"When your heart is pounding fiercely, the probability of a wrong judgment increases, " reads the article published Slate.fr portal.

Research published in Nature Communications discovered, that when we are finding ourselves face to face with a potential danger, consciously or subconsciously, our heart rate exacerbates racial prejudices.
The participants of the research (all white) had to decide which object a white or a black man had in his hand on the pictures:  a phone or a gun. Once the choice has been made in systolic time intervals, there increased 10 percent of the believe among volunteers, that a black man was armed, although that was not the case. This conclusion is confirmed also by other experiments, conducted with the participation of students and the police.

It has been proved, how the wrong judgments, born as a result of racial prejudice, can be devastating,. The fact is that individuals are more prone to mistakes, when they see the object in a black man’s hand. For example, they might mistake a screwdriver with a  gun and launch a shot in order to defend themselves of an illusory threat , writes the article.