scholarly journals Experimental sleep loss, racial bias, and the decision criterion to shoot in the Police Officer’s Dilemma task

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Scullin ◽  
Michelle R. Hebl ◽  
Abby Corrington ◽  
Stacy Nguyen

AbstractViolent behavior, police brutality, and racial discrimination are currently at the forefront of society’s attention, and they should be. We investigated whether mild sleep loss—as typical for many adults throughout the work week—could aggravate the socio-emotional-cognitive processes contributing to violence and discrimination. In a sample of 40 healthy young adults, we either experimentally restricted participants’ sleep for four nights (6.2 h/night) or let participants obtain normal sleep (7.7 h/night)—and then had them complete the Police Officer’s Dilemma Task. In this computerized task, the participant must rapidly decide to shoot or not shoot at White and Black men who either are or are not holding a gun. Results showed significant racial biases, including more and quicker shooting of Black targets compared to White targets. Furthermore, signal detection analyses demonstrated that mild sleep restriction changed participants’ decision criterion, increasing the tendency to shoot, even when controlling for psychomotor vigilance, fluid intelligence, and self-reported desirability to behave in a socially acceptable manner. The increased tendency to shoot was also observed in participants who reported believing that they had adapted to the sleep loss. Future experimental research using trained police officers will help establish the generalizability of these laboratory effects. Importantly, sleep loss is modifiable via organization-level changes (e.g., shift scheduling, light entrainment) and individual-level interventions (e.g., sleep hygiene education, incentives for behavioral change), suggesting that if sleep loss is corrected, it could save lives—including Black lives.

SLEEP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. A117-A117
Author(s):  
Janna Mantua ◽  
Carolyn Mickelson ◽  
Jacob Naylor ◽  
Bradley Ritland ◽  
Alexxa Bessey ◽  
...  

Abstract Introduction Sleep loss that is inherent to military operations can lead to cognitive errors and potential mission failure. Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) allele variations of several genes (COMT, ADORA2A, TNFa, CLOCK, DAT1) have been linked with inter-individual cognitive resilience to sleep loss through various mechanisms. U.S. Army Soldiers with resilience-related alleles may be better-suited to perform cognitively-arduous duties under conditions of sleep loss than those without these alleles. However, military-wide genetic screening is costly, arduous, and infeasible. This study tested whether a brief survey of subjective resilience to sleep loss (1) can demarcate soldiers with and without resilience-related alleles, and, if so, (2) can predict cognitive performance under conditions of sleep loss. Methods Six SNPs from the aforementioned genes were sequenced from 75 male U.S. Army special operations Soldiers (age 25.7±4.1). Psychomotor vigilance, response inhibition, and decision-making were tested after a night of mission-driven total sleep deprivation. The Iowa Resilience to Sleeplessness Test (iREST) Cognitive Subscale, which measures subjective cognitive resilience to sleep loss, was administered after a week of recovery sleep. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to determine whether the iREST Cognitive Subscale can discriminate between gene carriers, and a cutoff score was determined. Cognitive performance after sleep deprivation was compared between those below/above the cutoff score using t-tests or Mann-Whitney U tests. Results The iREST discriminated between allele variations for COMT (ROC=.65,SE=.07,p=.03), with an optimal cutoff score of 3.03 out of 5, with 90% sensitivity and 51.4% specificity. Soldiers below the cutoff score had significantly poorer for psychomotor vigilance reaction time (t=-2.39,p=.02), response inhibition errors of commission (U=155.00,W=246.00,p=.04), and decision-making reaction time (t=2.13,p=.04) than Soldiers above the cutoff score. Conclusion The iREST Cognitive Subscale can discriminate between those with and without specific vulnerability/resilience-related genotypes. If these findings are replicated, the iREST Cognitive Subscale could be used to help military leaders make decisions about proper personnel placement when sleep loss is unavoidable. This would likely result in increased safety and improved performance during military missions. Support (if any) Support for this study came from the Military Operational Medicine Research Program of the United States Army Medical Research and Development Command.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 237802311987979 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Wood ◽  
Daria Roithmayr ◽  
Andrew V. Papachristos

