An Analysis of Decision Making Utilizing Weapon Recogntion and Shooter Bias Tasks Results: Shooter Task Introduction Stimuli Selection Results: Weapon Recognition Task Samantha L. Moore * Dr. Andrew Karpinski Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1. The shooter bias and weapon recognition tasks will yield similar results (Payne, 2006). 2. Two potential race and SES effects might arise. 2A. Race and SES will have independent effects on decision-making such that individuals will demonstrate biases against Black targets and against low SES targets. 2B. Race and SES together will influence decision-making such that participants will demonstrate biases against low SES Black targets. Hypotheses Methods Participants. 181 non-Black participants (77.3% female; 95.6% non- Hispanic M age= = 26.7 years) participated in this study. The SES breakdown of the participants is as follows: high- class (15%), upper-middle class (26%), middle class (33%), lower-middle class (4%), low-class (4%), not reported (15%). Weapon Recognition Task. An image of a White/Black, low/high SES individual appeared on the screen for 200ms. This served as the experimental prime for this task. One hundred milliseconds after the prime disappeared, an image of either a cellphone or gun appeared for 100ms followed by a mask for 630ms. The response window began as soon as the image of the object appeared and lasted 730ms. (See Table 1.) Stereotypic associations between Black people and violence have been argued to bias responses toward Black people (e.g., Correll et al., 2002; 2007; Payne, 2001; Plant & Peruche, 2005). o For example, research using computer simulations has demonstrated that people are biased toward shooting Black suspects (i.e., quicker to shoot armed Black than armed White suspects and more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed Black than White suspects; e.g., Correll et al., 2002 ) and that people associate Black suspects with weapons (i.e., more likely to misidentify hand tools as handguns when primed with a picture of a Black person than a White person; e.g., Payne, 2001 ). Although past research has examined the role of race in decisions to shoot and identify weapons, this work did not explore the implications of socioeconomic status (SES) for decisions to shoot or weapon recognition. This is problematic as race and socioeconomic status (SES) are commonly perceived as interrelated in the United States. o White individuals, for example, are stereotypically seen as more financially successful than Black individuals (Klonis, 2005). Despite the confounding nature of race and SES, minimal research has focused on how SES stereotypes influence decisions and how race and SES might interactively influence decision-making. We examined the joint implications of race and SES for weapon recognition and shooting decisions. Shooter Task. Participants were told to pretend that they are police officers chasing dangerous suspects in the field. Their goal was to decide as quickly as possible if the suspect who appeared on the screen was armed and dangerous or was not. Images of suspects appeared on the screen with either a gun or nonthreatening object (e.g., cellphone, wallet, camera) superimposed on the picture. Once the image appeared, participants had a total of 630ms to make the decision to either “shoot” or “don’t shoot” depending on whether the suspect appeared with a gun or not. (See Table 2.) Sample Shooter Stimuli. Photos were selected from The Center for Longevity’s Face Database (Minear & Park, 2004) and web searches. Pretesting (n = 26) confirmed that the photos differed in race and SES (t(25) = , p <.01), but not in attractiveness, emotional expression, or age. A total of 20 faces were used (5 of each: Black low SES men, Black high SES men, White low SES men, White high SES men), with stimulus SES manipulated through stimulus clothing (i.e., high SES men are wearing suits and low SES men are wearing t-shirts). Conclusions These findings suggest that race and SES separately influence shooting decisions, while work together to influence weapon recognition. The current work lays the groundwork for future examinations into the relative impact of these factors for decision-making in threatening situations. Please feel free to contact Samantha Moore with any comments or questions at