Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Baylor University, One Bear Place 97334, Waco, TX, 76798, USA.
Department of Psychological Sciences, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
Sci Rep. 2020 Nov 25;10(1):20581. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-77522-z.
Violent behavior, police brutality, and racial discrimination are currently at the forefront of society's attention, and they should be. We investigated whether mild sleep loss-as typical for many adults throughout the work week-could aggravate the socio-emotional-cognitive processes contributing to violence and discrimination. In a sample of 40 healthy young adults, we either experimentally restricted participants' sleep for four nights (6.2 h/night) or let participants obtain normal sleep (7.7 h/night)-and then had them complete the Police Officer's Dilemma Task. In this computerized task, the participant must rapidly decide to shoot or not shoot at White and Black men who either are or are not holding a gun. Results showed significant racial biases, including more and quicker shooting of Black targets compared to White targets. Furthermore, signal detection analyses demonstrated that mild sleep restriction changed participants' decision criterion, increasing the tendency to shoot, even when controlling for psychomotor vigilance, fluid intelligence, and self-reported desirability to behave in a socially acceptable manner. The increased tendency to shoot was also observed in participants who reported believing that they had adapted to the sleep loss. Future experimental research using trained police officers will help establish the generalizability of these laboratory effects. Importantly, sleep loss is modifiable via organization-level changes (e.g., shift scheduling, light entrainment) and individual-level interventions (e.g., sleep hygiene education, incentives for behavioral change), suggesting that if sleep loss is corrected, it could save lives-including Black lives.
暴力行为、警察暴力和种族歧视是当前社会关注的焦点，这是理所当然的。我们研究了轻度睡眠缺失（如许多成年人在整个工作周中常见的情况）是否会加剧导致暴力和歧视的社会情感认知过程。在 40 名健康的年轻成年人样本中，我们要么实验性地限制参与者的睡眠 4 晚（每晚 6.2 小时），要么让参与者正常睡眠（每晚 7.7 小时），然后让他们完成警察困境任务。在这个计算机化的任务中，参与者必须迅速决定是否向拿着或不拿着枪的白人或黑人开枪。结果显示出明显的种族偏见，包括与白人目标相比，黑人目标的枪击次数更多、速度更快。此外，信号检测分析表明，轻度睡眠限制改变了参与者的决策标准，增加了开枪的倾向，即使在控制了精神运动警觉性、流体智力和自我报告的以社会可接受的方式行事的愿望之后也是如此。在报告说已经适应了睡眠不足的参与者中，也观察到了这种开枪的倾向增加。使用训练有素的警察进行的未来实验性研究将有助于确定这些实验室效应的普遍性。重要的是，睡眠不足可以通过组织层面的改变（例如，轮班安排、光照调节）和个人层面的干预（例如，睡眠卫生教育、行为改变的激励措施）来纠正，这表明如果纠正睡眠不足，它可以挽救生命，包括黑人的生命。
