white or Hispanic suspects. In other words, there was significant bias favoring blacks where decisions to shoot were concerned. These unexpected results raised many questions, key among them: What might account for the differences between the button-pushing studies findings and those reported by James et al. (2013)? This paper reports on efforts to answer this question by examining participants subconscious threat reactions to suspect race in order to determine whether unconscious bias predicts their shooting behaviors. Specifically, we re-analyzed data from the second experiment reported by James et al. (2013) that tested non-police participants subconscious and behavioral reactions in a deadly force judgment and decision-making simulator. The data from the experiment using nonpolice participants (instead of the experiment using police and military participants) was chosen for re-analysis because those participants were monitored for neurophysiological arousal using EEG devices, enabling a comparison of subconscious and behavioral racial bias. The experiment had been designed to measure civilian (nonpolice and non-military) ability to learn how to make accurate deadly force judgments and decisions. Changes in their neurophysiological and behavioral responses were recorded to map their learning. It is important to note that the investigation of bias was a post hoc analysis, so neither research staff nor participants thought that bias was being tested, which limits the likelihood that participants modified their behavior to appear unbiased. Before reporting on the results of this analysis and their implications, we first provide a more detailed description of the research design and other aspects of the experiment in question. Overview of the current study Design and materials The current study used a within-subjects, repeated-measures design to test non-police participant responses to highly realistic HD video scenarios in deadly force judgment and decision-making simulators. As noted above, non-police participants were selected because the primary purpose of the experiment was to map the neurophysiological and behavioral progression of novices from beginner to expert ; and participants responded to scenarios depicting white, black and Hispanic suspects, enabling an analysis of how suspect race and ethnicity influences both subconscious threat responses and decisions to shoot. Unfortunately the police and military participants used in separate experiments reported on by James et al. (2013) were not neurophysiologically monitored. Thus, because their role in the experiments was only to provide a comparator for explaining performance, their data cannot inform the current research question of whether unconscious racial bias predicts decisions to shoot in a deadly force judgment and decision making simulator. As such, the results of this experiment are generalizable to the population at large, not specifically to police officers. The scenarios used in this experiment depicted domestic disturbances, vehicle stops, robberies in progress, and investigations of suspicious persons/circumstances. According to the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) data compiled annually by the

10 L. James et al. FBI, these are the most typical encounters that deteriorate to officer-involved shootings. Thesimulatorsusedinthisexperimentareatypewidelyusedtotrainlawenforcement officers across the United States and around the world. 2 The experiment was conducted at the Washington State University Simulated Hazardous Operational Tasks laboratory, part of the Sleep and Performance Research Center in Spokane (Wash.), which is equipped with two of the aforementioned high definition deadly force judgment and decision-making simulators. These simulators are fully enclosed and acoustically neutral, 5 m (W) by 7 m (L) shooting ranges, with a 3.5 m (W) by 2 m (H) screen at the far end on which HD video scenarios are displayed. The modified handguns employed were Glock model 22 semiautomatic handguns, which are used by many American police agencies. The barrels of these handguns were replaced with infrared laser emitters that register exact shot placement on the screen and the precise time (measured in milliseconds) that participants fire. Participants shooting decisions were measured by whether they pulled the trigger on these modified firearms at any point during each scenario. The scenarios, as noted above, were developed from FBI data on officer-involved shootings and lasted between 1 and 2 min. Thirty-five percent of the scenarios depicted no shoot situations, where the suspects were armed with neutral objects such as wallets and cell phones. This provided opportunities for participants to shoot when doing so would be inappropriate. Although the suspects in these null scenarios could get highly aggravated for example two suspects in a domestic disturbance screaming at each other and swearing at the participant none of their behaviors escalated to legitimately warrant use of deadly force against them. The remaining 65 % of scenarios were shoot situations, where the suspects were armed with either a handgun or a knife. The racial/ethnic status of the suspects presented in the scenarios was roughly proportional to the percentage of black, white, and Hispanic individuals that FBI data indicate have been involved in police shootings over the past several years; 30 scenarios involved white suspects, 24 had black suspects, and 6 had Hispanic suspects. The scenarios varied in difficulty based on Klinger s (2005) adaptation of Charles Perrow s (1984) Normal Accident Theory (NAT) to deadly force encounters, which argued that the degree of difficulty which officers face in potentially violent encounters with people increases as the levels of complexity and coupling involved in incidents increase. 3 Based on NAT, the scenarios were grouped into three levels of difficulty that were dubbed naïve, intermediate, and journeyman, using a metric developed by tapping the expertise of veteran police officers, law enforcement trainers, and academics who study police violence (Vila et al. 2012). The large number of scenarios and the variation in deadly force decision difficultly allowed for a high level of realism when assessing the possibility of racial and ethnic bias. This is important because police encounters with people vary in terms of the level of challenge they present to officers concerning decisions about the use of deadly force. In sum, with realistic scenarios that are displayed in life size, and modified firearms that can measure to the millisecond when participants pull the trigger, the research 2 Advanced Interactive Systems (AIS) Professional Range Instruction Simulation (PRISim). 3 In NAT, complexity refers to the number of independent parts in a system (e.g. number of suspects, bystanders, officers, weapons etc.) and coupling refers to how much change in one part will effect change in another (e.g. distance between an officer and a suspect).

