The moderating role of neighborhood demographics on racially biased threat perception
Date
2019
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Five studies examined how contexts, modeled after real world environments, influence the racial biases in the perception of threatening stimuli. In Studies 1-4, participants performed variations of the first-person shooter task in which Black and White targets appeared holding either a gun or a non-gun object (Correll et al., 2002). Drift diffusion analyses were used to examine participants sensitivity to stereotypic cues and use of inhibitory processes (Ratcliff, 1978; Johnson et al., 2017) during the shooter task. In Study 1, participants showed greater inhibitory processes when shown Black targets in contexts where a majority of the targets were Black. In Study 2, participants displayed less racial biases in low-threat contexts where a majority of targets were unarmed. Specifically, participants in low-threat contexts were not racially biased in their sensitivity to threatening cues. Studies 3 and 4, attempt to manipulate segregated contexts and physical distance, respectively. However, no evidence of racial biases were observed in either study. In Study 5, the effects of the manipulated contexts from Studies 1-4, were tested in real world contexts. Examination of real-world homicide data provide evidence that racial diversity, prevalence of physical violence, and segregation were associated with increased likelihood that a felon homicide victim is Black, relative to White. These studies provide some preliminary evidence of the effect of environmental contexts on the processing of stereotypic threat-related cues.