Research on implicit racial prejudice and perception is important because of the numerous high-profile cases where Black people were killed by individuals who claimed to believe the unarmed individuals were armed or represented a threat to their personal safety.

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Research suggests that implicit racial prejudice and stereotypes can significantly affect an individual's perception.

Influence of Implicit Racial Prejudice on Perception

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

Several studies have demonstrated that implicit racial prejudice affects perception in weapon identification. For instance, non-Black participants identify weapons faster and are more likely to mistakenly identify non-weapons as weapons when the image is paired with a Black person.

Weapon Identification Bias

Research on implicit prejudice and perception shows that White individuals' decisions to shoot an armed target in a video game simulation are made more quickly when the target is Black. This illustrates how implicit biases can influence critical perceptual decisions.

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