Emotional Responses to Racially Disparate Policing

• In Event: Experimental Studies of Racial and Ethnic Prejudice

Abstract

The recent deaths of unarmed blacks at the hand of white police officers have sparked protests across the nation. Based on media images of these protests, protesters were visibly angered by these shootings. We conceptualize these events as racially traumatic stressful events (RTSEs) and argue that exposure to such RTSEs results in negative psychophysiological responses. Prior research has associated trauma with racial discrimination and racism. Carter (2006), for example, has used the term race-based traumatic stress (RBTS) in associating trauma with racism. Similarly, Smith (2011) argues that the accumulation of exposure to racism and discrimination can lead to what he has termed racial battle fatigue. These effects should of course be stronger among racial minorities than among whites, who are less likely to experience RTSEs. Also, some police interactions are more stressful than others; a routine traffic stop may be stressful, but a pretextual and potentially racially motivated event is more so to a minority citizen. Therefore we hypothesize that response will vary systematically along these dimensions: 1) Subjects of both races will have a stronger response when they believe the traffic incident is pretextual rather than legitimate; 2) Blacks will show a stronger response to all traffic stops, even legitimate ones; and 3) the difference in response from the legitimate to the pretextual stop will be stronger among blacks than whites.

Differences in psychophysiological responses are of real consequence politically – they matter not just to real-world reactions to policing, but to citizens’ policy preferences and political support. We plan to use a lab-experimental research design to examine data derived from two convenience samples, collected from a mixture of faculty, staff and students at a predominantly black university and a predominantly white university. Subjects will be exposed to a random set of still images that illustrate two types of treatments: Treatment 1: white officer, legitimate speeding or stop sign violation person treated with respect, ticket. Treatment 2: white officer, pretextual stop, search (maybe a canine search) of the car, no contraband found. After the experimental treatment, subjects will also complete a short online survey.

The stimuli will be drawn from both the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), and from recent crime news coverage in the US. The former images provide a baseline for psychophysiological reactions; the latter are our central focus. Each subject will be exposed to randomly-ordered stimuli, where prior to each image the subjects will be shown a blank screen, known as an interval stimulus interval (ISI), for 10 seconds. The ISI, too, serves as a baseline for comparison to the random stimuli. Psychophysiological responses are measured using skin conductance levels (SCL) to capture the magnitude of ‘fight or flight’ reactions to photos. Our expectation is that the same photos will induce rather different reactions across racial groups; and that this will be correlated with attitudes about policing, and crime policy more generally. We expect that results will highlight racial differences in reactions to policing, and the relevance of these emotional responses to attitudes about crime policy and governance.

Authors

• D' Andra Orey, Jackson State Universtiy

• Frank R. Baumgartner, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill