Question Two
The police dilemma shows the racial prejudice that lies within people. The persistent police shootings can be explained by representativeness heuristic and availability heuristic. In particular, the representativeness entails making a choice by comparing the current scenario to the most representative mental prototype ( Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002) . In this instance, a white police officer already has a mental prototype that a black person is dangerous thus will not hesitate to shoot him. Due to such tendency, society has a perpetual problem of police shootings.
There are various factors that would lead to the behavior of the police described in the article. One of these factors would be past experiences. Past experiences with something determine how you will treat a similar situation in future. For example, if in the past, the police had given an African-American the benefit of doubt only for him/her to turn against them, then the police could not trust Diallo. This comes about as a result of the brain creating an association with the particular object which might influence their behavior. Stereotyping would also be another factor that can explain the behavior. This is where one associates one race with particular behaviors which can lead to unfair judgment/ treatment even in cases where an individual is not guilty.
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Reference
Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C. M., & Wittenbrink, B. (2002). The police officer's dilemma: Using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals. Journal of personality and social psychology , 83 (6), 1314.