11 Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot equipment provides detailed data on shooting behavior. And it does so in an experimental setting that presents participants with highly realistic scenarios of the sort that police officers face on the street. Another piece of research equipment makes it possible to measure participants subconscious reactions to what they observe during scenarios. The Simulated Hazardous Operational Tasks laboratory equipment inventory includes state-of-the-art headgear that contains embedded ambulatory electroencephalograph (EEG) sensors that measure alpha brain waves. 4 Alpha brain waves occur when individuals are relaxed, and tend to be lower in magnitude when individuals are aroused by some external stimuli. The reduction of alpha waves when individuals are exposed to stimuli, often called alpha suppression, can thus be taken as an indicator of arousal provoked by the stimuli. Such neurophysiological arousal has been associated with a threat response (Klimesch 1999; Camm et al. 1996; Kolb and Whishaw 2001), so alpha suppression as measured by the difference between alpha waves during rest periods and when research subjects are participating in scenarios can provide an indication of the subconscious component of participants threat responses. 5 As is explained below, this aspect of the experiment allows for a comparison of how research subjects unconsciously respond to black, white, and Hispanic suspects, independent of the degree of actual threat they pose. Participants Forty-eight people from the general Spokane, Washington, area were recruited through Craigslist to participate in the study. Selection criteria were that participants had no policing, military, or firearms experience, and that they were physically and mentally healthy (by self-reported questionnaire). The sample size was originally chosen based on a power analysis conducted on 24 participants, a pilot study that established differences in decisions to shoot between novice (non-police) and expert (police) participants. Using the data from this pilot study, we ran a post-hoc power analysis and determined that the data from 48 non-police participants were sufficiently sensitive to detect effects of racial/ethnic bias in decisions to shoot. As indicated in Table 1, a majority of participants were white, most were males, and their mean age was 26 (range: 18 45). Participants were briefed that the study addressed decisions to shoot at suspects in simulated conditions, they were told that they would receive remuneration for participating, and each one read and signed an informed consent document 6 prior to participating in the experiment. It is important to note that neither the research team 4 The headgear used was B-Alert X10 wireless ambulatory EEG caps; manufactured by Advanced Brain Monitoring in Carlsbad, CA, USA). These caps are comfortable and non-intrusive, and can be set up in less than 5 min. They can record up to 9 channels of high fidelity EEG, and have wireless acquisition and transmission up to 10 m, a vital feature given the size of the simulator ranges. 5 We chose alpha suppression as our indicator of threat response because it is easier to measure accurately than other neurophysiological phenomena, such as the P200 ERP s used by Correll et al. (2006). ERP s are brief in duration and can be difficult to detect because they co-occur with other electrical signals (Kolb and Whishaw 2001). Alpha waves, on the other hand, are of longer duration, are robust, and are relatively easy to monitor, which is an important consideration for experimental designs that involve substantial participant movement, such as the experiments described here. 6 Approved by the Washington State University Institutional Review Board.

