Author ORCID Identifier
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
Publication Title
Journal of Experimental Criminology
First Page
1
Last Page
29
Abstract
Objectives
Police legitimacy can hinge on what happens in police–civilian encounters, yet much remains unknown about the socio-psychological processes involved in these bilateral interactions, especially those affecting officers. We integrate insights from policing research with theories and findings from scholarship on moral psychology, interpersonal strain, and victimization fear to develop hypotheses about the situational effects of civilian demeanor on officers’ cognitions (suspicion and perceived danger) and emotions (anger, frustration, annoyance, and fear).
Methods
We administered a series of three randomized vignettes involving routine police–civilian encounters to 546 officers working in a large city in the southwestern United States. We randomized civilian behavior—compliant, bad attitude (compliant but disrespectful), or noncompliant—and the encounter type—offense-based versus dispatch-initiated.
Results
Demeanor exerts a large causal effect on what officers think and feel in police–civilian encounters. In each experiment, civilian hostility and disrespect increased officers’ self-reported suspicion, perceived danger, and antagonistic emotions (anger, frustration, and annoyance). In some cases, it also increased their fear.
Conclusions
Each of these cognitions and emotions may separately influence police decision-making, and each carries unique policy implications. Our results also suggest the efficacy of experimental surveys to unpack the dynamics of police–civilian interactions.
Recommended Citation
Nix, J., Pickett, J.T. & Mitchell, R.J. J Exp Criminol (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-019-09363-4
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Funded by the University of Nebraska at Omaha Open Access Fund
Comments
© The Author(s) 2019
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-019-09363-4