Black and blue: Exploring racial bias and law enforcement in the killings of unarmed black male civilians.

Abstract

In late 2014, a series of highly publicized police killings of unarmed Black male civilians in the United States prompted large-scale social turmoil. In the current review, we dissect the psychological antecedents of these killings and explain how the nature of police work may attract officers with distinct characteristics that may make them especially well-primed for negative interactions with Black male civilians. We use media reports to contextualize the precipitating events of the social unrest as we ground our explanations in theory and empirical research from social psychology and industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology. To isolate some of the key mechanisms at play, we disentangle racial bias (e.g., stereotyping processes) from common characteristics of law enforcement agents (e.g., social dominance orientation), while also addressing the interaction between racial bias and policing. By separating the moving parts of the phenomenon, we provide a more fine-grained analysis of the factors that may have contributed to the killings. In doing so, we endeavor to more effectively identify and develop solutions to eradicate excessive use of force during interactions between "Black" (unarmed Black male civilians) and "Blue" (law enforcement).

Lay evaluations of police and civilian use of force: Action severity scales.

“…Lemoine, 2017)). Other experimental research in psychology has used time-restricted decision-making tasks (e.g., the "shooter task"), but these studies have almost exclusively focused on biases by police and civilians in the application of force (Correll et al, 2007;Hall, Hall, Perry, & Hall, 2016) rather than on moral evaluations of force from the perspective of lay observers.…”

Lay evaluations of police and civilian use of force: Action severity scales

“…Such an approach is useful for understanding deadly force but is unlikely to generalize to all levels of force, in part because deadly force is extreme and rare (as rare as a person being struck by lightning, Eith & Durose, 2011;Lemoine, 2017)). Other experimental research in psychology has used time-restricted decision-making tasks (e.g., the "shooter task"), but these studies have almost exclusively focused on biases by police and civilians in the application of force (Correll et al, 2007;Hall, Hall, Perry, & Hall, 2016) rather than on moral evaluations of force from the perspective of lay observers.…”

Moderated mediation in multilevel structural equation models: Decomposing effects of race on math achievement within versus between high schools in the United States.

“…This effect may operate directly, but it can also function indirectly through collective SES, which further reflects the problems of poorer neighborhoods and schools (e.g., Pickett & Pearl, 2001). As a moderator, gender composition could influence these effects because of the different ways that black males and females are collectively treated (Hall et al, 2016;Wingfield, 2007).…”