Exploring Shooter Bias through Virtual Reality

Elham Ebrahimi, Brennon James Treadwell, Jessica Caite Reich, Andrew Cannon Lawson

Abstract: This research endeavor aims to measure and examine the phenomena of shooter bias using virtual reality. Shooter bias is a form of implicit bias when an individual has attitudes toward people or associates stereotypes with them without that individual’s conscious knowledge. We posit that virtual reality is a uniquely powerful tool for studying shooter bias because it allows complete control over what participants see and facilitates precise data collection. For this study, we used eye-tracking. We examine what participants looked at during a series of virtual decision tasks with the intention of correlating this information with the phenomena of shooter bias. Our results provide some insights into detecting moments of shooter bias in the virtual environment. Experimental results indicate that participants spent more time looking at Black virtual human (VH) agents over White virtual human agents and took longer to make decisions when the agent of interest was Black.