12 L. James et al. Table 1 Characteristics of research participants (n=48) Characteristics Frequency/mean (range) Race/ethnicity White 85 % Black 2 % Asian 7 % Declined to comment 6 % Sex Male 46 % Female 44 % Age All participants 26 (19 50) nor the study participants anticipated that the data collected would be used to assess racial or ethnic bias. The analyses undertaken for the present paper were not contemplated until after the experiments were conducted. Further, follow-up interviews with participants showed that they were not aware of the racial/ethnic element of the experiment. This eliminates the possibility that participants were trying to behave in an unbiased manner in response to the experiment itself. Procedures Data was collected across 12 days, with four participants tested per day. On each research day, participants were fitted with EEG devices and given an orientation to the research that consisted of two 45-min standardized training sessions taught by two police officers who were certified firearms instructors. The first training session covered safety issues, the weapon system, marksmanship, range layout, and the rules governing whether they should shoot or hold their fire during the potentially deadly encounters depicted in the scenarios. These rules were developed by the researchers based on the consensus of a diverse focus group of subject matter experts about the optimal outcome in a potential deadly force encounter (Vila et al. 2012). In essence, the directions given to participants were to shoot only when they believed the actions of the suspects would have presented a threat to their life or the life of another party in the scenario if they had occurred in a real-life setting. Participants were presented with the following statement: The goal of a police officer in a deadly force encounter is to accurately identify a threat and neutralize it, while minimizing harm to bystanders, officers, and suspects. The second training session focused on interacting with the scenarios (e.g., use of assertive language such as Show me your hands! and Drop your weapon! ). During this training session, each participant completed a practice scenario, on which they received trainer feedback. Following training, each participant responded to 18 scenarios in the deadly force judgment and decision-making simulator. Participants began each scenario with their weapon holstered, and had been instructed to only draw their weapon if they felt that the scenario might warrant use of deadly force. The scenarios were randomized and organized into six sets of three scenarios each. Scenarios were randomized by difficulty, not by suspect race/ethnicity, so in any given set a participant did not necessarily receive each suspect racial/ethnic category (although they responded to multiple suspects of each racial/ethnic group throughout the day).

13 Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot We attempted to maximize internal validity by gathering data from as many repeated observations per participant as possible while balancing fatigue concerns. Eighteen was determined to be the maximum number of scenarios participants could respond to before becoming fatigued based on data from the pilot study. In the pilot, participants engagement started to decline after 18 scenarios they stopped interacting with the scenario and their reaction times slowed considerably due to time-on-task fatigue. The participants rested for 3 min between the three scenarios in each set, during which they sat quietly in a chair. Scenarios lasted between 1 and 2 min, so a set of three scenarios took approximately 15 min. There was no significant difference in the duration of scenarios based on suspect race or scenario difficulty (for example scenarios with black suspects were not consistently longer than scenarios with white suspects). After completing each of the first five sets, participants also had a 30-min rest break in a quiet section of the laboratory that is isolated from the range area. They were given lunch during one of these 30-min rest periods. Participants were monitored at all times during the experiment and were kept from discussing research-related topics amongst themselves. Each participant was debriefed after completing the experiment. The EEG head caps worn by each participant monitored alpha suppression in each scenario this provided a measure of subconscious threat response for each participant in each scenario. Alpha suppression was calculated as the difference between alpha while at rest and alpha during each simulation scenario. During shoot scenarios, alpha was measured from the point that the race/ethnicity of the suspect became apparent to the point when a weapon became apparent. This assured that any changes in alpha measured were responses to suspect race/ethnicity, rather than the appearance of a weapon. Alpha suppression measurement during null scenarios began at the point when suspect race/ethnicity became apparent in order to establish the impact of suspect race on participant neurophysiology in scenarios where no weapon emerged. Results Participant decision making Of the total number of 827 scenarios presented to participants (505 with white suspects, 314 with black suspects, and 8 with Hispanic suspects), 588 required the use of deadly force (321 with white suspects, 267 with black suspects, and 0 with Hispanic suspects) and 239 were null scenarios (184 with white suspects, 47 with black suspects, and 8 with Hispanic suspects). We first assessed racial/ethnic differences in participants shooting responses. We did this in two ways: first, by examining shootings in null scenarios, to see whether participants were more likely to mistakenly shoot minorities than they were to shoot whites when no deadly threat was present. And second, by comparing reaction times across threat scenarios involving suspects with different race/ethnic characteristics. This was measured as the amount of time in milliseconds that passed between the exact scenario frame where the suspect s weapon became visible and the time a participant pulled the trigger. For null scenarios, there were no significant differences in participants reactions across the three suspect race/ethnicity groupings. Across the entire experiment, there

