Attitudes Toward the Police: The Effects of Direct and Vicarious Experience

Abstract

Researchers have emphasized the importance of direct encounters with the police as a determinant of attitudes toward the police, yet cross-sectional studies allow for limited causal inference. This study includes the measurement of attitudes before and after encounters with the police among African American, Hispanic, and White residents of Chicago. Contrary to previous research, direct contact with the police during the past year is not enough to change attitudes, but vicarious experience (i.e., learning that someone else has had a good or bad encounter with the police) does influence attitudes in a predictable manner. Also, residents’ initial attitudes about the police play a critical role in shaping their judgments of subsequent direct and indirect experiences as well as their future attitudes. The findings are discussed in terms of stereotypes about the police that are resistant to change.

Race and Justice System Attitude Formation During the Transition to Adulthood

“…Finally, this study did not examine the effects of vicarious justice system exposure on the development of attitudes towards the justice system. In accordance with the social developmental model [20], vicarious experiences with authorities likely shape youths' attitudes towards the justice system [9,12,22,45]. Although emerging research suggests that vicarious negative experiences with justice system actors affect attitudes towards the justice system [13,15], research has not examined whether these effects are limited to family members or friends, or if effects vary by developmental timing.…”

Organizational stressors and police performance

“…The message received by the public from a police officer as he or she carries out his or her duty leaves a lasting impression about the organization. Police-citizen encounters that produce conflict and negative emotion are long-lasting and vastly remembered over those interactions that produce collaboration (Dean, 1980;Rosenbaum, et al, 2005;Weitzer and Tuch, 2005). If police officers are laboring under stress and treat citizens in a differential manner, then a negative image of the organization may be imprinted, where trust and legitimacy are vitiated; trust and legitimacy once lost are not easily regained.…”

Mirage of Police Reform: Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy

“…The effects of each contact on the attitude of the citizen participant are quite modest. The effects may be somewhat greater when we take account of both direct and indirect experiences, as the effects of vicarious experience ripple through circles of relatives, friends, and neighbors (Miller et al 2003;Rosenbaum et al 2005). The effects may be greater still as they accumulate across many contacts: in a single year, even in a fairly small city, police handle tens of thousands of calls for service, make thousands of arrests, issue thousands of traffic and other tickets, and have innumerable other contacts with the public.…”

“…The correlation reflects reciprocal causal effects: satisfaction with the individual contact affects more global satisfaction with the police, but more global attitudes toward the police also shape the perceived quality of police performance in individual police-citizen encounters Rosenbaum et al 2005;Tyler 1987Tyler , 1990. Most of the research that reports on this correlation is cross-sectional, and so it is unable to tease the reciprocal effects apart; multiwave panel surveys are necessary, providing for interviewing the same respondents at two (or more) points in time.…”