Sleep deprivation and racial bias in the decision to shoot: A diffusion model analysis

This research summary can be incorporated into a lecture or shared with students as a reading to demonstrate how psychological science explores the diversity of human experience. This resource can also be used to encourage students to identify the major components of a research study (i.e., the hypothesis or study question, sample, method, and findings). Students can be asked to identify potential limitations of the study and encouraged to discuss the implications for our understanding of human behavior. Keywords highlight how concepts within and across pillars are incorporated into a single research study.

This group of researchers sought to answer the question of whether sleep deprivation increases errors and racial bias in the decision to “shoot” a potentially dangerous target. The college students who participated in this study were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group was told to go home and get a good night’s sleep the night before they completed the task and the other was required to stay at the lab overnight and deliberately kept awake. The next morning, all study participants completed a standard shooter task. This task involves showing participants photographs of people holding either a handgun or a harmless object, such as a phone and asking them to press one button (“shoot”) if the person is armed, and another button (“don’t shoot”) if the target is not armed. To make the task similar to what police officers face in their jobs, participants are told to make the decision as fast as they can. In this study, some men in the photographs were Black and others were White.

As the researchers predicted, people who were sleep-deprived made far more errors in the shooter task – and they were more likely to wrongly shoot unarmed targets than to miss armed targets (so they were more likely to be wrong in a lethal direction). But racial bias was also clear: both sleep-deprived and rested participants were more likely to shoot unarmed Black men than unarmed White men. This study is a vivid example of how experimental research can have clear applications for real world issues.

Johnson, D. J., Stepan, M. E., Cesario, J., & Fenn, K. M. (2021). Sleep deprivation and racial bias in the decision to shoot: A diffusion model analysis. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(5), 638–647. https://doi.org/10.1177/194855062093opens in new window

Race, Biological, Sleep, Sensation, Bias

The development of resources to broaden diversity and representation in the teaching of high school psychology resources is an APA Committee of Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools initiative supported by funding from the American Psychological Foundation David and Carol Myers Fund. This resource was developed by Eric Castro, Shawn C.T. Jones, PhD, Allyn Olsen, and Catherine Sanderson, PhD.