14 L. James et al. were 47 instances in which a participant shot an unarmed suspect. Of the unarmed suspects who were shot, 46 were white and 1 was black. Participants shot in each of the threat scenarios, enabling us to obtain comprehensive information about reaction time. As Table 2 shows, there were notable differences between the average reaction times for each suspect race/ethnicity. The mean reaction time in threat scenarios with black suspects (1.61 s) was greater than for either white or Hispanic suspects. Participants were quicker to shoot Hispanic than white suspects in threat scenarios, although not significantly so (0.88 vs s, respectively). Reaction times also varied with scenario difficulty, with mean times of.59, 1.78, and 1.33 s for naïve, intermediate, and journeyman scenarios, respectively. To determine whether the differences observed in reaction times across racial/ethnic groups in the threat scenarios could be explained by differences in scenario difficulty, we estimated multi-level mixed effects models to account for both the presence of the additional predictor variable (scenario difficulty) and the fact that the observations are not independent, because each research subject participated in 18 scenarios. The R Project for statistical computing was used for all multivariate analyses. This software provides a wide variety of statistical techniques, including linear and non-linear modeling, that allow the user to specify his or her own models in a flexible statistical environment. The following mixed effect linear model was used to generate our multivariate results for participant reaction time: lme ðfixed ¼ RT Black þ Hispanic þ Difficulty; random ¼ 1j Subject; method ¼ ML Þ 000: & & & & lme = linear mixed effects fixed = RT Black + Hispanic + Difficulty = the impact of the independent variables (dummy variables where created for race/ethnicity and White was used as the reference group) on reaction time random = 1 Subject accounts for multiple observations per subject (and the possibility that reaction times are clustered around subjects and cannot be treated as independent) ML = multi-level method used. The results of the multi-level, fixed effects model revealed that even after controlling for scenario difficulty and accounting for between-subject variation, participants still responded significantly more slowly when confronting black suspects than those who were white or Hispanic (t=2.55, df=515, p<.05). And there was no significant Table 2 Reaction time to shoot after a threat was presented, in seconds, for each predictor variable (standard deviations in parentheses) *p<.05 **p<.001 Predictor variable Mean (SD) Suspect race Hispanic 0.88 (0.27) White 1.37 (0.09) Black 1.61 (0.15)* Scenario difficulty Naive 0.59 (0.09) Intermediate 1.78 (0.15)** Journeyman 1.33 (0.27)**

15 Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot difference in their reaction times when confronting Hispanic vs. white suspects. The initial differences with regard to scenario difficulty also remained: participants responded significantly more slowly in intermediate and journeyman scenarios than they did in naïve scenarios (t=3.47, df=519, p<.001). However, the difference in participant reaction time between intermediate and journeyman scenarios was not significant. Finally, we assessed whether scenario difficulty influenced the race/ethnicity effects observed. Post hoc tests disclosed one significant interaction effect: participants hesitated longest before shooting black suspects in more difficult (intermediate and journeyman) scenarios (t=2.14, df=371, p=<.05). Thus, our findings about differences in participants reaction time to shoot suspects from different racial/ethnic groups in threat scenarios are contrary to findings from researchers using button-pushing experimental design. We next turn to the critical question of whether the participants increased threat arousal in response to a particular racial/ethnic group accounts for the unexpected shooting patterns observed. Participant neurophysiological response Alpha suppression (measured on a Hz scale as cycles of micro-volts per second) ranged from.078 to.167 across the 864 scenarios. Because the meaning of raw differences in alpha suppression is not easily interpretable, we do not report any bivariate analyses of race/ethnicity differences and move directly to the results from the multivariate modeling conducted in order to assess whether participant arousal varied systematically with suspect race/ethnicity. We first estimated multi-level mixed effects models for the shoot scenarios. 7 Consistent with findings from the button-pushing experiments used in previous research, suspect race significantly predicted threat arousal; participants exhibited greater alpha suppression when facing armed black as compared to armed white or Hispanic suspects (t=3.48, df=305, p<.001). However, there was no significant difference in alpha suppression among participants when they faced Hispanic vs. white suspects armed with deadly weapons. Scenario difficulty also significantly predicted alpha suppression during scenarios where a threat was presented (t=3.41, df=305, p<.001). Participants exhibited greater alpha suppression in journeyman scenarios than they did in either naïve or intermediate scenarios, which suggests that the more complex, tightly coupled and difficult journeyman scenarios made them feel more threatened. We also tested for the presence of a race/scenario-difficulty interaction effect to determine whether race played a stronger role in certain types of scenarios. No such effect was found, which indicates that black suspects elicited a stronger threat response across all levels of difficulty in scenarios that involved weapons. Suspect race played essentially the same role in the null scenarios (during which no weapons were displayed by scenario suspects). Participants exhibited stronger threat responses when facing unarmed black suspects than they did in scenarios featuring 7 Again using the R Project for statistical computing; model = lme(fixed = AlphaSupression Black + Hispanic + Difficulty, random = 1 Subject, method = "ML"). See reaction time model above for an interpretation of the model.

