White civilians’ implicit danger evaluation of police officers underlies explicit perception of police

Abstract

The role of implicit processes during police-civilian encounters is well studied from the perspective of the police. Decades of research on the “shooter bias” suggests that implicit Black-danger associations potentiate the perception of threat of Black individuals, leading to a racial bias in the decision to use lethal force. Left understudied are civilians’ possible associations of police with danger and how such associations pervade behavior and explicit views of the police. The current work begins to address this gap. In two within-subjects studies, we separately assess police-threat (i.e., safety/danger) and police-valence (i.e., good/bad) associations as well as their relative influences on explicit perceptions of police. Study 1 revealed that implicit threat evaluations (police-danger associations) more strongly predicted negative explicit views of the police compared to implicit valence evaluations (police-negative associations). Study 2 replicated these findings and suggests that individuals evaluate the police as more dangerous versus negative when each response is pitted against each other within single misattribution procedure trials. The possible implications for explicit attitudes toward police reform and behavior during police-civilian encounters are discussed.

Exploring+the+Effects+of+Vicarious+Exposure+to+Police+Violence+on+Implicit+and+Explicit+Perceptions+of+the+Police

“…the Chinese iconograph) is influenced by their implicit evaluation of the prime stimulus (e.g., police officer), effectively measuring one9s implicit attitude towards police officers. Previous work using the AMP has shown that people associate threat more with police than non-police (Olivett & March, 2021) and I expected similar results.…”

“…These may include a lowered trust in police, more negative perceptions of law enforcement, and a change in behavioral intentions towards police such as an aversion to calling the police for help or a refusal to comply with police orders. Implicit attitudes towards police have been shown to be associated with explicit attitudes (i.e., how much people self-report liking or dislike the police, Olivett & March, 2021;Stults, 2023), yet the role of vicarious exposure to violence in establishing an explicit lack of trust in or negative beliefs towards police remains unstudied. As public perceptions and trust regarding police may play a pivotal role in establishing positive police-civilian relations, it is imperative to further investigate the relationship between exposure to police violence and trust in police.…”

The civilian’s dilemma: Civilians exhibit automatic defensive responses to the police.

“…Yet, police-danger associations and defensive responses might also affect several other downstream attitudes and behaviors absent or prior to a police presence. Our previous work, for example, demonstrates that automatic police-threat attitudes predict more negative explicit attitudes of the police over and above automatic police-negative evaluations (Olivett & March, 2021). Meaning, police-threat associations are a negative influence on explicit attitudes of the police.…”

“…Although the explicit attitudes measured by Olivett and March (2021) captured general positive-to-negative views of the police, automatic police-danger evaluations may also relate to more specific attitudes about policing and police reform. Supporting this idea, self-reported emotional fear of the police predicts support for defunding the police, as well as intentions to engage in defensive legal socialization (i.e., having “the talk” about the police with one’s children; Pickett et al, 2022).…”

“…Just as perceiving a human threat may encourage defensive responses among police officers, police-threat perceptions among civilians may sometimes result in associated defensive behavioral responses. Supporting the idea that encountering police may activate threat processes is our recent work showing that people automatically associate the police with physical threat (Olivett & March, 2021). Building on those associations, the current work furthers the idea that civilians may not only perceive police officers as a physical threat but may also respond defensively to the threat.…”