The possibility of experiencing physical harm caused by an object, animal, or person is an omnipresent risk in almost any situation. People show variability in their in the propensity to perceive the possibility of harm from any ostensibly innocuous object or situation-a so-called threat bias. Despite the important psychological and societal consequences resulting from individual differences in physical threat bias, there does not currently exist an easily administered means to capture this disposition.
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December 2021
The role of implicit processes during police-civilian encounters is well studied from the perspective of the police. Decades of research on the "shooter bias" suggests that implicit Black-danger associations potentiate the perception of threat of Black individuals, leading to a racial bias in the decision to use lethal force. Left understudied are civilians' possible associations of police with danger and how such associations pervade behavior and explicit views of the police.
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