Social Interactionism of Charles Tilly Social Psychology

Questions: 1. What is/are the research question(s) addressed in this study? (Note: remember that this is a question and should end in a question mark.) 2. What is/are the research hypothesis/hypotheses in this study? (Note: remember that this is/are the proposed answer(s) to the question(s).) 3. Who/what are the participants in this study?(Note: remember to include the number of participants, who/what they were, and information on how they were recruited to participate.) 4. What materials were used to gather data? (Note: remember to include the names and citations of surveys if they were used, as well as detailed information on any other materials,) 5. What was the procedure used in this study?(Note: remember to provide detailed information about what the participants actually experienced.) 6. What was/were the researcher(s) conclusions? (Note: remember to compare these results to what the researcher(s) originally hypothesized.) 7. What is/are the implication(s) of this study? (Note: remember to include your opinion of why these findings are important.) 8. What is a methodological strength of this study? (Note: remember to include strengths of the way the study was conducted, not something great about what the researchers found.) 9. What is a methodological limitation of this study? (Note: remember to include limitations of the way the study was conducted, not something problematic about what the researchers found.) 10. If you were to follow-up this research, what question would you choose to address? Answers: 1. What is/are the research question(s) addressed in this study? The research questions addressed in this study are: Are the police officers influenced by the racial biasness in dealing with criminals? Can the biasness be eliminated by repeated exposure to computer simulation? 2. What is/are the research hypothesis/hypotheses in this study? The research hypotheses are: Police officers responses to criminal suspects are influenced by the suspects race The racial biasness can be overcome by training and computer simulation 3. Who/what are the participants in this study?(Note: remember to include the number of participants, who/what they were, and information on how they were recruited to participate.) The participants in the study are 50 certified sworn law-enforcement personnel in the state of Florida. There were 83% male and the rest were females. Among the males there were 84% White, 10% Black, 2% Native Americans and 4% Hispanic. The average age of the participants were 37 years and out of the 50 respondents there were, two of the officer made very few valid responses and thus the study was conducted on 48 participants. 4. What materials were used to gather data? In order to test the hypotheses, computer simulation was used. This simulation was used previously at a study by Plant et al. the programme uses a Inquisit software that instructed the participants to follow certain guidelines and instructions. The program presented to the participants with digital color photographs of nine Black and nine White males of college standard; they were selected from a set of pictures matched for attractiveness. A picture of a gun or a neutral object (e.g., wallet, cell phone), formatted to be equivalent in size and background, was superimposed on each of the faces. The gun or other object was positioned with the face still visible, but the location varied so that participants could not predict where the object would appear. Two stimuli were created for each face, one with a gun and one with a neutral object (Collins, 2010). On each trial, the computer program randomly selected one of the pictures and displayed it on the screen. So that the program would be challenging, the picture randomly appeared toward the top, middle, or bottom of the screen and toward the right, center, or left of the screen. Each picture appeared on screen until the participant responded or until the 630-ms time limit elap sed. When a participant did not make a correct decision (i.e., hit the wrong key or exceeded the time limit), an error message appeared on screen for a full second. Each participant completed 20 practice trials and 160 test trials. 5. What was the procedure used in this study? The procedure that was carried was that the officers were asked to meet the experiments individually in the private offices at headquarter of the departments. They were asked to sit at a desk with laptops in the front ('Social Psychology Quarterly: Article Index to Volume 74: 2011', 2011). They were told that the study was about the decisions to shoot and how the different factors influence the decision to shoot. The participants read the consent form and they agreed to participate in the simulation. They did not sign the forms as the anonymity was to be kept ensured. The experimenter provided the instructions to the participants regarding the computer simulation, and the participants did their task. After the simulation was over, participants were debriefed about the experiment and thanked for their participation. 6. What was/were the researcher(s) conclusions? The aim of this study that was hypothesized was to demonstrate that racial biases in responses to criminal suspects. It was seen that although it was present among some police officers, it was not inevitable and can be overcome with training on a computer simulation in which race is non diagnostic. 7. What is/are the implication(s) of this study? (Note: remember to include your opinion of why these findings are important.) Theses implications are important as because the decision of the police regarding shooting of the criminal based on the racial biasness could be understood. It was seen that they mistakenly shot the black suspects more than the white suspects in the early trial, but it was corrected after the simulation (Correll, Park, Judd Wittenbrink, 2002). It was seen that unlike much of the previous work that demonstrated the existence of racial biases in the decisions to shoot and in weapon identification, the current study is heartening and indicates that, although such biases exist in police officers responses to computer simulations, they are not inevitable and may be eliminated. 8. What is a methodological strength of this study? The methodological strength of the study was that to find whether the performance of the participants in the simulation task revealed less bias on the later trials than the earlier trials, it was split into two parts. The responses of the trails of the first half were compared to the responses of the second half. The error scores were submitted to a formula: 2 (race of suspect: Black vs. White) * 2 (object: gun vs. neutral) * 2 (trial: early vs. late) Then the object ANOVA was conducted for the early as well as the late trials 9. What is a methodological limitation of this study? The limitations were that the sample sizes small and it does not represent the whole police force. Thus there remains the problem that the racial discrimination can exist among the police. Moreover they were not tested regularly in order to check their progress. 10. If you were to follow-up this research, what question would you choose to address? It is hoped that is that the current work will provides a critical first step towards the understanding of the factors that influence and also eliminate the racial biases in police officers responses to the criminal suspects (Kelley, 2000). There is a question that can be raised is that the simulation can make the policemen sort out the difference of the biasness, but whether it will have a long lasting effect on them? References Collins, R. (2010). The Contentious Social Interactionism of Charles Tilly. Social Psychology Quarterly. doi:10.1177/0190272509359616 Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C., Wittenbrink, B. (2002). The police officer's dilemma: Using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 83(6), 1314-1329. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.83.6.1314 Kelley, H. (2000). The Proper Study of Social Psychology. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(1), 3. doi:10.2307/2695877 Social Psychology Quarterly: Article Index to Volume 74: 2011. (2011). Social Psychology Quarterly, 74(4), 441-442. doi:10.1177/0190272511427896