Fight or flight: The role of context on biased intergroup shooting behaviors

Work using the First-Person Shooter task (FPST, also referred to as the "Police Officers Dilemma") shows that cultural stereotypes play an integral role in influencing decisions to engage in shooting behaviors during a mock shooter simulation. Knowledge of the Black-violent stereotype typically leads White participants to have a quicker response to "shoot" armed Black target and falsely shoot unarmed Black targets, compared with White targets. Because this task constrains response options to shoot or not shoot, it is unclear what role structural and environmental factors may play in modulating biased shooting behaviors. In this study, participants played a variation of the FPST in which they made speeded shoot/flee decisions in response to armed and unarmed targets. In this variation, participants could "flee" in half of the trials regardless of whether the target was armed. Additionally, participants were primed with instructions that mirrored Stand Your Ground (SYG) law, traditional self-defense laws, or a set of control instructions. Across three studies, participants displayed racially biased behavior only on trials in which they were not allowed to flee from armed targets. In Study 3, EEG was recorded during the task to assess activation of an inhibitory brain network, which differentiated between Black and White targets. Decreased activation of this inhibitory network was associated with increased racial biased behavioral responses for those in the SYG condition. These studies highlight the ability for structural and environmental factors to exacerbate race-based disparities in the use of aggressive force as they pertain to the FPST. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).