Researchers studying a range of psychological phenomena (e.g., theory of mind, emotion, stereotyping and prejudice, interpersonal attraction, etc.) sometimes employ photographs of people as stimuli. In this paper, we introduce the Chicago Face Database, a free resource consisting of 158 high-resolution, standardized photographs of Black and White males and females between the ages of 18 and 40 years and extensive data about these targets. In Study 1, we report pretesting of these faces, which includes both subjective norming data and objective physical measurements of the images included in the database. In Study 2 we surveyed psychology researchers to assess the suitability of these targets for research purposes and explored factors that were associated with researchers' judgments of suitability. Instructions are outlined for those interested in obtaining access to the stimulus set and accompanying ratings and measures.

Using a simple videogame, the effect of ethnicity on shoot/don't shoot decisions was examined. African American or White targets, holding guns or other objects, appeared in complex backgrounds. Participants were told to "shoot" armed targets and to "not shoot" unarmed targets. In Study 1, White participants made the correct decision to shoot an armed target more quickly if the target was African American than if he was White, but decided to "not shoot" an unarmed target more quickly if he was White. Study 2 used a shorter time window, forcing this effect into error rates. Study 3 replicated Study 1's effects and showed that the magnitude of bias varied with perceptions of the cultural stereotype and with levels of contact, but not with personal racial prejudice. Study 4 revealed equivalent levels of bias among both African American and White participants in a community sample. Implications and potential underlying mechanisms are discussed.

The content of spontaneously activated racial stereotypes among White Americans and the relation of this to more explicit measures of stereotyping and prejudice were investigated. Using a semantic priming paradigm, a prime was presented outside of conscious awareness (BLACK or WHITE), followed by a target stimulus requiring a word-nonword decision. The target stimuli included attributes that varied in valence and stereotypicality for Whites and African Americans. Results showed reliable stereotyping and prejudice effects: Black primes resulted in substantially stronger facilitation to negative than positive stereotypic attributes, whereas White primes facilitated positive more than negative stereotypic traits. The magnitude of this implicit prejudice effect correlated reliably with participants' scores on explicit racial attitude measures, indicating that people's spontaneous stereotypic associations are consistent with their more controlled responses.Over the past 40 years, opinion surveys have documented substantial changes in racial attitudes among White Americans (Campbell,

In 3 experiments, White American college students received a message advocating either a color-blind or a multicultural ideological approach to improving interethnic relations and then made judgments about various ethnic groups and individuals. Relative to a color-blind perspective, the multicultural perspective led to sU'onger stereotypes, greater accuracy in these stereotypes, and greater use of category information in judgments of individuals. This increase in between-category differentiation occurrexi both for attributes that favored the in-group and for attributes that favored the out-group and was also paired in some cases with greater overall positivity toward the out-group. The findings lead us to question the implicit assumption driving the majority of social psychological efforts at prejudice reduction: that the categorization process leads to prejudice, and that the relevance of social categories must therefore be de-emphasized. The historical idea of a unifying American identity is now in peril .... Instead of a transformative nation with an identity all its own, America in this new light is seen as preservative of diverse alien identifies .... The multiethnic dogma abandons historical purpose, replacing assimilation by fragmentation, integration by separatism. It belittles unum and glorifies pluribus .... One wonders: Will the center hold? Or will the melting pot give way to the Tower of Babel. (Schlesinger, 1992, pp. 16-18) Ethnic lines will not disappear in the foreseeable future. In many parts of the world strong forces are drawing those lines more sharply. Ethnic groups in conflict mutually reinforce their antagonistic identifies. In the midst of collapsing states and empires, old dreams of their own nation-state become vivid for many long-suffering ethnic minorities. In less conflictual settings, the continuing need for a more personal identity in a culturally complex and rapidly changing world persists .... At this period in history, it is not a matter of assimilation versus ethnicity, but of assimilation and ethnicity.

Police officers were compared with community members in terms of the speed and accuracy with which they made simulated decisions to shoot (or not shoot) Black and White targets. Both samples exhibited robust racial bias in response speed. Officers outperformed community members on a number of measures, including overall speed and accuracy. Moreover, although community respondents set the decision criterion lower for Black targets than for White targets (indicating bias), police officers did not. The authors suggest that training may not affect the speed with which stereotype-incongruent targets are processed but that it does affect the ultimate decision (particularly the placement of the decision criterion). Findings from a study in which a college sample received training support this conclusion.

The goal of the research reported in this article was to examine whether automatic group attitudes and stereotypes, commonly thought to be fixed responses to a social category cue, are sensitive to changes in the situational context. Two experiments demonstrated such variability of automatic responses due to changes in the stimulus context. In Study 1 White participants' implicit attitudes toward Blacks varied as a result of exposure to either a positive (a family barbecue) or a negative (a gang incident) stereotypic situation. Study 2 demonstrated similar context effects under clearly automatic processing conditions. Here, the use of different background pictures (church interior vs. street corner) for Black and White face primes affected participants' racial attitudes as measured by a sequential priming task. Implications for the concept of automaticity in social cognition are discussed.

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Using a videogame to simulate encounters with potentially hostile targets, three studies tested a model in which racial bias in shoot/don't-shoot decisions reflects accessibility of the stereotype linking Blacks to danger. Study 1 experimentally manipulated the race-danger association by asking participants to read newspaper stories about Black (vs. White) criminals. As predicted, exposure to stories concerning Black criminals increased bias in the decision to shoot. Studies 2 and 3 manipulated the number of White and Black targets with and without guns in the context of the videogame itself. As predicted, frequent presentation of stereotypic (vs. counterstereotypic) targets exacerbated bias (Study 2) and-consistent with our process account-rendered stereotypes more accessible (Study 3). Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Social psychology has long been concerned with the idea that social categories like race, gender, and social class can influence people's interpretations of, and reactions to, ambiguous stimuli (Allport, 1954;Campbell, 1967;Duncan, 1976;Kunda & Sherman-Williams, 1993;Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997). In the domain of criminal justice, category-based judgments can have profound consequences through slow, deliberative judgments like those made by a jury (Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson, 2006;Sommers & Ellsworth, 2000) but also through the spontaneous, split-second reactions of a police officer (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002;Correll, Park, Judd, Wittenbrink, Sadler & Keesee, 2007;Payne, 2001;Plant, Peruche, & Butz, 2005). In particular, research using computer simulations to investigate the influence of race on shoot/don't-shoot decisions demonstrates a pronounced bias to shoot Blacks. In our paradigm, participants perform a videogame task in which they encounter armed and unarmed targets who are either Black or White. Participants attempt to shoot armed targets and indicate don't shoot in response to unarmed targets. Though race is irrelevant to this task, participants are faster and more likely to shoot Black targets. They are also faster and more likely to indicate don't shoot for Whites. In essence, participants respond quickly and accurately when targets