There are moments when time seems to slow down for the average person—a first kiss, a tense moment in a baseball game, a job interview. For a cop with his finger on his trigger, that moment can come when aiming at someone who may or may not be reaching for a gun.
That's (sort of) the focus of a new study that suggests time slows down a bit when whites look at blacks' faces—if those whites are feeling pressure to compensate for racial bias, that is—with potentially life-and-death consequences.
"[I]magine a police officer needing to gauge the time in which a minority suspect must respond before force is exerted," psychologists Gordon Moskowitz, Irmak Okten, and Cynthia Gooch write in Psychological Science. "The perceived difference of a half second could determine whether shots are fired."
[For more of this story, written by Nathan Collins, go to http://www.psmag.com/health-an...-slows-down-for-cops]
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