Induced emotions on shoot decisions

Abstract

The purpose of this experiment was to examine the effect of emotion on shoot decision bias. Student participants from The University of Texas at Arlington were randomly assigned to one of five emotion induction conditions (angry, contemptuous, happy, sad, or neutral) where they wrote about an emotional experience and then participated in a first person shooter task. Initial results revealed no differences with emotion conditions on racial and shooter bias indices. Inspection of the components which make up racial and shooter bias unveiled partial racial and shooter bias. After comparing immigrants to Americans, it was found that immigrants did not exhibit racial bias but did show partial shooter bias. Americans however showed both partial racial and shooter bias. This provided support for the idea that these biases may come from the American stereotype that African Americans are dangerous. Within Americans, a trend emerged where ethnicity interacted with emotion to influence racial bias which revealed bias towards Blacks, reversed bias, and no bias. As for shooter bias, a trend also emerged; within immigrants, ethnicity interacted with emotion to produce bias towards Blacks and reversed bias. Within Americans, ethnicity also interacted with emotion to influence shooter bias. The three patterns of bias were found for different groups. The findings indicate that the effect of emotion on shoot decisions depends on the participant’s ethnicity. The study did not have enough power to fully examine the interaction between ethnicity and emotion on racial and shooter bias. Future directions and implications are discussed.