White perceivers typically report Black people as experiencing less pain than White people even when their faces display the same expressions of pain. In the present research, we examined whether medical resource scarcity would exacerbate this effect. Replicating previous findings, subjects evaluated Black pain as lower than White pain. Further, manipulating scarcity reduced perception of both Black and White pain, with Black people’s pain rated the lowest when medical resources were scarce. This suggests a potentially pernicious additive effect by which Black patients who seek scarce medical treatments—e.g., during a global pandemic—may have their pain most severely discounted, worsening existing racial health disparities. Current follow-up studies are testing the effects of discounted Black pain under scarcity on a behavioral measure of resource allocation.

We often make judgments about what is reasonable, which can influence consequential decisions—such as whether to indict someone in a legal trial.

In two experiments (n = 1,885), we took a situated cognition perspective to assess how judgments of a target’s actions can be influenced by context. We randomly assigned each participant to evaluate an “objectively reasonable officer” or an equivalent control, as this is the legalese used in excessive force cases. Initial results showed participants’ judgments under the objectively reasonable standard were more favorable and this effect was moderated by race, such that non-White participants described the objectively reasonable officer more positively than White participants. 

In a pre-registered replication, we observed that Black and White Americans’ priors regarding police officers significantly differed in the absence of the objectively reasonable standard, but that their judgments of the officer were positive and statistically equivalent when this standard was invoked (as it is in actual court cases). 

Thus, the context surrounding our judgments of reasonableness might itself influence the objectivity of those evaluations.