Deciding Under Pressure

Cognitive psychology research focused on the relationship between automatic and controlled cognition referring to split-second decisions (Payne, 2001, 2006) and examined the effect that race as an ethnic group factor leads to a response bias in shooting decisions using videogame-like tasks (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002; Correll et al., 2007). A weapon bias was reported in judgement denoted as a perceptual weapon-tool classification (Payne, 2001, 2006) and as a behavioural shoot-do not shoot decision (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002; Correll et al., 2007; Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoffman, 2003). The aim of this research was to investigate the impact of arousal, valence and content of IAPS pictures on measures of perceptive sensitivity (d’), response bias (c) and reaction times (RTs). Two Weapon Identification Tasks (WIT) and two First Person Shooting Tasks (FPST) were performed manipulating emotional and arousing contents of visual stimuli. Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that affective modulation influences response bias activation and performance, and that content of stimuli amplifies the effect size.