Eliminating Racial Bias in Police Officer Decisions to Shoot: Implications for the Control of Automatic Bias

在当今世界，警察面临着艰难的瞬间决定，这要求他们确定犯罪嫌疑人是否持有武器并构成迫在眉睫的威胁。当嫌疑人是少数民族成员时，警察可能更倾向于相信他们持有武器。这方面的例子包括一名手无寸铁的年轻黑人男子被警察开枪打死，他们误以为他携带的手机是武器。当这样的悲剧发生时，就会出现这样一个问题：警察的瞬间开枪决定是否会受到嫌疑人种族的影响。越来越多的证据表明，与手无寸铁的白人嫌疑人相比，警察更有可能错误地开枪打死手无寸铁的黑人嫌疑人。这项研究考察了在应对犯罪嫌疑人时消除这种种族偏见的培训计划的有效性。这项研究的目的是：1)加深对如何消除警察反应中的种族偏见的理解；2)确定在减少偏见模拟训练中可能影响的行为和反应；3)探索是否存在影响最初存在的种族偏见程度或训练模拟效果的因素。采用计算机模拟的一系列研究被提出来程序化地检验这些问题中的每一个。在这项工作中，执法人员参与并完成计算机模拟，他们必须决定是否向出现在屏幕上的嫌疑人开枪。在这里，嫌疑犯的种族与拥有武器无关，因此参加比赛并受到比赛的影响会影响模拟的表现。初步证据表明，即使在训练后24小时，这种方法也能有效地消除模拟反应中的种族偏见。

In today's world, police officers face difficult split-second decisions that require them to determine whether criminal suspects are armed and constitute an imminent threat. When suspects are members of ethnic minorities there may be a greater tendency for police officers to believe that they are armed. Examples of this include the shooting of an unarmed young Black man by police officers who mistook the cellular phone that he was carrying for a weapon. When tragedies like this occur, the question arises as to whether police officers' split-second decisions to shoot may be influenced by the suspect's race. There is mounting evidence that police officers are more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed Black suspects compared to unarmed White suspects. This research examines the efficacy of a training program to eliminate this type of racial bias in responses to criminal suspects. The goals of this research are to: 1) Develop a deeper understanding of how to eliminate racial bias in police responding; 2) Identify the behaviors and responses that can be influenced by training on a bias reduction simulation; and 3) Explore whether there are factors that affect either the degree of racial bias initially present or the efficacy of a training simulation. A series of studies employing computer simulations is proposed to programmatically examine each of these issues. In this work, law enforcement personnel participate, and complete a computer simulation where they must decide whether to shoot at suspects who appear on screen. Here, the race of suspect is unrelated to weapon possession such that attending to race and being influenced by race impairs performance on the simulation. Initial evidence indicates that this approach is effective in eliminating racial biases in responses to the simulation even 24 hours after training.