IMPLICIT COGNITIVE BIASES, RACIAL ATTITUDES, AND THREAT DETECTION
Open Access
- Author:
- Grimaldi, Elizabeth Mary
- Graduate Program:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- November 07, 2016
- Committee Members:
- James Marshall Lebreton, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Kisha Shannon Jones, Committee Member
Richard Alan Carlson, Committee Member - Keywords:
- implicit personality
cognitive biases
signal detection
racial biases
implicit attitudes
threat detection - Abstract:
- The current study aimed to integrate multiple streams of research in order to better understand the underlying mechanisms of threat detection malfunctioning and the decision to use lethal force. Signal Detection Theory (SDT) was used as a guiding framework around which to frame the hypotheses. Specifically, the roles of implicit racial biases, cognitive load, and implicit personality were examined. It was expected that each of these would influence the proportion of false alarm responses, participants’ willingness to fire a weapon (criterion, an SDT parameter), and participants’ reaction times. Data were collected from a sample (N = 110, 78% female) of undergraduate students at a large, northeastern university. Participants completed personality assessments, a measure of implicit racial bias, and an experimental procedure where they were asked to shoot or not shoot stimuli consisting of Black and White adults under strict time constraints. Findings did not generally support the proposed relationships, however a significant three-way interaction between target race, cognitive load, and implicit personality emerged when examining the three outcome variables together in a multivariate ANCOVA. Findings indicate that further research is needed in order to more fully understand the complex relationships between these variables.