Personal Prejudice,Other Guilt: Explicit Prejudice Toward Black People Predicts Guilty Verdicts for White Officers Who Kill Black Men

Abstract

Across the United States, acquittals of White police officers who have killed Black men have spurred clashes between those who see such situations as manifestations of racism and those who see them as race-irrelevant acts of officer self-defense. In this research, we explore the relationship between participants’ racial prejudice and construal of an event that leads to the death of a Black man. In Study 1, we found that participants’ racial prejudice predicts lower perceived guilt for a White officer who killed a Black man. In Study 2, we found evidence that the relationship between racial prejudice and guilt judgments is driven by increased perceptions that the officer was in danger and decreased perceived relevance of officer prejudice. Finally, Study 3 demonstrated that these patterns hold when the victim is Black, but not White. We conclude that racial prejudice shapes perceptions of legal responsibility for lethal interactions with Black men.

Keywords

prejudice/stereotyping racism social justice psychology and law

Acquittals of White officers who have killed Black men have spurred riots and accusations of racism across the United States. Critically, these protests of racial injustice are often matched with equal ardor from those who defend the officers’ need to protect themselves—often claiming that the event has nothing to do with the Blackness of the victim, but instead the danger of the situation. Given that people often have access to the same information when coming to these diverging conclusions, what might drive whether people perceive racial prejudice in police interactions that end in the death of Black men? In the present work, we propose that observers’ own affective reactions toward Black people may shift whether lethal interactions with Black men are construed as situations where officers faced grave danger, or situations where officers acted on racial biases. Critically, if personal prejudice shifts construal in these ways, this would pose serious implications for the role of victim race in jury determinations of officer guilt.

Background

Since the death of Trayvon Martin in Ferguson, Missouri, fatal interactions between law enforcement officers and Black men have elicited a variety of social movements within the United States (e.g., #BlackLivesMatter, #BlueLivesMatter, #AllLlivesMatter; Anderson & Hitlin, 2016; Garza, 2014; Sawyer & Gampa, 2018). And, despite the fact that these movements stem from the same national events, they vary greatly in their relative focus on the role of racial biases on one hand (e.g., #BlackLivesMatter) and necessary self-defense and officer safety on the other (e.g., #BlueLivesMatter). Although experimental data cannot speak to the relative role of racial prejudice in any particular fatal interaction, there is reason to believe that perceptions of danger may hinge critically on the mere presence of a Black man.

A long history of research has demonstrated a societal link between Black men and threat/danger (e.g., Devine & Elliot, 1995; Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson, 2006; Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008; Hurwitz & Peffley, 1997)—a link that has critical consequences for the experiences of Black men at all stages of the criminal justice system (e.g., Blair, Judd, & Chapleau, 2004; Fryer, 2016; Goff, Lloyd, Geller, Raphael, & Glaser, 2016; Hester & Gray, 2018; Jacobs & O’Brien, 1998; Levinson, Smith, & Young, 2014; Smith, 2004; Terrill & Mastrofski, 2002; Terrill & Reisig, 2003; Wolfe & Nix, 2016). For example, mere knowledge of cultural stereotypes of Black people predicts shooter biases in laboratory tasks intended to simulate police decision making (Correll, Urland, & Ito, 2006; Payne, 2001; see also Payne, Vuletich, & Lundberg, 2017). In particular, those who report the greatest knowledge of stereotypes that link Black people with violence are also most likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed Black men more often than unarmed White men (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002; Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2007). Moreover, these laboratory shooter biases are even more pronounced when there are contextual cues associated with threat such as particular neighborhoods or attire (Kahn & Davies, 2017). Thus, the perception of threat, and in particular the threat associated with Black people, may be particularly relevant to the split-second decisions that officers are forced to make—especially when the ability to exert cognitive control is low, such as when one is highly aroused by fear (Correll, Hudson, Guillermo, & Ma, 2014). Together, these experimental data are able to demonstrate that, holding all else constant, race can shift automatic perceptions of danger.