Conventional explanations of police misconduct generally adopt a microlevel focus on deviant officers or a macrolevel focus on the top-down organization of police departments. Between these levels are social networks of misconduct. This study recreates these networks using data on 16,503 complaints and 15,811 police officers over a six-year period in Chicago. We examine individual-level factors associated with receiving a complaint, the basic properties of these misconduct networks, and factors related to officer co-naming in complaints. We find that the incidence of police misconduct is associated with attributes including race, age, and tenure and that almost half of police officers are connected in misconduct ties in broader networks of misconduct. We also find that certain dyadic factors, especially seniority and race, strongly predict network ties and the incidence of group misconduct. Our results provide actionable information regarding possible ways to leverage the co-complaint network structure to reduce misconduct.


SLEEP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. A47-A48
Author(s):  
Erika Yamazaki ◽  
Tess Brieva ◽  
Courtney Casale ◽  
Caroline Antler ◽  
Namni Goel

Abstract Introduction There are substantial, stable individual differences in cognitive performance resulting from sleep restriction (SR) and total sleep deprivation (TSD). The best method for defining cognitive resilience and vulnerability to sleep loss remains an unanswered, yet important question. To investigate this, we compared multiple approaches and cutoff thresholds to define resilience and vulnerability using the 10-minute Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT). Methods Forty-one healthy adults (ages 21-49; mean±SD, 33.9±8.9y; 18 females) participated in a 13-night experiment [2 baseline nights (10h-12h time-in-bed, TIB), 5 SR nights (4h TIB), 4 recovery nights (12h TIB), and 36h TSD]. The PVT was administered every 2h during wakefulness. PVT lapses (reaction time [RT]>500 ms) and 1/RT (response speed) were measured. Resilient and vulnerable groups were defined by three approaches: average performance during SR1-5, average performance change from baseline to SR1-5, and variance in performance during SR1-5. Within each approach, resilient/vulnerable groups were defined by +/- 1 standard deviation and by the top and bottom 12.5%, 20%, 25%, 33%, 50%. Bias-corrected and accelerated bootstrapped t-tests compared PVT performance between the resilient and vulnerable groups during baseline and SR1-5. Kendall’s tau correlations compared the ranking of individuals in each group. Results T-tests revealed that the resilient and vulnerable PVT lapses groups, defined by all three approaches, had significantly different mean PVT lapses at all cutoffs. Resilient and vulnerable PVT 1/RT groups, defined by raw scores and by change from baseline, had significantly different mean PVT 1/RT at all cutoffs. However, resilient/vulnerable PVT 1/RT groups defined by variance only differed at the 33% and 50% cutoffs. Notably, raw scores at baseline significantly differed between resilient/vulnerable groups for both PVT measures. Variance vs. raw scores and variance vs. change from baseline had the lowest correlation coefficients for both PVT measures. Conclusion Defining resilient and vulnerable groups by raw scores during SR1-5 produced the clearest differentiation between resilient and vulnerable groups at every cutoff threshold for PVT lapses and response speed. As such, we propose that using PVT raw score is the optimal approach to define resilient and vulnerable groups for behavioral attention performance during sleep loss. Support (if any) ONR Award No.N00014-11-1-0361;NIH UL1TR000003;NASA NNX14AN49G and 80NSSC20K0243;NIH R01DK117488


2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. 7512500020p1-7512500020p1
Author(s):  
Alaa Abou-Arab ◽  
Rochelle Mendonca

Abstract Date Presented 04/13/21 Racial bias is defined as the negative evaluation of a group and its members relative to another and can exist on explicit and implicit levels. This is an exploratory study to examine the presence of implicit and explicit racial bias among OT professionals across the United States. The results (N = 201) highlight the presence of implicit and explicit racial biases among OT professionals in the United States and the need for further education on racial bias. Primary Author and Speaker: Alaa Abou-Arab Additional Authors and Speakers: Alee Leteria, Kristina Zanayed, and Susanne Higgins


