primed them — just like John Bargh did in the experiments
described in chapter 2 — by flashing either a black face or a
white face on a computer screen. Then Payne showed his
subjects either a picture of a gun or a picture of a wrench. The
image was on the screen for 200 milliseconds, and everyone
was supposed to identify what he or she had just seen on the
screen. It was an experiment inspired by the Diallo case. The
results were what you might expect. If you are primed with a
black face first, you’ll identify the gun as a gun a little more
quickly than if you are primed with a white face first. Then
Payne redid his experiment, only this time he sped it up.
Instead of letting people respond at their own pace, he forced
them to make a decision within 500 milliseconds — half a
second. Now people began to make errors. They were quicker
to call a gun a gun when they saw a black face first. But when
they saw a black face first, they were also quicker to call a
wrench a gun. Under time pressure, they began to behave just
as people do when they are highly aroused. They stopped
relying on the actual evidence of their senses and fell back on a
rigid and unyielding system, a stereotype.
“When we make a split-second decision,” Payne says, “we
are really vulnerable to being guided by our stereotypes and