16 L. James et al. unarmed whites and Hispanics (t=2.25, df=181, p<.05). Consistent with what was observed in the scenarios with armed suspects, there was no significant difference in alpha suppression when participants faced unarmed Hispanic vs. unarmed white suspects. Finally, scenario difficulty was not related to alpha suppression in null scenarios. Discussion Our participants demonstrated significantly greater threat responses against black suspects than white or Hispanic suspects suggesting they held subconscious biases associating blacks with threat. This finding is consistent with the psychological literature on racial stereotypes (Devine and Elliot 1995), the experimental research on implicit bias in shooting behavior (Correll et al. 2006), and much of the criminological literature on police use of deadly force in the field (Sorenson et al. 1993; Jacobsand O Brien 1998). However, our participants showed a behavioral bias in favor of blacks because they took longer to shoot armed black suspects than armed white or Hispanic suspects. In other words, they hesitated longest before deciding to shoot black suspects. Thus, contrary to expectations, participants subconscious bias that blacks were more threatening resulted in behaviors that favored blacks over white or Hispanic suspects. Participants in the present study displayed greater alpha suppression when facing black suspects, in both threat and null (respectively shoot and don t-shoot ) scenarios. This indicates that they reacted subconsciously to the racial aspect of minority status in the manner expected by theory as did the participants in previous, buttonpushing studies (e.g., Ito and Urland 2003; Correll et al. 2006; Sadler et al. 2012). However, although the research participants in the present study appeared to exhibit subconscious bias against blacks, it had an inverse effect on the speed with which they pulled the trigger on the real handgun adapted for use in the simulator. Our results using a more physically, psychologically, and neurophysiologically realistic stimulus than the button-pressing research design suggests that participants bias against blacks when compared to Hispanics or whites delayed their decision to shoot. It is critical to note that this study examined the impact of racial/ethnic bias on the subconscious responses and shooting behavior of non-police participants. As such, the results from this sample are not generalizable to sworn officers. However, there is some evidence from the field to support the proposition that an officer s threat bias could cause him or her to tend to take more time to make decisions to shoot people whom they subconsciously perceived as more threatening because of race or ethnicity. This behavioral counter-bias might be rooted in people s concerns about the social and legal consequences of shooting a member of a historically oppressed racial or ethnic group. Discussion of a counter-bias favoring blacks extends at least as far back as the late 1970s, when Inn et al. (1977) reported that incident records from a major metropolitan police department showed that officers fired more shots per incident at white suspects than at black suspects. This finding led them to speculate that, perhaps, police behave more cautiously with blacks because of departmental policy or public sentiment concerning treatment of blacks (Inn et al. 1977: 35).