However, experimental data on the prevalence of shooter biases cannot definitively tell us whether racial prejudice played a role in any particular instance of lethal force in the real world. Instead, such scenarios, devoid of experimental control, are often quite complex. Thus, it is important to understand how people sift through evidence to decide whether the use of lethal force is driven by racial bias or justified self-defense. After all, debates about the relative role of these two factors not only are at the crux of contemporary social movements (Garza, 2014) but also are the critical decision faced by jury members who must decide whether a White officer is guilty of a crime. Thus, might these more deliberative decisions, in contrast to automatic decisions to shoot, also be influenced by societal connections between Blackness and threat?

Current theories on the relative roles of automatic and controlled processes in racial discrimination contend that although stereotypes/prejudice may be automatically activated (as indicated by shooter biases; Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995), they, ironically, may be particularly influential when people are engaged in conscious, effortful reasoning (Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006). In particular, this perspective argues that preexisting information (i.e., schemas, stereotypes, prejudice) is most likely to be applied when people have limited cognitive resources (Bodenhausen, 1988; Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Sloman, 1996). And, because conscious processing is inherently limited in capacity, this means that effortful decision making should be particularly likely to be influenced by preexisting attitudes and beliefs (Bos & Dijksterhuis, 2011; Dijksterhuis, Bos, Nordgren, & van Baaren, 2006; Dijksterhuis & Van Knippenberg, 1995). Consistent with this reasoning, a variety of experiments indicate that controlled (vs. automatic) processing leads to a greater focus on stereotype-consistent information (Bos & Dijksterhuis, 2011; Dijksterhuis & Van Knippenberg, 1995) and suboptimal weighting of evidence (Levine, Halberstadt, & Goldstone, 1996; Schooler, Ohlsson, & Brooks, 1993; Wilson et al., 1993; see also research on confirmation bias, e.g., Nickerson, 1998). Thus, in the present work, we reason that jurors who are high in explicit racial bias may construe trial evidence involving the death of a Black man in a way that confirms their prejudice-based expectations.

Indeed, research indicates that overtly expressed racial beliefs can influence jury decision making in racially relevant trials. In particular, Wittenbrink, Gist, and Hilton (1997) found that people who reported believing that African Americans are responsible for their own suffering (rather than victims of an unjust society) were more likely to construe trial evidence about a physical assault on a basketball team as incriminating for the Black actors. Moreover, general data on jury decision making indicate that when sifting through trial evidence, people tend to form an expectancy or “pre-judgment,” which they then use to interpret subsequent information (Carlson & Russo, 2001). Thus, whereas implicit biases may be influential for spontaneous behaviors such as quick decisions to shoot (Dovidio, Kawakami, & Gaertner, 2002; Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997), explicit racial prejudice may play a particularly prominent role in shifting construal of conflicting, ambiguous evidence in jury deliberations about White officers who kill Black men (Kang et al., 2012).

Building from this work, in the present research, we will examine effortful decision making in the context of mock jury decisions about officer guilt in a trial modeled after the types of lethal interactions that have led to controversial Black deaths in the United States. We propose that in the context of ambiguous interactions between White officers and Black men, prejudice toward Black people is likely to shift perceptions of the level of threat experienced by the officer. If so, people’s own racial prejudice may shift whether the same objective situation involving a Black man seems like one in which self-defense is justified or one in which racial bias predominates. To test these ideas, we will present participants with a court case modeled after the fatal shooting of Keith Scott in Charlotte in 2016 (Fausset & Blinder, 2016).¹ Critically, we hypothesized that participants’ own racial prejudice would amplify perceptions that the officer was in a threatening situation, decrease perceived relevance of officer racial prejudice, and, thus, lead to lower perceived officer guilt. We tested our hypotheses across three highly powered studies. Sample sizes for all studies were determined using G*Power 3 software (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007), to ensure adequate power (1 − β ⩾ .80) to detect a small effect (f = 0.10).

Study 1

In Study 1, we examined whether people’s racial prejudice toward Black people influenced their determinations of guilt for a White police officer who killed a Black man. We measured both implicit and explicit racial prejudice, so that we could examine their relative roles in perceptions of officer guilt. We reasoned that both forms of racial prejudice may play a role in perceived officer guilt, albeit perhaps through different mechanisms. In particular, implicit prejudice may shift automatic perceptions of threat (consistent with shooter biases; Correll et al., 2002), whereas explicit prejudice may shift construal of evidence in ways that confirm preexisting racial attitudes (consistent with confirmation biases; Nickerson, 1998).

