Judgmental asymmetry in the exercise of police discretion

Abstract

Police officers and probationer constables rated 40 sets of circumstances as to how far each would influence them to prosecute or not prosecute a motorist stopped for speeding. The distribution of responses about the ipsative means exhibited an asymmetry, consistent with the maximum salience bias towards a negative proportion of lle (Tuohy and Stradling, 1987). This asymmetry occurred in both directions, differentiating between a minority group for whom 'prosecute' was the negative pole and a majority for whom 'not prosecute' was negative. These groups did not differ significantly on overall mean rating, but did so on the primary underlying factor ('lack of deference'), where the former group was significantly more likely to prosecute. Significant differences were also found between probationer and experienced officers in their susceptibility to the bias, and in their distribution between the two groups. This paper reports on part of a large-scale investigation into discretionary practices in a major provincial police force in Britain. The substantive findings are detailed elsewhere (Roberts, Harper, Stradling and Quinn, 1988;Stradling and Harper, 1988); the present analysis, however, warrants separate treatment on a number of grounds. Firstly, in identifying distinct attitudinal schemas in a specific area of police work, the findings have potentially important implications for force training and operational administration. Secondly, in addition to what they suggest about the bases of discretionary judgment by police officers, the findings bear on a number of theoretical issues of some interest and complexity, notably the pervasive asymmetry of evaluative judgment (Adams-Webber, 1979) and its relationship to the mediation of affect (Tuohy, 1987). Methodologically, they also confirm and extend previous findings (Tuohy and Stradling, 1987), and show that judgemental asymmetry constitutes a useful technique whereby psychological differences may be identified as underlying actions in real-world situations.The relevant part of the investigation consisted of an instrument which was originally devised for use in a study of probationer constables (Harper, 1989). The

Seeing themselves as others see them: Scottish police officers' metaperceptions of public opinion

“…Two groups of subjects were studied. The police group consisted of 165 Scottish police officers (154 M and 11 F), with a mean age of 34.1 years (SD=7.1); the low number of female respondents in this group reflects the relatively small proportion of women in the police service (Stradling et al, 1990;Walklate, 1992). The rank structure of the sample was as follows: 114 constables, 11 detective constables, 22 sergeants, seven detective sergeants, five inspectors, two detective inspectors, and one superintendent (three respondents did not disclose their rank).…”

Asymmetric relations in positive and negative evaluations of acquaintances

“…Tuohy also saw "maximal differentiation of negative evaluation as a basic operating characteristic of the affective mediator" (p. 49). For example, Stradling et al (1990) reported that when 522 police officers and probation constables rated 40 sets of circumstances as to how far each would influence them to prosecute or not prosecute a motorist stopped for speeding, "the distribution of responses about the ipsative means exhibited an asymmetry, consistent with the maximum salience bias towards a negative proportion of lle" (p. 409), that is, approximately 37%. Tuohfs hypothesis seems consistent with Lefebvre's (1990,199213) proposal that an automatic mechanism for "fast reflexion" determines that the overall proportion of negative judgments will be, on average, close to 0.37.…”

Positive‐negative asymmetry in normative data

“…Presumably the ratings reported by Toglia et al reflect operations carried out at the schematic or conceptual levels defined by Leventhal and Scherer; it can be suggested, however, that the effects of an early informational tendency may continue to reverberate through higher levels and later stages of this hypothetical SEC process. Such an on-going reverberation, although normally over-written by later processing characteristics, would give the informational mechanism the status of a 'weak background force' (Stradling, Tuohy and Harper, 1990), and would account for the covert nature of its effects in normative data.…”