In the First-Person Shooter Task (FPST), participants make rapid shoot/don't-shoot responses to Black and White targets holding guns or harmless objects. It is possible that participants' responses in this task are influenced by perceptions of targets' social class, as Blacks are more likely to be low social class, and lower-class individuals are more likely to be pursuing a fast life strategy and therefore more likely to need to resort to physical conflict. Participants across three studies completed a FPST in which Black and White targets were dressed in upper-class outfits or lower-class outfits. Errors and reaction times were recorded and analyzed using the Drift Diffusion Model (DDM). DDM results indicate that participants interpreted the evidence for a shoot decision as stronger for lower-class targets. However, DDM results in two studies also demonstrated a bias against White targets, and differences in error rate and reaction time did not emerge when controlling for random effects by target individual, suggesting that results may have been strongly influenced by characteristics of the targets other than race, social class, and object. Thus while results may demonstrate that perceptions of social class play a role in shooting decisions, further research is needed to confirm this. Implications for the generalizability of shooter research are discussed. -- Abstract.
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