Does Race Affect Your Perception?

Nicholas Kristof, another NY Times columnist who should be a candidate for the Nobel Prize (for Peace), has an interesting link in today's column.

The link is to a game in which you "shoot" bad guys with guns. Some bad guys are white, some are black. But here's the trick: they're not all bad guys. Some of the men you see have guns in their hands, but some have cell phones or something else. You should not shoot men holding cell phones.

How long does it take you to decide? And is the time affected by whether the man is white or black?

The game keeps track, and gives you a summary like this, which was my own report:

Game Over
Your Score: 325
Average reaction time:
Black Armed:853.08ms
Black Unarmed:917.8ms
White Armed:912.08ms
White Unarmed:851.32ms

The game takes just a couple of minutes, but gives you something to think about for quite a while longer.