17 Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot This notion is consistent with sentiments expressed by police administrators about differential concerns regarding officers shooting white vs. minority suspects. Geller and Scott (1992), for example, open their vastly informative volume about deadly force in American police work with mention of an interview that former Minneapolis chief Anthony Bouza gave to a member of the press. They report that: Bouza. added that in most urban centers in the United States, when a police chief is called at three in the morning and told, Chief, one of our cops just shot a kid, the chief s first questions are: What color is the cop? What color is the kid? And, the reporter asked, if the answer is, The cop is white, the kid is black? He gets dressed, replied Bouza. (Geller and Scott 1992:1). Interviews with police officers also indicate that at least some of them are especially wary about using deadly force against black suspects (Klinger 2004). Race plays a major role in some officers decisions to hold fire officers have expressed being wary of shooting black suspects regardless of whether they (the officers) have ever shot anyone; something that the vast majority of police officers never do (e.g., Geller and Scott 1992). In this sense, the non-police participants in the present study share an important characteristic with the vast majority of America s police officers; they are all individuals who have never fired a weapon at another human being. Thus, if there is in fact a behavioral counter bias that operates in police work, it might also extend to the general public, which would help to explain why the present study did not find the antiblack behavioral bias present in the button-pressing experiments. If counter bias is in fact operating in police decisions to use deadly force one might expect trends in the racial make-up of suspects in officer-involved shooting to have shifted over time. While obtaining the necessary historical data would likely be challenging, it may be possible for future research to investigate temporal changes in the racial makeup of the population of suspects shot at by the police as a next step for exploring the counter bias hypothesis. Despite testing non-police participants, the present study may provide insight into how subconscious associations between race and threat influence shooting behaviors outside the confines of abstract laboratory experiments because it used experimental techniques that much more realistically simulated real world shooting situations. This increase in experimental realism suggests that the race effects reported in previous research may be artifacts of the button-pushing methods they used, which both we and the researchers who pioneered that line of experimentation agree are not very wellsuited to uncover behavioral biases that operate in the real world (Correll and Keesee 2009; Sadler et al. 2012). Of course, it is impossible to truly re-create a deadly encounter in a controlled laboratory setting. Participants know at least consciously that they are not in any danger, and that the consequences from their decisions to shoot are not real. However, at the subconscious, visceral level they can lose track of the real world and instead experience the world created in the brain. Despite the artificial nature of experimentation, laboratory-based studies can have relevance to deadly force encounters, providing that they represent the dynamics of those encounters with sufficient fidelity to create an immersive experience (Baumann et al. 2001:151; Roza et al. 1999:1). Participant responses to the simulations we used in the current experiment demonstrate a high level of immersion. For example, some participants heart rates increase dramatically, they have been observed involuntarily jumping to avoid a threat, and often crane their necks

18 L. James et al. to see around an obstacle as the video scenario unfolds. By mimicking real-world shootings, participants can be exposed to a much more realistic simulation than in previous experiments using shoot / don t shoot button-pressing designs. Another contribution of the present study is that it expands the scope of evidence about the role that minority status plays in deadly force decision making beyond the simple black/white dichotomy. The first studies to do this were Sadler et al. (2012)and James et al. (2013). The present study sheds additional empirical light on how facing members of this minority ethnic group affects both subconscious reactions and behavior in mock deadly force encounters. There were no differences in either unconscious reactions or shooting behavior among participants between scenarios featuring white and Hispanic suspects, but there were notable differences in both types of responses between black and Hispanic suspects. This demonstrates that experiments on this critical topic need to consider both race and ethnicity. Finally, as stated above, this study tested deadly force judgment and decision making using non-police participants reducing the direct relevance of the findings to police officers. It is necessary to replicate this investigation of the connection between subconscious and behavioral bias with police participants, and we have such a set of experiments currently underway. This research should help connect the present findings to police behavior in the field, and directly address the fundamentally important question of whether police officers shooting behavior tends to be biased with regard to racial and ethnic minorities. Until this research is conducted, however, the present study suggests that academics, policy makers and others interested in this issue should take into account that behavioral bias may differ strikingly from subconscious associations between race and threat with regard to decisions to shoot. Acknowledgments Research supported by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract nos. NBCHC and NBCHC090054, National Institute of Justice grant no IJ-CX-0015, and Office of Naval Research DURIP grant no. N References Baumann, M.R., Sniezek, J.A., & Buerkle, C.A. (2001) Self-Evaluation, Stress and Performance: A Model of Decision Making Under Acute Stress. In E. Salas and G. Klein, Eds., Linking Expertise and Naturalistic Decision Making. