Police training reduces shooter misidentification but not racial speed bias
Evidence
Notably, police officers are less apt to make the same errors as untrained lay participants, but police officers show greater speed in shooting when the person with the gun is Black (Correll, 2007). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1364
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- QUESTION: What mechanism explains reduced errors but retained speed bias? Suggests training addresses decision thresholds but not associative activation.
Related
- Police officers suppress race-linked shooting errors but still react faster against Black suspects (similarity 0.94)
- Even trained police and black participants shoot unarmed black figures more (similarity 0.81)
- Quick shoot decisions bias toward shooting unarmed Black individuals (similarity 0.80)
- Shoot decisions vary with officer fatigue, distance, and target race prototypicality (similarity 0.78)