Bias

High-profile police use-of-force events, like the deaths of Trevon Martin, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, and George Floyd, have increased scrutiny towards law enforcement, and many believe that racial disparities in the justice system are caused by biased decision-making. The subsequent protests and civil unrest have furthered the divide between the police and members of the public, which has damaged police legitimacy and led to depolicing and militarization. This study pilot tests the impact of implicit bias on decision-making for a student sample with a decision-making simulator and an experimental design with random assignment. Simulated police-public contacts, substantively, were found to be very complex and largely guided by legal factors; however, stressful stimuli can affect decision-making. The forthcoming protocol and methodology, moreover, provide insight to decision-making and create a framework to guide future research.

We examined how adult attachment styles influence human perception of support provision. We invited 119 couples to the lab, where they performed an exploration task. We also used pre- and post-exploration measures, including assessing adult attachment styles and partners' perception of support provided during the task. Three independent coders watched the videos of couples interacting and rated partners' support provision behavior. We utilized West and Kenny's (2011) truth and bias model to compare judgments (partners' perception of support received during the exploration task) with so-defined truth (combined rankings from coders). We used regression analysis to investigate how attachment orientation moderates the perception of support provision. On average, individuals tended to over-perceive helpfulness and under-perceive intrusiveness. Attachment avoidance was not a significant predictor of directional bias for helpfulness and intrusiveness. Results for the second exploratory hypothesis show those higher on attachment anxiety to have a weaker bias in underperceiving intrusiveness.

Face perception and recognition abilities develop throughout childhood and differences in viewing own-race and other-race faces have been found in both children (Hu et al., 2014) and adults (Blais et al., 2008). In addition, implicit biases have been found in children as young as six (Baron & Banaji, 2006) and have been found to influence face recognition (Bernstein, Young, & Hugenberg, 2007). The current study aimed to understand how gaze behaviors, implicit biases, and other-race experience contribute to the other-race effect and their developmental effects. Caucasian children’s (5-10 years of age) and young adults’ scanning behaviors were recorded during an old/new recognition task using Asian and Caucasian faces. Participants also completed an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a race experience questionnaire. Results found an own-race bias in both children and adults. Only adult’s IAT scores were significantly different from zero, indicating an implicit bias. Participants had a greater number of eye to eye fixations for Caucasian faces, in comparison to Asian faces and eye to eye fixations were greater in adults during encoding phases. Additionally, increased nose looking times were observed with age. Central attention to the nose may be indicative of a more holistic viewing strategy implemented by adults and older children. Participants spent longer looking at the mouth of Asian faces during encoding and test for older children and adults, but younger children spent longer looking at own-race mouths during recognition.
Correlations between scanning patterns and implicit biases, and experience difference scores were also observed. Both social and perceptual factors seem to influence looking behaviors for own- and other-race faces and are undergoing changes during childhood.

Previous studies suggested that the Functional Activities Questionnaire (FAQ-10)
has minimal ethnic bias and that a shorter version (FAQ-6) can equally diagnose MCI
and dementia. Objective: We analyzed whether FAQ-6 is similar to FAQ-10 in
diagnosing MCI and dementia. We examined their applicability across European
Americans (EA) and Hispanic Americans, and how scores correlated to beta amyloid.
Method: 222 participants (116 EA) completed a neuropsychological battery, FAQ, and
PET scans, and were classified as cognitively normal (CN), MCI, or dementia. The
diagnostic capacity of FAQ-10 and FAQ-6 were compared for the total sample and across
ethnic groups. Scores were correlated to beta amyloid. Results: Both versions showed
good item discrimination. Ethnicity did not affect scores when controlling for diagnosis
and education. Both versions classified CN and dementia, and positively correlated to
beta amyloid. Conclusions: Results suggest FAQ-6 and FAQ-10 similarly predict
diagnosis and is adequate in these ethnic groups.