Assertive, but Less Competent and Trustworthy? Perception of Police Officers with Tattoos and Piercings

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate whether police officers should be allowed to wear tattoos or piercings on visible parts of the body or not. One argument often brought forward against it is that such body modifications would cue negative evaluations of officers by citizens that would impede officers’ fulfillment of their duties. Yet, empirical evidence for this claim is missing. The present research aims to close this gap by examining how citizens perceive police officers with tattoos and piercings. In an experiment, participants saw edited photographs of police officers with and without tattoos (study 1) or piercings (study 2). They rated each officer regarding communion, agency, likability, respect, and threat. We found that, as expected, police officers with tattoos and piercings were perceived as less trustworthy and less competent, were liked somewhat less, and triggered higher perceptions of threat. In addition, police officers with tattoos (but not with piercings) were perceived as less friendly and more assertive. Regarding respect, we found no differences between officers with and without body modifications. While our empirical results cannot answer the societal and political question whether police officers should be allowed to wear tattoos and piercings or not, experimental psychological research can contribute to the respective discussions by providing an empirical basis. Our findings further have important theoretical implications, as the opposing effects on competence and assertiveness underline the importance of distinguishing between these two facets of agency in research on social perception and judgment.

Deviance as an historical artefact: a scoping review of psychological studies of body modification

“…Industrial or occupational psychology is a subfield of social psychology concerned with human relations in workrelated settings. A common theme in the concern over body modifications is how visible modifications will influence employability (e.g., Burgess and Clark, 2010;Dillingh et al, 2020;Flanagan and Lewis, 2019;Hauke-Forman et al, 2021;Tews et al, 2020;Thielgen et al, 2020;Timming et al, 2017;. Some studies relate to particular circumstances wherein bias toward body modifications could undermine interactions beyond employment status, such as in the courtroom (e.g., Funk and Todorov, 2013) or classroom or based on the specific imagery of a person's tattoos (e.g., Timming and Perrett, 2016).…”

Gender Typicality and Prestige of Occupational Aspirations in Adolescents: The Relevance of Agency and Communion

“…Conversely, masculine occupations involving impersonal tasks such as dealing with tools and machines might not require the agentic attributes used in boys' selfdescriptions (e.g., intelligent, strong, sporty). Another explanation could lie in recent findings showing that agency can be subdivided into two facets-ability/competence and volition/ assertiveness, and that these two facets can be perceived directly opposite by others-one can be perceived as less assertive, but more competent, and vice versa (e.g., Hauke-Forman et al, 2021). Thus, a similar mechanism might have been at play in the participants' self-descriptions and their relations to the gender typicality of occupational aspirations: The adolescents who described themselves with agentic attributes might have used attributes indicating either assertiveness or competence, which could have played different roles in the gender typicality of aspirations and canceled out each other's influence.…”