Prior investigations into racial bias in fatal police shootings have predominantly employed the First-Person Shooter Task (FPST) and the Weapon Identification Task (WIT). These paradigms have revealed consistent patterns of bias, including faster correct decisions to shoot armed Black targets (as shown in the FPST) and a bias towards misidentifying harmless objects as weapons after exposure to Black primes (evidenced in the WIT). While these findings are valuable, they overlook the role of visual search in these high-stakes decision-making processes. The influence of visual search processes and their associated cognitive mechanisms—such as those described by Drift Diffusion Modelling (DDM)—remain relatively unexplored. This dissertation bridged this gap by examining the impact of race on search efficiency within complex visual environments and its reflection in evidence accumulation. Across two studies, I found that race did not significantly impact search efficiency or evidence accumulation. Instead, a consistent target type effect emerged, indicating that searches for guns were more efficient than for other objects, irrespective of racial primes, and this was mirrored in credibly stronger rates of evidence accumulation. This work serves as a first step into understanding the dynamics of racial biases within decision-making processes in high-stakes situations, emphasizing the examination of search behaviors.
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