(It's watching you.)
In his well known book titled “Blink,” author Malcolm Gladwell had told one of the more invigorating modern stories about racial discrimination. It was the story about Amadou Diallo and how he was thought of as a criminal planning to trespass an apartment in New York. The officers called Diallo’s attention. Diallo turned around, with one hand in his pocket. Seven seconds upon being spotted by the officers, Diallo was bloodied on the floor as he was shot forty one times. Diallo, after all the screams and shots fired, was just pulling out his wallet. Gladwell viewed the incident as a result of the officers’ faulty thin slicing- a cognitive phenomenon where the subconscious takes over careful, deliberate thinking that the officers’ previous exposure and experience of black people are mostly criminals became implicitly associated with Diallo.
Inspired by the story, our group had aimed to look at the incident from a different perspective. That is, what if vigilance, or any degrees of it for that matter, caused the policemen to become neurotic and identify objects incorrectly? What if policemen have personality types unsuitable for agents of law? What if the over-vigilant nature of policemen caused them to make mistakes or to react unfavorably to the situation? To conduct the experiment, we sought 105 students from the University of the Philippines Diliman. We utilized a between-subjects design composed of three groups subjected to different forms of priming: Audiovisual Priming (auditory and visual presentation), Visual Priming (only visual presentation), and Auditory Priming (only auditory presentation) where each condition had 35 participants in it.
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| (Screenshot of news clip used for priming) |
For the experiment proper, participants were primed according to their group conditions. The prime was a presentation of Philippine crime statistics taken from a news program. Participants in the visual condition were only shown the video via a laptop, while in the audio condition only listened through a set of earphones, and in the audiovisual condition participants viewed and listened to the program simultaneously. After which the participants were asked to perform a signal detection task. Their goal is to spot a silhouette of a thief, designed to be holding an ambiguous item, in various scenes of alleys, forests, and bays which were partitioned into a 9x9 grid. Detecting the signal meant using the mouse of the laptop to click on the grid where the silhouette is found. There are twenty scenes all in all, each flashed for only four seconds. A miss or an instance when the signal is not detected is indicated when the mouse is not clicked within the four-second time limit. After the test, participants were asked to remember and identify what the silhouette of a man was holding. Finally, they were asked to answer the HPI-Calmness HIC scale, and the NEO-PI-R Vulnerability scale while not being informed what specifically it was for. Participants were debriefed afterwards.
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| (Sample of an image presented in the signal detection task) |
The current study found that a relatively moderate sensitivity in the audio-visual prime (AV) condition exists compared to the other two conditions. Moreover, a slightly liberal manifestation in signal detection for the AV condition was found. Meanwhile, there is a low sensitivity and neutral bias resulting from the audio-only and visual-only prime. Average reaction time of the participants is also considered as a measure of vigilance. Results showed that, audiovisual group respond the fastest, followed by visual group, and audio group. When reaction time is correlated with selected personality factors, calmness and vulnerability, it was found that there is a very weak correlation between these two variables. In other words, these personality factors do not have a significant relationship with reaction time. These findings generally showed consistencies with past studies that prove multi-modal cues connect neurons more efficiently, as compared to single modalities.
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| (c) Disney's Zootopia |
Relating back to the case of Diallo, adding to Malcolm Gladwell’s view about the incident, that there are deep seated predispositions such as racial discrimination among people aiding in their snap judgments/ thin slicing, our study tells us that we can say that police officers’ personalities can somehow tell how they reacted, that more vulnerable people, as opposed to calm, are more vigilant; but this factor was found to have a weak correlation to vigilance to claim finality. The experiment also suggests that using the senses more actively, that is to have multimodal sensing of a particular stimulus, can result to better attention, and consequently, better vigilance. One interesting finding, however, is that majority of the participants identified the ambiguous object to be a deadly weapon, particularly a knife. Remember that identification of the object was done only after performing the signal detection task. Since it was shown to all conditions, it is hard to make distinctions between groups; but results show participants had increased vigilance before identifying the object. Similar to the incident, perhaps the officers were too vigilant that they misconceived Diallo’s wallet for a gun.
Amidst the lowering reported crime rates in the metro, there are still undeniably occurrences of extrajudicial killings and riding-in-tandem crimes. With the awareness of various factors that may influence subconscious reactions, the findings of the study, together with the case of Diallo, reinforce the significant role of the news reporting style and portrayal in mass media. The subtle cues may reinforce negative judgments not just on racial aspects but also on stereotypes based on clothing style, preferences and other demographic factors. It can be concluded that vigilance is an advantage and essential for survival. However, over-vigilance becomes a threat to the community.
With the Yuletide season approaching, how would you help make the world a just-right-type-of-vigilant place?
Everyday Thomist. (2010). What Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink Teaches About Virtue. Retrieved from https://everydaythomist.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/what-malcolm-gladwells-blink-teaches-about-virtue/
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