Phillip Atiba Goff

The Impact of Psychological Science on Policing in the United States Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and Effective Law Enforcement

The May 2015 release of the report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing highlighted a fundamental change in the issues dominating discussions about policing in America. That change has moved discussions away from a focus on what is legal or effective in crime control and toward a concern for how the actions of the police influence public trust and confidence in the police. This shift in discourse has been motivated by two factors—first, the recognition by public officials that increases in the professionalism of the police and dramatic declines in the rate of crime have not led to increases in police legitimacy, and second, greater awareness of the limits of the dominant coercive model of policing and of the benefits of an alternative and more consensual model based on public trust and confidence in the police and legal system. Psychological research has played an important role in legitimating this change in the way policymakers think about policing by demonstrating that perceived legitimacy shapes a set of law-related behaviors as well as or better than concerns about the risk of punishment. Those behaviors include compliance with the law and cooperation with legal authorities. These findings demonstrate that legal authorities gain by a focus on legitimacy. Psychological research has further contributed by articulating and demonstrating empirical support for a central role of procedural justice in shaping legitimacy, providing legal authorities with a clear road map of strategies for creating and maintaining public trust. Given evidence of the benefits of legitimacy and a set of guidelines concerning its antecedents, policymakers have increasingly focused on the question of public trust when considering issues in policing. The acceptance of a legitimacy-based consensual model of police authority building on theories and research studies originating within psychology illustrates how psychology can contribute to the development of evidence-based policies in the field of criminal law.

The Costs of Racism for Marriage How Racial Discrimination Hurts, and Ethnic Identity Protects, Newlywed Marriages Among Latinos

The experience of racial or ethnic discrimination is a salient and severe stressor that has been linked to numerous disparities in important outcomes. Yet, the link between perceived discrimination and marital outcomes has been overlooked by research on relationship stressors. The current study examined this link and tested whether ethnic identity buffered the relation between discrimination and ratings of marital quality and verbal aggression. A sample of 330 Latino newlyweds completed measures of perceived discrimination, ethnic identity, spouse’s verbal aggression, and marital quality. Each spouse’s interviewer also independently rated marital quality. Dyadic analyses revealed that husbands’ experience of discrimination negatively predicted wives’ marital quality, but only for husbands with weak ethnic identity. Wives whose husbands had strong ethnic identity were buffered from this effect. Identity also buffered the relation between husbands’ discrimination and verbal aggression toward their wives, and this effect mediated the association between discrimination, identity, and marital quality.

HOW PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE IMPEDES INTERSECTIONAL THINKING

Psychological science that examines racial and gender bias, primarily located within social psychology, has tended to discount the ways in which race and gender mutually construct each other. Lay conceptions of racial and gender discrimination tend to see racism as primarily afflicting men and sexism primarily afflicting White women, when in fact race and gender are interrelated and work together intersectionally. Ignoring womens experiences of racial discrimination produces androcentric conceptions of racisms—in other words, many definitions of racial discrimination are to some degree sexist (Goff et al., 2008 ). Similarly, privileging the experiences of White women produces narrow definitions of gender discrimination—in other words, many definitions of gender discrimination are to some degree racist, such that they serve to reinforce the current societal hierarchies. Psychological science sometimes appears to reflect such conceptions. The result is that the social science principally responsible for explaining individual-level biases has developed a body of research that can undervalue the experiences of non-White women (Goff et al., 2008 ). This article examines features of social psychological science and its research processes to answer a question suggested by this framing: is the current psychological understanding of racism, to some extent, sexist and the understanding of sexism, to some extent, racist? We argue here that the instruments that much of social psychological science uses to measure racial and gender discrimination may play a role in producing inaccurate understandings of racial and gender discrimination. We also present original experimental data to suggest that lay conceptions parallel social psychologys biases: with lay persons also assuming that racism is about Black men and sexism is about White women. 2 Finally, we provide some suggestions to increase the inclusivity of psychologys study of discrimination as well as reasons for optimism in this area.

Protecting Whiteness White Phenotypic Racial Stereotypicality Reduces Police Use of Force

Focusing on intergroup anti-non-White bias in the criminal justice system, little attention is given to how Whites may additionally be protected from negative police treatment. This study examines intragroup bias via perceived suspect phenotypic racial stereotypicality (e.g., how strongly members possess physical features typical of their racial group) on severity of police use of force. It is hypothesized that the Whiter one appears, the more the suspect will be protected from police force. Internal use of force case files from a large police department were coded for severity of police force, and suspects’ booking photographs were scored for phenotypic racial stereotypicality. Regression analyses confirmed that police used less force with highly stereotypical Whites, and this protective effect was stronger than the effect for non-Whites. Results suggest that intragroup bias is a protective factor for Whites, but not for non-Whites, providing an additional route through which racial disparities in policing operate.

Research and Training to Mitigate the Effects of Implicit Stereotypes and Masculinity Threat on Authority Figures’ Interactions with Adolescents and Non-Whites

In this chapter, Kahn, Goff, and Glaser discuss how masculinity threat (perceived threat to manhood) and implicit racial bias (unconscious racial prejudice) may affect authority figures’ interactions with adolescents, which may lead to disproportionate discipline outcomes for non-White adolescents. The chapter details the theory and development of an intervention program for authority figures (e.g., school police officers, teachers, and school administrators) who interact with adolescents, focused on reducing the impact of implicit racial stereotypes and insecure masculinity on their actions toward adolescents. The authors detail the content of the intervention, which teaches authority figures how to recognize and respond to implicit bias and insecure masculinity in themselves and others. They discuss the pilot intervention implementation and detail recommendations for schools.

Implications of Research Staff Demographics for Psychological Science

Long-standing research traditions in psychology have established the fundamental impact of social categories, such as race and gender, on people’s perceptions of themselves and others, as well as on general human cognition and behavior. However, there is a general tendency to ignore research staff demographics (e.g., researchers’ race and gender) in research development and research reports. Variation in research staff demographics can exert systematic and scientifically informative influences on results from psychological research. Consequently, research staff demographics need to be considered, studied, and/or reported, along with how these demographics were allowed to vary across participants or conditions (e.g., random assignment, matched with participant demographics, or included as a factor in the experimental design). In addition to providing an overview of multidisciplinary evidence of research staff demographics effects, it is discussed how research staff demographics might influence research findings through (a) ingroup versus outgroup effects, (b) stereotype and (implicit) bias effects, and (c) priming and social tuning effects. Finally, an overview of recommended considerations is included (see Appendix) to help illustrate how to systematically incorporate relevant research staff demographics in psychological science.