Bias And Prejudice: Types, Effects And Solutions

Introduction

In rapid changing fields such as law enforcement, it is important for people to recognize their biases and prejudice. By understanding their own bias and prejudice, as well as, seeing how bias and prejudice affects people, police officers can change how their actions are conducted. In order to do this, an understanding of what bias and prejudice is, how it has evolved, and its impact must be shown. Once this is completed, police actions can be better guided resulting in better interactions with the world.

What Is Bias?

To begin understanding bias, one must know what bias entails and its origins. Bias as defined by the sixth edition of the Multicultural Law Enforcement; Strategies for Peacekeeping in a Diverse Society textbook is “a preformed negative opinion or attitude toward a group of persons based on their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”(Shusta) Now that bias has been defined it’s important to see its history of it. Similar to water, trees, stars, ect... bias has been around since the dawn of time. A fun fact about bias: while it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment bias was observed, we can trace the origin of the word back to the 1520s. An interesting fact about bias is that contrary to belief humans are not the only species that experience it. This can be seen in a study conducted by Neha Mahajan and a group of psychologist which Daisy Grewl wrote about in an article for Scientific American. Grewl briefly writes about Mahajan and Co.’s discovery on Cayo Santigo, an island close to Puerto Rico. Grewl’s article highlights the experiment that was conducted on Rhesus Monkeys regarding groups and outsiders. This was done using the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The IAT measures unconscious bias by determining how quickly a word is associated with specific groups and reveals implicit bias.

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Types Of Bias

Before discussing the effects of bias, it’s crucial to know that there are many types of bias. While most are directed at oneself or (i.g. Confiration bias) the main ones dealt within law enforcement are implicit and explicit bias. Implicit bias according to the American Psychological Association (APA) is “attitudes or stereotypes that can influence our beliefs, actions, and decisions, even though we’re not consciously aware of them and don’t express those beliefs verbally to ourselves or others.” (Weir) An example of this in law enforcement would be, an officer disliking a certain minority group over another and pursuing justice more often with one group than the other over the course of a fiscal year. If implicit bias is what someone is unaware of than what’s explicit bias? Explicit bias as defined by the National Center for Cultural Competence (NCCC) is “when someone knows about their feelings and attitudes towards someone or a group of people”. (Two) An example of this in law enforcement would be, an officer targeting Hispanics who commit crimes because they don’t think Hispanics should be in the U.S because they’re criminals.

Effects & Solutions Of Bias

Bias has been briefly defined but no effects or solutions were given. That is the focus of the paragraph, how does bias affect people and how can people work to stop it? One experiment that showcased the issue of bias in police officers was Joshua Correll’s Police Officer’s Dilemma. In this people played a first player shooter game, in the game, there were unarmed white and black men. It was shown that when police officers played it took them less time to shoot the black men. Activities like these can be used to monitor which officers are more likely to shoot an unarmed person instead of an armed person, especially if they are different races. Another potential option for reducing bias is when a suspect is arrested use a different officer for the interrogation and booking process. The article written by Weir highlighted this as a way to stop officers from acting on biases that are present. Weir talked to a law and psychology professor by the name of Tom Tyler. In their conversation, Tyler hinted that having set protocol and a checklist regarding various situations would hold all officers to the same standard when conducting things such as traffic stops. During their talk, Tyler also hinted at the possibility of changing a department’s hiring practices to decrease racial disparity. Another way to reduce racial disparity and improving bias control given in the article was by John Dovido. Dovido reminded Weir that the act of community police would help rebuild the community’s trust in law enforcement. By conducting community policing practices you&