The decision to use lethal force against a civilian is one of the most difficult decisions police officers face. There has been increasing concern that racial bias amongst police officers has led to increased shootings of Black Americans. Researchers have used simplified shooting tasks to test this question in the laboratory. Such studies typically reveal a bias shoot unarmed Black men more than unarmed White men. However, such studies have major shortcomings in that they do not include several important features of the real world decision environment. The following four studies tested whether dispatch information, information about a suspect given to police by dispatch, influenced shooting decisions and racial bias. Untrained civilians and trained officers made better decisions when dispatch information was correct. Dispatch information was also sufficient to eliminate racial bias in shooting decisions. This demonstrates a limitation in generalizing findings of racial bias in the laboratory to real world shooting decisions. In addition, I also used a computational model, the drift diffusion model, to test how dispatch information, race, and expertise influence shooting decisions. This modeling showed these factors influence how individuals collect information for the decision to shoot in an online fashion, rather than creating an a priori bias to favor the decision to shoot. I discuss what part of dispatch information may reduce racial bias, as well as implications for police recruitment and training.
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