When Do the Public Condone Police Violence Against a Suspected Terrorist? Testing Societal Acceptance of Unconscious Bias

We are unconsciously biased against minority ethnic groups and the police are no exception. But do majority group members secretly take comfort in this fact? That is the dark question that academics are daring to ask. In this talk we will anticipate a future conflict between the development of innovative methods to reduce unconscious bias and the public desire to retain unconscious bias – a bias that may allow the police to treat minority group members harshly by means that are easy to hide from scrutiny. We intend to use an experimental survey to test this conflict in the context of policing Asian Muslim terror suspects.