General perceptions of police mediate relationships between police contact and anticipated police behavior in imagined roadside encounters

Sargent, Rikki H.; Caselli, Abigail J; Machia, Laura V.; Newman, Leonard S.

doi:10.1007/s12144-020-00952-5

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Although beliefs about police officers are thought to result from previous positive or negative experiences with law enforcement (Bartsch & Cheurprakobkit, 2004), ACT predicts that even those who have never interacted with the police have fundamental sentiments about them that influence expectations (Sargent et al, 2020). Following from ACT, if someone believes a police officer is good, then they will expect them to behave benevolently toward others who are also good.…”

Section: Perceptions Of Police and Police Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreting Events Involving Police: Liberals, Conservatives, and Moderates in the Face of Ambiguity

Collett,

Pierce

2023

Advances in Group Processes

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Purpose: We show political divisions in perceptions of police officers even before the divisive political and social events of 2016. We do so using respondents' interpretations of surprising and ambiguous headlines involving police officers (e.g., assumptions about what happened or who was involved).Methodology/Approach: We use affect control theory's ABO event structure and derivations of this structure to construct a set of headlines that describe ostensibly good people (A) doing bad things (B) to other good people (O) or are ambiguous on one or more of these components. We present 517 MTurk respondents with a set of 7 headlines and collect quantitative and qualitative data on their reactions to, and interpretations of, these headline events.Findings: Police headlines generate interest among readers. When interpreting events, respondents are less likely to modify or redefine police officers compared to other actors However, assumptions related to ambiguous events involving police differ by political orientation. Liberals view police more negatively than conservatives, in part because they imagine them doing worse things to slightly better people. Qualitative analyses support and shed light on the mechanisms underlying this and other partisan effects.Research Limitations: The research was designed to examine interest in headline structure, not specific actors. Thus, the patterns unique to police and political differences were not an original focus. We believe these inductive results are informative, but a study expressly designed to test hypotheses regarding perceptions of events with police officers is recommended for future work.Practical and Social Implications: Understanding the political divide in perceptions of police and the potential of media coverage for exacerbating these effects is essential and related to ACTs growing interest in meaning divergence.

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Section: Perceptions Of Police and Police Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreting Events Involving Police: Liberals, Conservatives, and Moderates in the Face of Ambiguity

Collett,

Pierce

2023

Advances in Group Processes

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show abstract

“…In light of these events, we collected a second, independent wave of data ( n = 386) in the fall of 2020, to examine if attitudes toward police (implicit fear of police) had changed after the events of the summer. Given that one of the factors that impact explicit attitudes toward police officers is living in a community where information regarding police encounters is shared (e.g., Carr et al, 2007; Dirikx et al, 2012; Sargent et al, 2020), as was happening freely in news outlets and on social media throughout the summer and fall of 2020, and given that implicit attitudes may be a reflection of cultural knowledge (e.g., Devine, 1989; Verhaeghen et al, 2011), we hypothesized that implicit bias against police officers would be more widely found in this second sample compared to the first.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Police as threat: The influence of race and the summer of Black Lives Matter on implicit and explicit attitudes towards the police

Verhaeghen

Aikman

2022

Journal Community Psychology

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Police officers partially rely on implicit and explicit stereotypes in their interactions with the public. We investigated if these attitudes are reciprocated, specifically, if people of color implicitly fear police, and whether the events of the summer of 2020 changed the public's attitudes about police. Seven hundred and fifty‐nine college students (235 BIPOC) participated, 373 in 2019, 386 in fall 2020. BIPOC participants more readily implicitly associated police officers with threat; implicit police‐as‐threat scores increased after the summer of 2020 regardless of race. Explicit attitudes showed the same pattern: BIPOC participants had less favorable attitudes of police; participants in Fall 2020 had less favorable attitudes of police. Implicit attitudes were predicted by race, time, the experience of being treated with (dis)respect, and an emphasis on the binding aspect of morality. Explicit attitudes were predicted by the same variables, as well as specific community variables, the moral foundation of individualizing, and implicit attitudes.

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The impact of parenting style on perceptions of police and offending intentions of young drivers: evidence from Australia

Bates

Seccombe

Alexander

et al. 2022

Crime Prev Community Saf

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General perceptions of police mediate relationships between police contact and anticipated police behavior in imagined roadside encounters

Cited by 5 publications

References 18 publications

Interpreting Events Involving Police: Liberals, Conservatives, and Moderates in the Face of Ambiguity

Interpreting Events Involving Police: Liberals, Conservatives, and Moderates in the Face of Ambiguity

Police as threat: The influence of race and the summer of Black Lives Matter on implicit and explicit attitudes towards the police

The impact of parenting style on perceptions of police and offending intentions of young drivers: evidence from Australia

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