The Ideal Police for the Kids? A Vignette Experiment Exploring Adults’ Views of Appropriate Law Enforcement Images for Children

• In Event: Police Legitimacy and Trust

Abstract

Americans’ attitudes toward the police are highly divided and polarized, now more than ever. Researchers have long concerned themselves with understanding these perceptions and how they are formed, largely focusing on factors at the individual-, neighborhood-, and society-level. However, one area of socialization that has largely been unexplored are what messaging adults feel is appropriate to be passed on to children. This is important because young children are a particularly vulnerable population and are likely to lack direct contact with the policy and rely on adults to understand the social institution of law enforcement. The current study uses a vignette experiment embedded in an online survey to investigate American adults’ preferences for messaging and views to children regarding viewing law enforcement as punitive warriors or benign rule keepers, and if such images vary based on the police officers’ race and gender, and if respondents of different demographic and political ideology groups view these images differently. Results from the study expand our understanding of the informal messages about law enforcement that may be delivered to children in everyday life.

Authors

• Luzi Shi, University of Rhode Island

• Megan M. Parry, University of Rhode Island