Modeling effects of newspaper articles ...

The first-person shooter task (FPST) captures implicit stereotypical associations between Blacks and danger. Exposure to information conveying this stereotype has been found to reinforce the shooter bias as measured by the FPST, even though the cognitive mechanisms involved in this bias are not well understood. In the present study, we manipulated the Black-danger link by exposing White Europeans to newspaper articles about Black (vs. White) criminals and analyzed the effects of this manipulation in the FPST. Overall, the shooter bias emerged in a pattern of error rates and response times similar to those reported with U.S. samples. The results of multinomial processing tree analysis converged in supporting the conclusion that the Black criminals article increased automatic Black-danger associations. Diffusion model analysis also suggests that reading the Black criminals story affected the evidence accumulation process particularly in respect to Black targets.