Abstract
Through implicit biases, we link individuals to the stereotypes associated with their group(s); this can occur automatically and outside conscious awareness. A subset of the voluminous body of research on implicit biases looks at which groups that society links to street crime, aggression, and violence. The implicit association between African Americans and crime—the “Black-Crime implicit bias”—can lead individuals to be more likely to perceive ambiguous actions on the part of African Americans, versus Caucasians, as threatening. Such an association could lead to over-vigilance with racial/ethnic minorities on the part of police. Society links other groups—such as women, Asians, the elderly—to noncrime, nonviolence; such associations could lead to under-vigilance on the part of police. Some laboratory research, including some using police as subjects, has affirmed over-vigilance with racial/ethnic minorities, men and Muslims and under-vigilance with groups, such as Caucasians and women. Although researchers have affirmed over and over again, the widespread existence of implicit biases in modern humans, those same researchers have also identified ways that individuals can reduce and manage their biases. As examples, positive contact with individuals who are different from us, as well as exposure to counterstereotypes, can reduce our biases. The counter-stereotype debiasing mechanism has important implications for how use-of-force training can reduce manifestation of human biases in those often split-second use-of-force decisions.
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Notes
- 1.
For instance, Correll et al. (2002) found that in a “shoot, don’t shoot” task (see coverage of this methodology below) both White and African American samples shot Black targets more quickly than White targets and were more likely to erroneously shoot unarmed Blacks (versus unarmed Whites).
- 2.
That the race of the subject as Black is also emphasized by the press, is indicated in the 2015 document entitled “Unarmed Civilians and the Police.” Street Cred reviewed 125 incidents in the first 8 months of 2015 in which police killed an unarmed civilian. In examining the press coverage of these incidents, they report that their analyses of 420 examples of press coverage, “the media mentioned the race of the decedent and the officer four times more when the decedent was Black” p. 7.
- 3.
Go to https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. An article evaluating the validity of the IAT is Jost et al. (2009).
- 4.
The phrase “street crime” is used here to encompass the behaviors with which municipal police usually deal–such as, robberies, prostitution, trespassing, and burglary, and to distinguish those from “crimes of the powerful” (e.g., tax fraud, insider trading, mortgage fraud).
- 5.
For an exception, see American Civil Liberties Union (2013).
- 6.
Highlighting the predominance of “in-group” versus “out-group” biases (that are linked to cultural differences), Schofield et al. (2015) found that Saudi Arabian subjects were more likely to shoot the White target than the Middle Eastern target.
- 7.
James et al. (2013) also tested a Hispanic-crime implicit bias using a variation of the shooting paradigm methodology. This research is covered under the discussion of “controlled responses”.
- 8.
This was not a “critical test” of the hypothesis.
- 9.
Overview chapters on “Implicit Bias in Education,” “Implicit Bias in Criminal Justice,” and “Implicit Bias in Health/Health Care” are contained in Staats (2013), and updates are provided in Staats (2014) and Staats et al. (2015).
- 10.
With regard to errors, “the police officers were better able to distinguish weapons from nonthreatening objects, when held by Black and Latino targets than by Asian and White targets” (pp. 306–307).
- 11.
To be precise, the researchers actually found the highest TPF with Asian subjects, but noted that the percentage was likely unreliable because of the small number of Asians that were subject to officer-involved shootings.
- 12.
The researchers found some differences across officer races (more Black and Hispanic officers experienced TPF), but these differences were not statistically significant.
- 13.
The story was shared during a segment entitled “Cops see it differently, Part 2” on “This American Life” broadcast February 13, 2015. Found on 9/15/2015 at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/548/cops-see-it-differently-part-two?act=2#play. Relevant segment starts at 37:40; the officer’s story starts at 54:00.
- 14.
The Fair and Impartial Policing Training Program will be covered in more depth in Chap. 3.
- 15.
This dispatch, by necessity, varies from location to location, depending on state gun laws. Whatever the wording, the dispatch will give the officers reasonable suspicion to detain and to frisk.
- 16.
Police report that male gang members often give the guns to the females when they are together on the streets, presumably because they believe the police will be less vigilant with the females.
- 17.
In a subsequent section, I discuss how bias might manifest in the decisions of individuals at the higher levels of an agency. These include both operational and managerial decisions.
- 18.
In fact, research indicates that individuals who perceive themselves to be objective make more biased decisions than those who do not (Kang et al. 2012).
- 19.
As an important reminder here: Even if stereotypes are based in part on fact, police err when they treat the individual as if s/he fits the stereotype.
- 20.
Attempts to suppress stereotypes can actually make the stereotype more accessible (Galinsky and Moskowitz 2000).
- 21.
While there is a large body of literature finding support for the effectiveness of counterstereotypes for reducing bias, there are also some recent studies that raise questions about effectiveness (see e.g., Lybarger and Monteith 2011; Schmidt and Nosek 2010). More research is needed to identify the circumstances in which exposure to counterstereotypes has, or does not have, an effect. (For more, see Staats et al. 2015.)
- 22.
Importantly, Correll et al. (2007b) confirmed that it was, in fact, the exposure to the opposite of the stereotype that produced this positive benefit (versus some other mechanism, such as practice). These researchers conducted a similarly study wherein in one group of subjects performed a counterstereotype version and another group of participants perform a “pro-stereotypic version”—where unarmed Whites and armed Blacks were overrepresented. Biased use of force was reduced in the subjects exposed to the counterstereotype version, but not with the group exposed to the pro-stereotypic version.
- 23.
Gilbert and Hixon (1991) reported that the cognitive busyness made it less likely that a stereotype would activate, but more likely, if activated, to produce a biased response.
- 24.
Evidence of this concern on the part of officers can be found among the anecdotes in David Klinger’s 2004 book, The Kill Zone: A Cop’s Eye View of Deadly Force.
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Fridell, L. (2017). The Science of Implicit Bias and Implications for Policing. In: Producing Bias-Free Policing. SpringerBriefs in Criminology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33175-1_2
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