Friends of the Forensic Science Club, this week we present the paper “Racial Essentialism and Stress: a Deadly Combination for Prospective Police Officers’ Encounters with Black Suspects” de Tawa, J. (2022), in which the author carries out an experiment to know how stress and racial stereotypes affect police when suspects are not caucasian people.
We have seen on many occasions how police violence against black people is exposed on social networks or in the media, becoming a phenomenon that is unprecedented in today’s contemporary society.
Documented analysis of police shootings generally finds that black suspects are disproportionately killed relative to white suspects. However, these analysis cannot study all variables that influence police action.
Previous studies have successfully carried out experiments where participants had to make decisions in real time that would be affected by their racial prejudices and would make them choose between using deadly force or not.
Typically, in these studies, participants sat in front of a computer and viewed images of black and white suspectes, who were armed and unarmed, and were asked questions about the photograph, such as whether or not they would shoot.
What must be questioned about these studies, among other things, is that the programs that analyze the results do not infer types of affective states, such as psychological stress, or the cognitive processes experienced by police officers who make decisions on the use of lethal force in unpredictable, high-pressure situations.
The author points out, in an attempt to find an explanation for these events, the idea of stress and racial bias. It is possible that one affects the other, depending on the extent to which the participants believe in racial prejudices, for example, believing that black people are naturally aggressive and unpredictable.
Research on “attentional control theory” suggests that when people are under stress, they tend to disproportionately allocate visual attention to stimuli they perceive as threatening. Therefore, it is logical that those who essentialize race and believe in the stereotypes associated with it, pay excessive attention to black suspects.
It is for this reason that identifying the way in which these stereotypes, stress and visual attention interact with each other could be of great help in the development of police training programs.
But what is the real data so far? In a study regarding shootings in St. Louis that took place between 2003 and 2012, it was found that incidents of community violence within black communities accounted for the highest percentage of police use of deadly force.
There are experts in the scientific community who support the idea that this happens simply because there are objectively higher levels of threat of violence towards police officers. However, other studies have found evidence that communities with higher numbers of black people experience higher levels of police use of deadly force, even when there is no objective threat.
All of this suggests to us that the level of deadly force used by police officers may be the result of their subjective perceptions of violent threat, and these perceptions may be influenced by racist stereotypes, such as the idea, for example, that black people are more dangerous.
Another important fact is that, at the time of writing the article, an analysis published that African-American men and women represented 22.9% of deaths at the hands of police, despite being approximately 13% of the population of the United States of America.
Despite the valuable contributions that have been made to try to shed light on the subject, laboratory experiments have several limitations, including the fact that they do not induce affective states (such as stress when experiencing a real situation) or cognitive processes.
Therefore, the author carries out his own experiment where he tries to correct this limitation. To do this, he filmed a series of scenarios with interactions between a suspect, sometimes white and sometimes black, and a police officer, with a 360º video camera, which can be seen with virtual reality glasses in a very immersive way. Stress was measured by pupil dilation, which has already been shown to be a reliable indicator of stress.
49 people participated, 98% of them were born in the US and all were white. They were told that they should shoot the suspect if they felt his or someone else’s life was in danger.
The results obtained are in line with what is expected. Neither stress nor racial essentialism had a direct impact on the care of black suspects separately, but in combination, they did.
The idea that stress can harm but also improve performance is not new. Perhaps then, in the absence of racial stereotyping, participants have some freedom to allocate cognitive resources to detecting social contextual cues within a pressured environment; facilitating the obtaining of clues about the real danger or the innocence of the suspect.
The most encouraging aspect of the study is that while racial essentialism had detrimental consequences in deciding whether or not to use deadly force, there is research that suggests that these racial views can be mitigated through education.
If you want to know more about the criminal mind, criminal profiling, and forensic science, don’t miss our
Do you want to take your passion for forensic science to the next level? With the Master in Criminal Profiling, you will not only study criminology and criminal profiling online, but also earn a degree from a licensed university in the United States.
The U.S. education system is known for being one of the most respected and demanding in the world, and Evidentia University meets all required standards, ensuring a prestigious education. Study from just $208 a month and advance towards an exciting forensic career!
