White Americans' blame attributions and empathy towards Black victims of police violence: How pejorative stereotypes ‘engulf the field’

Abstract

We examined the dynamics of minority‐directed police violence by considering how our White participants' empathy for Black victims may be influenced by critical intragroup differences related to racial stereotyping. Although the role of stereotyping in reactions to Black Americans accused of crime is well‐established, we explore the influence of pejorative Black stereotypes on reactions to Black victims of police violence. Specifically, we investigated the roles of individual differences in the endorsement of the Black criminal stereotype among White observers and manipulated the crime‐unrelated stereotypicality (i.e. stereotypical, counterstereotypical) of Black victims of police violence. White US MTurk participants read about a White policeman shooting a Black man (Study 1, n = 140) or sexually assaulting a Black woman (Study 2, n = 166). Across both studies, strong stereotype endorsers reported relatively low empathy for stereotypical victims, mediated by greater blame towards those victims. This finding demonstrates the relevance of heretofore untested motivated reasoning processes in the outgroup empathy deficits literature. Weak stereotype endorsers showed relatively high empathy and low victim blame regardless of Black victim stereotypicality, indicating limited sensitivity to outgroup member suffering is not inevitable. We consider the practical implications of the findings for policing and for citizenship education.