READING 3
The Police Officer’s Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals by Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink (2002)
Please refer to the printed reader, Readings in Social Psychology 3/e, for the text of this article.
Overview
Using a simple videogame, the effect of ethnicity on shoot/don’t shoot decisions was examined. African American or White targets, holding guns or other objects, appeared in complex backgrounds. Participants were told to “shoot” armed targets and to “not shoot” unarmed targets. In Study 1, White participants made the correct decision to shoot an armed target more quickly if the target was African American than if he was White, but decided to “not shoot” an unarmed target more quickly if he was White. Study 2 used a shorter time window, forcing this effect into error rates. Study 3 replicated Study 1’s effects and showed that the magnitude of bias varied with perceptions of the cultural stereotype and with levels of contact, but not with personal racial prejudice. Study 4 revealed equivalent levels of bias among both African American and White participants in a community sample. Implications and potential underlying mechanisms are discussed.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. Chapter 5 describes a similar study conducted by Payne (2001) in which participants had to distinguish between pictures of weapons and tools. In what ways do the studies in the present article build on the findings of Payne (2001)? Taken together, how do the Payne and Correll articles help us explain what happened to Amadou Diallo in 1999 (described in detail in the Introduction to Chapter 5)?
2. The title of Chapter 5 is “Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination.” Are all three of these concepts useful for understanding the present results? If you asked Correll and colleagues which of these three concepts is most relevant to the behaviors demonstrated by participants in their article, how do you think they would respond?
3. Explain, in your own words, what Correll and colleagues mean by the phrase “Shooter Bias.” Make sure you include reactions to both armed and unarmed targets in your explanation of this concept.
4. In Study 3, Correll et al. discuss both personal and cultural stereotypes. Explain the difference between those two concepts. Which of these concepts is most responsible for the results reported in this paper?
5. The fourth and final study of this paper includes a comparison of the performance of White and African American participants. How do the data from this comparison speak to the issue of personal vs. cultural stereotypes (as discussed in Question #4 above)?
6. What is the Stroop effect mentioned in the General Discussion of this article, and how is it relevant to the present findings? What lessons can we learn from research using the Stroop effect when it comes to applying the present findings to the ways in which police are trained? In general, are there any changes you would suggest in police training and procedure based on these findings? Are there any aspects of police behavior in these situations that you think are unchangeable?
Links For Further Investigation
This article, as well as other studies described in your textbook, was inspired by the tragic shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999. For more details about the Diallo incident, see the Washington Post’s coverage at A more general look at the role played by race in the criminal justice system can be found at This site includes news articles, opinion pieces, and a discussion of hidden racial bias.
More generally, Chapter 5 discusses the role played by automatic, nonconscious processes in everyday stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. For example, the concept of implicit racial bias suggests that people often have group preferences of which they are unaware. To examine this fascinating and controversial research topic yourself, go to https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. This site includes demonstrations of the Implicit Association Test that you can take on your own computer. Sample versions include tests of preferences related to age, race, gender, religion, weight, sexuality, political orientation, and disability.