Racial stereotypes distort split-second shoot or don’t shoot decisions

Evidence

In 1995, Amadou Diallo was shot forty-one times by officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) (Cooper, 1999). The officers thought he was reaching for a gun, when in fact he had reached into his pocket to retrieve a cell phone. The event spurred a flurry of psychological research examining the possibility of racial bias in shoot/ don’t shoot decisions, demonstrating that when making quick shoot/don’t shoot decisions, lay participants were more likely to make errors by shooting unarmed Black individuals and failing to shoot armed White individuals (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002). The bias in these quick decisions to shoot an unarmed individual may be the result of a commonly held stereotypic association between Black individuals and aggressive behavior and/ or criminality (e. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 858 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Police show reduced shooter bias errors but faster shooting for Black armed suspects; Dispatched information and officers’ prior attitudes shape their shooting decisions; Off-duty Black officers are disproportionately shot by fellow police officers mistaken about identity (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Quick shoot decisions bias toward shooting unarmed Black individuals #corroborates (0.97) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 858