University of Chicago Offers Online Shooter Game / Psychological Test to Determine Racism

Perhaps you're also no fan of first-person shooter video games (or of video games at all, for that matter). But you may want to give this online shooter game created by the Stereotyping and Prejudice Research Laboratory at the University of Chicago a try, as it is also apparently a psychological test.

"Since 2000, we have been working to develop and refine a first-person-shooter videogame, which presents a series of images of young men, some armed, some unarmed, set against realistic backgrounds like parks or city streets," the department's website explains.

"The player's goal is to shoot any and all armed targets, but not to shoot unarmed targets. Half of the targets are black, and half are white. We have used this game to investigate whether decisions to 'shoot' a potentially hostile target can be influenced by that target's race."

The shooter game research demonstrates "robust evidence of racial bias in decisions to shoot... Participants shoot an armed target more quickly and more often when that target is black, rather than white. However, participants decide not to shoot an unarmed target more quickly and more often when the target is white, rather than black. In essence, participants seem to process stereotype-consistent targets (armed blacks and unarmed whites) more easily than counterstereotypic targets (unarmed blacks and armed whites)."

See your own results -- and draw your own conclusions -- by trying the University of Chicago Shooter Game now (http://backhand.uchicago.edu/Center/ShooterEffect/ ).

NOTE that for "innocents" -- those quickly pictured without guns in their hands -- you will need to holster your gun by pressing the "z" key on your keyboard. For those quickly pictured WITH guns in their hands, you will need to shoot by pressing the "/" key near the lower right on your keyboard.

As for me, I decided to try to talk even those with guns out of doing anything stupid instead of shooting at them, and it worked ... not one of them took a shot at me.