Examining Racial Profiling from a Cognitive Perspective

Department or Administrative Unit

Law and Justice

Document Type

Article

Author Copyright

© Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA

Publication Date

9-2011

Journal

International Journal of Humanities and Social Science

Abstract

This paper examines the issue of racial profiling from a cognitive perspective. This approach emphasizes that misunderstanding of probability regarding the correlation between race and crime plays a role in prompting racial profiling. The misunderstanding consists of the confusion of relative frequency and absolute frequency of the correlation and ignoring the probability of committing the statistical Type I error. In addition, it analyzes two cognitive errors that may contribute to the false probability thinking.

Comments

This article was originally published in International Journal of Humanities and Social Science. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

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