The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing Black children.

Abstract

The social category "children" defines a group of individuals who are perceived to be distinct, with essential characteristics including innocence and the need for protection (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000). The present research examined whether Black boys are given the protections of childhood equally to their peers. We tested 3 hypotheses: (a) that Black boys are seen as less "childlike" than their White peers, (b) that the characteristics associated with childhood will be applied less when thinking specifically about Black boys relative to White boys, and (c) that these trends would be exacerbated in contexts where Black males are dehumanized by associating them (implicitly) with apes (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008). We expected, derivative of these 3 principal hypotheses, that individuals would perceive Black boys as being more responsible for their actions and as being more appropriate targets for police violence. We find support for these hypotheses across 4 studies using laboratory, field, and translational (mixed laboratory/field) methods. We find converging evidence that Black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a less essential conception of childhood than do their White same-age peers. Further, our findings demonstrate that the Black/ape association predicted actual racial disparities in police violence toward children. These data represent the first attitude/behavior matching of its kind in a policing context. Taken together, this research suggests that dehumanization is a uniquely dangerous intergroup attitude, that intergroup perception of children is underexplored, and that both topics should be research priorities.

Anticipated Negative Police-Youth Encounters and Depressive Symptoms among Pregnant African American Women: A Brief Report

“…The results were significant for the presence of male children only which might reflect the mothers' fears that young black boys are perceived as being older and therefore more threatening, thus placing them at similar risk for negative police encounters as much older black males [30][31][32]. Mothers care for all of their children yet less is understood or acknowledged about when, and under what circumstances, black mothers' concerns about their daughters' potentially negative encounters with police arise.…”

How language shapes the cultural inheritance of categories

“…Attributing existing patterns of social inequities to hidden, inherent, and inalterable causes in individuals is an oversimplification that ignores structural and historical factors (117,118) and contributes to a variety of social ills, including stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination (102,(119)(120)(121)(122)(123)(124)(125). For example, essentialist beliefs about gender promote disrespect and lowered expectations toward girls and women in schools and academia (104,126), and essentialist beliefs about "Blackness" predict the perception of Black people as less than human, which subsequently predicts greater violence toward Black children and increased rates of applying the death penalty toward Black men in the United States courts system (127,128).…”

Baltimore Is Burning: Can I-O Psychologists Help Extinguish the Flames?

“…Given that people associate Blacks more than Whites with threat, crime, and danger (Correll, Urland, & Ito, 2006;Goff, Jackson, Di Leone, Culotta, & DiTomasso, 2014), researchers developed a computer simulation to examine the impact that these perceptions may have on police enforcement. Using the police officer's dilemma, or shooter-bias paradigm, approximately two dozen studies have been conducted on the biases that police officers too often express toward Black versus White individuals (e.g., Correll et al, 2014;Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002;Payne, 2001;Plant & Peruche, 2005).…”