Method

Participants

We recruited 400 participants through Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk). More people completed the study than were recruited.² We used all available data for analyses. Our final sample was 481 people (190 men, 284 women, two other) who were majority White (79%, 9.4% Black, 9.1% Asian, 2.3% Native American or Pacific Islander, 4.8% Other), an average age of 33 years old, and with a median education of a 4-year college degree.

Procedure

Implicit attitudes

After providing electronic consent, participants first completed the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP; Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005), an implicit measure of prejudice toward Black people. This task was described as a “concentration task” and participants learned that they would see photos of people and Chinese symbols flash quickly on the screen. Participants were instructed to ignore the photos of people and make ratings of the Chinese symbols on whether they were more “pleasant” or “unpleasant” than average by pressing the “I” or “E” key, respectively. On each trial, participants saw an image of a Black or a White male face flash on a computer screen for 75 ms, followed by a Chinese character for 100 ms, and then an image of black and white “noise” that remained on the screen until participants made a response. Participants completed several practice trials and 48 critical trials—half of which were preceded by images of Black men and half of which were preceded by images of White men.

Next participants reported their global negative explicit affect toward Black people. They responded to “To what extent do you dislike Black people?” “To what extent do you approve of Black people?” and “To what extent do you feel negatively toward Black people?” on 0 (not at all) to 100 (very much) scales. Participants also completed a feeling thermometer to assess their general feelings of warmth toward Black people, White people, and Hispanic people.

Simulated court case

The following, ostensibly true, information was presented to participants. The general facts were loosely based on the fatal shooting of Keith Scott in Charlotte (Fausset & Blinder, 2016). Participants were asked to imagine being a jury member, and were told that they were responsible for determining guilt in the following case:

The following information pertains to a wrongful death suit brought by the family of a man recently shot and killed by a member of the police force of a large U.S. city. The victim, a middle-aged African American male named John, was confronted by a White police officer while sitting with his wife in a parked vehicle around 3:00 in the afternoon. This encounter, which resulted in John’s death, led many to question whether or not the actions of the officer were justified. You are about to read excerpts from the closing arguments of both the attorney for John’s family and the officer’s defense attorney. Please read the following information carefully and answer the questions that follow:

The following information was taken from the closing argument given by the officer’s defense attorney:

The officer confronted John because he believed that he was in possession of marijuana and a firearm.

Video footage of the incident shows John exiting his vehicle and backing away from it while holding an object in his hand, which the officer perceived to be a gun.

John was shot because he failed to drop the object after the officer had asked him to do so.

A firearm was found at the scene.

The following information was taken from the closing argument given by the attorney for John’s family:

The officer who shot John recently showed a high level of implicit racial bias on a measure administered by the police department.

In the state in which this incident occurred, it is legal for the owners of a firearm to openly carry their weapons inside of their vehicles.

According to John’s wife, who was present during the incident, John was unarmed.

John had recently suffered a traumatic brain injury that may have affected his mental functioning.

In video footage recorded shortly after the shooting took place, the firearm does not appear on the ground next to John until several moments after he was shot.

Perceived responsibility and guilt

After reading the court case, participants reported their agreement with the following items: “The officer should be punished for John’s death” and “The officer should not be held accountable for John’s death.” Agreement was measured using sliding scales anchored from 0 (strongly disagree) to 100 (strongly agree). Participants also responded to the item, “How likely is it that you would determine the officer as guilty?” from 0 (not at all) to 100 (extremely). Finally, participants made a binary verdict of “guilty” or “not guilty.”

Participants concluded with several exploratory moderator measures and demographic information. As these measures were exploratory in nature, the exact item wordings and results are presented in the Supplementary Material.

Results

Data Reduction and Initial Analyses

Overall, the sample demonstrated implicit racial biases with significantly more “pleasant” responses on trials preceded by White primes (M = 0.63, SD = 0.21) as compared with trials preceded by Black primes (M = 0.38, SD = 0.23), F(1, 477) = 215.35, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .31. We created an index of implicit racial prejudice by subtracting the proportion of “pleasant” responses on trials preceded by Black primes from the proportion of “pleasant” responses on trials preceded by White primes. Higher values on this index indicate preferences for White stimuli.