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, Chap. 8, pp Blascovich, J., Wyer, N., Swart, L., & Kibler, J. (1997). Racism and racial categorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, Brown, J., & Langan, P. (2001). Policing and homicide, : justifiable homicide by police, police officers murdered by felons. Bureau of Justice Statistics: U.S. Department of Justice. Washington. Camm, A. J., Malik, M., et al. (1996). Heart rate variability: standards of measurement, physiological interpretation, and clinical use. European Heart Journal, 17, Carretie, L., Martin-Loeches, M., Hinojosa, J., & Mercado, F. (2001). Emotion and attention interaction studied through event related potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13(8), Collins, R.(2008). Violence: a microsociological theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Correll, J., & Keesee, T. (2009). Racial bias in the decision to shoot? May: The Police Chief Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C. M., & Wittenbrink, B. (2002). The police officer s dilemma: using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, Correll, J., Urland, G. L., & Ito, T. A. (2006). Event-related potentials and the decision to shoot: the role of threat perception and cognitive control. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C. M., Wittenbrink, B., Sadler, M. S., & Keesee, T. (2007a). Across the thin blue line: police officers and racial bias in the decision to shoot. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6),

19 Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C. M., & Wittenbrink, B. (2007b). Stereotypes and racial bias in the decision to shoot. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37(6), Devine, P., & Elliot, A. (1995). Are racial stereotypes really fading? the Princeton trilogy revisited. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division. (2006). Violent Encounters: a study of felonious assaults on our nation s law enforcement officers. Washington: U.S. Department of Justice. Fiske, S., & Neuberg, S. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individualting processes: Influences of information and motication on attention and interpretation. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol.23, pp. 1 74). New York: Academic. Fyfe, J. J. (1978).Shots fired: an examination of New York City Police firearms discharges,ann Arbor: University Microfilms International. Fyfe, J. J. (1982),Readings on Police Use of Deadly Force. Washington, DC: Police Foundation. Geller, W. A. (1982). Deadly force: what we know. Journal of PoliceScience and Administration, 10, Geller, W. A., & Scott, M. (1992). Deadly force: what we know. Washington: Police Executive Research Forum. Goldkamp, J. (1976). Minorities as victims of police shootings: interpretations of racial disproportionality and police use of deadly force. Justice System Journal, 2, Greene, J., Sommerville, R., Nystrom, L., Darley, J., & Cohen, J. (2001). An fmri investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science, 293, Inn, A., Wheeler, A. C. & Sparling, C. L. (1977). The effects of suspect race and situation hazardon police officer shooting behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 7, Ito, T., & Urland, G. (2003). Race and gender on the brain: electrocortical measures of attention to the race and gender of multiply categorizable individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(4), Jacobs, D., & O Brien, R. (1998). The determinants of deadly force: a structural analysis of police violence. The American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), James, L., Vila, B. & Daratha, K. (2013) Influence of Suspect Race and Ethnicity on Decisions to Shoot in High Fidelity Deadly Force Judgment and Decision-Making Simulations. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 9(2), Klimesch, W. (1999). EEG alpha and theta oscillations reflect cognitive and memory performance: a review and analysis. Brain Research. Brain Research Reviews, 29(2 3), Klinger, D. (2004). Into the kill zone: a cop s eye view of deadly force. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Klinger, D. (2005). Social theory and the street cop: the case of deadly force. Ideas in American policing essay number 7. Washington: Police Foundation. Kolb, B. & Whishaw, I. (2001). An Introduction to Brain and Behavior. New York: Worth. Krivo, L. & Peterson, R. (2012). Race, Crime and Justice: Contexts and Complexities. American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 623. Liska, A. E. & Yu, J. (1992).Specifying and testing the threat hypothesis: police use of deadly force.in A. E. Liska (Ed.) Social Threat and Social Control (pp ). Albany: State University of New YorkPress. Macdonald, J. M., Kaminski, R. J., Alpert, G. P. & Tennenbaum, A. N. (2001). The temporal relationship between police killings of civilians and criminal homicide: a refined version of the danger-perception theory. Crime Delinquency, 42(2), Payne, B. K. (2001). Prejudice and perception: the role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving aweapon.journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, Payne, B. K., Lambert, A. J., & Jacoby, L. 