Author(s):  
Marije Keulen-de Vos ◽  
Massil Benbouriche

The purpose of this study is to assess treatment change at both a group and individual level in a sample of 81 Dutch male patients who received mandated care for either violent (non-sexual) behavior or sexual violent behavior. Psychiatric nurses rated patients’ social skills, insight, hostility, physical violence with the BEST-Index every 6 months over the course of 2 years after patients were admitted to hospital. Mixed analysis of covariances and the reliable change index indicated that patients, irrespective of offense type, showed treatment change over time with exception of physical violence. This study shows that general treatment may be useful in the first 18 month for risk factors common to different types of offenses, but that specialized treatment is needed to establish further change.


2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-486
Author(s):  
Nicole E. Pacheco

The author reviews pervasive racial biases in psychoanalysis, spanning from overt instances of racial judgement to the normalized tendencies of internalized racist societal structures on individuals. A personalized account is given addressing how such issues have led to a hesitancy in the author— a Black and Hispanic psychiatry resident—to pursue psychoanalytic training. Institutes can more appropriately acknowledge how racism has affected their patients and the theories of the mind that are commonly promulgated. Academic institutions need to actively engage in creating awareness of racial bias, microaggressions, and uncovering unconscious negative attitudes. This will aid in the development of educational approaches that strive toward racial equality and inclusiveness.


Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 366 (6464) ◽  
pp. 447-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziad Obermeyer ◽  
Brian Powers ◽  
Christine Vogeli ◽  
Sendhil Mullainathan

Health systems rely on commercial prediction algorithms to identify and help patients with complex health needs. We show that a widely used algorithm, typical of this industry-wide approach and affecting millions of patients, exhibits significant racial bias: At a given risk score, Black patients are considerably sicker than White patients, as evidenced by signs of uncontrolled illnesses. Remedying this disparity would increase the percentage of Black patients receiving additional help from 17.7 to 46.5%. The bias arises because the algorithm predicts health care costs rather than illness, but unequal access to care means that we spend less money caring for Black patients than for White patients. Thus, despite health care cost appearing to be an effective proxy for health by some measures of predictive accuracy, large racial biases arise. We suggest that the choice of convenient, seemingly effective proxies for ground truth can be an important source of algorithmic bias in many contexts.


2007 ◽  
Vol 92 (6) ◽  
pp. 1006-1023 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Correll ◽  
Bernadette Park ◽  
Charles M. Judd ◽  
Bernd Wittenbrink ◽  
Melody S. Sadler ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 794-808 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas D. Thomson

There is a clear link between drugs and violence, and the extensive burden drug-related violence inflicts on society. However, drug-related violence is largely understudied, especially in female populations. The aim of the present study was to explore whether women convicted of drug-related violent crime differed on individual-level risk factors from women convicted of a nondrug-related violent crime and women convicted of nonviolent crimes. One hundred and twenty-five female inmates were classified using official criminal records. Multinomial logistic regression indicated inmates higher in antisocial psychopathic traits and low level of educational attainment were more likely to be in the drug-related violent crime group. In comparison, inmates higher in callous psychopathic traits were more likely to be in the nondrug-related violent crime group. Using official records of prison misconduct, a secondary aim tested whether prison violence increased the likelihood of being in either of the violent crime groups. Results show inmates who had committed violent misconducts over a 6-month period were more likely to be the nondrug-related violent crime group. Prison violence did not differentiate inmates in the nonviolent crime group from the drug-related violent crime group. These findings are the first to explore the relation between psychopathy and drug-related violent crime, and drug-related violent crime predicting future violent behavior in female criminals. This study demonstrates the heterogeneity in female violent behavior. Furthermore, psychopathy is not only shown to be an important risk factor for violence in women but also highlights that the dimensional construct is essential for understanding context-dependent violence.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document