Overview of Research on Attitudes Towards the Police
The Civilian's Dilemma
Over two decades of research in social psychology examines the implications of threat processes for police officers' decisions to use lethal force. Yet very little work focuses on civilians' threat processing of the police, despite the fact that police-civilian interactions incur the possibility of danger for both parties. Towards addressing this gap, this line of research focuses on civilians’ automatic threat evaluations of the police, factors that promote these evaluations, and their implications for perceptions of and defensive responses toward the police.
Implications for Explicit Attitudes, Trust, and Police Contact
Our earliest research on automatic attitudes toward the police focused on teasing apart the implications of police-danger and police-negative associations for explicit perceptions of the police. The idea is that people might form summary views of the police as a function of evaluating them as sources of danger or associating them with various other forms of negativity (such as sources of racial bias or threats to freedom). In two studies we simultaneously operationalized police-danger and police-negative associations using three separate affect misattribution procedures (AMPs; an indirect measure of associations) we consistently found police-danger evaluations to predict explicit perceptions ("POPS" scores) of the police over-above police-negative associations. We replicated this pattern in a more recent study and found police-danger associations to also predict less trust in the police and less intention to contact the police when in personal danger.
Automatic Police-Danger Associations (AMP Scores)
Police-Threat Associations and Perceptions of Police Aggression Mutually Reinforcing
mediated by self-reported perceptions of officer aggression. A third study tested whether perceived aggression-induced increases in the police-threat association shape later perceptions of police aggression. Participants completed the same procedure as Study 2 before viewing arrest videos that were moderate in police violence. We replicated the effect of perceiving aggression on attitude change. Additionally, among those who initially viewed high aggression arrests, increases in the police-threat association were associated with stronger perceptions of aggression in the later viewed videos.
S2: Change in Police-Threat Association
High Hostility
Low Hostility
Time 2 Police-Threat Association
Arrest Video Condition
The advent of body worn cameras and ubiquity of digital and social media have made it easier than ever to witness police aggression firsthand. Our most recent project on police-threat associations sought to understand if and how witnessing violent policing shapes police-threat attitudes. A first study established that the extent which one automatically associates the police with threat (on an AMP) is positively associated with their perceptions of officer aggression in observed arrests. In a second study, participants completed a baseline measure of automatic police-threat associations, before viewing videos of (a) high hostility or (b) low hostility arrests and completing a follow-up measure of police-threat associations. Controlling for baseline associations, viewing high compared to low hostility arrests increased the strength of the police-threat association. This effect was fully
Aggression-Induced Change In
The Police-Threat Association
Increase in Strength
Decrease in Strength
Perceived Officer Aggression in
Later Viewed Arrests
High Host.. Cond.
Low Host. Cond.
S3: Change in Police-Threat Association Shapes Later Perceived Aggression
S3: Change in Police-Threat Association
Time 2 Police-Threat Association
Arrest Video Condition
High Hostility
Low Hostility
People Exhibit Defensive Behaviors in Response to Police
Faced with threats to physical harm, humans exhibit a cascade of automatic bodily and behavioral responses tailored to minimize harm. Responses to threat include initial physiological preparations, followed by defensive flight, freeze, and aggressive behaviors. A police-threat association implies the possibility that civilians evince automatic defensive responses upon encountering police. I recently tested this idea in three studies:
1. Civilians exhibit speeded avoidance of police
One way psychologists measure defensive flight (or avoidance) is using joystick approach-avoidance tasks (AATs). In AATs, participants are instructed to rapidly "approach" or "avoid" certain classes of stimuli based on peripheral features (such as cropped shape) by pushing or pulling a joystick. The content of cropped or bordered images are task irrelevant, yet nonetheless indirectly influence approach and/or avoidance latency. For example, people typically exhibit speeded avoidance to stimuli with embedded threat images such as snakes or spiders. Using an AAT, we found that people show speeded avoidance to police compared to non-police (firefighters, EMTs, casually dressed civilians).
2. Civilians exhibit enhanced freeze responses to police
Human defensive freeze responses are typically measured by assessing whole-body postural sway. People "freeze"-- or exhibit diminished shifts in center-of-pressure (sway) across time -- when viewing threats compared to non-threats. In our work, we find that people freeze to police compared to non-police. To the left is a graph depicting mean differences in variability of forward-back sway to police compared to non-police. Below are two graphs depicting sway to police and non-police across 90 second blocked stimulus presentations (left is a single representative participant, right is the grand mean).
3. Civilians exhibit larger defensive physiological responses to police
Changes in peripheral physiology are integral in the human threat response. A widely studied defensive physiological response is the potentiation of the startle eye-blink reflex. The startle eye-blink reflex is adapted to protect the eyes during audio or tactile startle. Under perceived threat, the magnitude of the startle eye-blink is enhanced (people blink harder), which reflects a muscular (physiological) preparation to respond defensively. Using facial electromyography to measure the magnitude of an audio induced startle eye-blink, we find police relative to non-police images to produce potentiated blinks. That is, civilians exhibit an enhanced physiological preparation to respond defensively to police compared to non-police.