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, Perrow, C. (1984).Normal Accidents. New York: Basic Books Plant, E. A., Peruche, B. M., & Butz, D. A. (2005). Eliminating automatic racial bias: making race nondiagnostic for responses to criminal suspects. Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, 41, Roza, M., Voogd, J., Jense, H., & van Gool, P. Roza, M. (1999) Fidelity Requirements Specification: A Process Oriented View, 99 Fall Simulation Interoperability Workshop, September 1999, Paper 032. Downloaded 12 Feb from Rosich, K. J.(2007).Race, Ethnicity, and the Criminal Justice System.Washington, DC:American Sociological Association. Sadler, M., Correll, J., Park, B., & Judd, C. (2012). The world is not black and white: racial bias in the decision to shoot in a multiethnic context. JournalofSocialIssues,68(2), Scharf, P., & Binder, A. (1983). The badge and the bullet: police use of deadly force. New York: Praegar. Sherman, L. & Langworthy, R. (1979). Measuring homicide by police officers. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 4,

20 L. James et al. Smith, B. W. (2004). Structural and organizational predictors of homicide by police. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 27, Sorenson, J., Marquart, J., & Brock, D. (1993). Factors relating to killings of felons by police officers: a test of the community violence and conflict hypotheses. Justice Quarterly, 10(3), Takagi, P. (1974). A garrison state in a democratic society. Crime and Scholarly Justice, 1, Vila, B., James, L., James, S. & and Waggoner, B. (2012). Final Report: Developing a Common Metric for Evaluating Police Performance in Deadly Force Situations. National Institute of Justice, grant no. 2008IJCX0015, 27 Aug. Lois James, Ph.D., is an assistant research professor with the Sleep and Performance Research Center (SPRC) and the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University (WSU). She has a BA in Psychology from Trinity College Dublin, and received her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from WSU in During her time at WSU, Dr. James has served as Co-Principal Investigator on $1.4 million in U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Department Of Defense (DOD) funded projects, and as Lead Principle Investigator on a $40,000 contract with the Spokane Police Department. Her research focus is on understanding and overcoming the impact of shift-work related fatigue, sleep deprivation, cultural biases, and other stressors in high-performance and high-risk operational environments (primarily military, law enforcement, and elite athletes). David A. Klinger is Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri- St. Louis and Senior Fellow at the Police Foundation in Washington, DC. He holds a BA in History from Seattle Pacific University, an MA in Justice from American University in Washington, D.C. and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Washington in Seattle. Prior to pursuing his graduate degrees, Professor Klinger worked for three and one-half years as a patrol officer for the Los Angeles and Redmond (WA) Police Departments. He has held research positions at the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C.; the University of Washington, Seattle; the Washington State's Attorney's Office; and the Seattle Police Department. In 1997 he was the recipient of the American Society of Criminology's inaugural Ruth Cavan Young Scholar Award for outstanding early career contributions to the discipline of criminology. He has served as a member of two National Academy of Sciences committees and has written more than thirty scholarly articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries that address topics such as arrest practices, the use of force, how features of communities affect the actions of patrol officers, and terrorism. Dr. Klinger often conducts training sessions for police officers on the use of deadly force, frequently serves as an expert witness in police-related litigation, and is regularly sought out by news organizations for his take on various police issues. His book on police shootings, Into the Kill Zone: A Cop s Eye View of Deadly Force, was published by Jossey-Bass in Bryan Vila, Ph.D., is a professor of criminal justice and criminology at WSU Spokane. Prior to joining WSU in July 2005, he directed the Division of Crime Control and Prevention Research at the U.S. Department of Justice s National Institute of Justice. Dr. Vila has served as Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on $7.6 million in externally funded research projects. He has brought eight grants/contracts totaling $5.5 million to WSU in the past six years. Dr. Vila received his Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis in Before he became an academic, Dr. Vila served as a law enforcement officer for 17 years including nine years as a street cop and supervisor with the Los Angeles County Sheriff s Department, six years as a police chief helping the emerging nations of Micronesia develop innovative law enforcement strategies, and two years in Washington, D.C., as a federal law enforcement officer.