We created a single index of explicit racial prejudice by combining the feeling thermometer and the three-item composite of reported negativity toward Black people, dislike of Black people, and approval of Black people (reverse scored; M = 13.53, SD = 18.16, α = .77). The thermometer and the composite score were standardized and then averaged together such that higher numbers reflect more explicit prejudice toward Black people.

Perceptions of officer responsibility were calculated by averaging agreement to the item that the officer should be punished and the reverse-scored item that the officer should not be held accountable for John’s death (α = .90). Finally, we created a single index of perceived officer guilt by combining the continuous measure of guilt (M = 65.55, SD = 28.99) with the binary verdicts of “not guilty” or “guilty” into a single standardized guilt index.³ To do this, we standardized continuous ratings of guilt, then coded “not guilty” verdicts as 0 and “guilty” verdicts as 1, and then averaged these two variables together. For correlations among these measures see Table 1.

Table 1.

Correlations Between Perceived Officer Responsibility, Perceived Officer Guilt, Participant Implicit Racial Prejudice, and Participant Explicit Racial Prejudice, Study 1.

Measure	1	2	3	4
1. Officer responsibility	—	—	—	—
2. Officer guilt	.87***	—	—	—
3. Participant explicit prejudice	−.21***	−.206***	—	—
4. Participant implicit prejudice	.063	.082^†	−.10*	—

†

p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Primary Analyses

Perceived officer responsibility

First, we examined our hypothesis that participants’ own prejudice toward Black people would predict perceptions of the White officer’s responsibility for killing the Black man. To test this, we conducted a linear regression analysis with both implicit prejudice and explicit prejudice entered as simultaneous predictors of perceived responsibility. Results revealed that participants’ explicit prejudice was the only significant predictor such that higher participant explicit racial prejudice was associated with less perceived responsibility of the White officer for killing the Black man, b = −0.22, t = −4.34, p < .001. Implicit prejudice did not show a significant relationship with perceived responsibility, b = 0.07, t = 1.49, p = .14.

We also tested the same regression model, but this time included implicit prejudice, explicit prejudice, and their interaction in the model. This enabled us to test whether particular combinations of implicit and explicit racial prejudice may be predictive of our outcome. Inconsistent with this possibility, there was no interaction between implicit and explicit racial prejudice on perceived officer responsibility, b = −0.01, t = −0.24, p = .81. Replicating the simpler linear model, the only significant effect was for participants’ explicit prejudice, b = −0.22, t = −4.35, p < .001; participants’ implicit prejudice did not significantly predict their perceptions of officer responsibility in this model, b = 0.07, t = 1.46, p = .14.

Perceived officer guilt

Next, we examined the role of implicit and explicit racial prejudice for final determinations of White officer guilt in the jury decision-making task. To test this, we conducted a linear regression predicting perceptions of White officer guilt by participants’ implicit and explicit racial prejudice. Consistent with our hypotheses, and replicating analyses predicting perceived responsibility, greater explicit prejudice was associated with lower perceived officer guilt, b = −0.149, t = −4.26, p < .001; implicit prejudice did not predict officer guilt in this model, b = 0.04, t = 1.41, p = .16.

As before, we also tested a model that included an interaction between implicit and explicit racial prejudice. There was no interaction of implicit and explicit racial prejudice predicting officer guilt, b = 0.04, t = 1.23, p = .22. Again, the only significant effect was for explicit prejudice predicting White officer guilt, b = −0.15, t = −4.15, p < .001; implicit prejudice was not a significant predictor, b = 0.05, t = 1.51, p = .132.

Discussion

Together, results revealed that for the effortful decision making involved in a complex court case, participants’ own explicit racial prejudice, above and beyond their implicit prejudice, predicted perceived responsibility and perceived guilt of a White officer who killed a Black man. In particular, people higher in personal explicit prejudice were more likely to determine that the officer was “not guilty” of a crime. The unique role of explicit, but not implicit, prejudice on deliberative processing of evidence is consistent with research indicating that preexisting beliefs and attitudes may be particularly influential for controlled (vs. automatic) decision making (Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006).

Thus, in the following studies, we explore the mechanisms through which participants’ own explicit prejudice may influence their guilt judgments. In particular, we build from research that finds that beliefs about the causes of Black disadvantage as assessed by a Modern Racism Scale (MRS; McConahay, 1986) affect encoding of facts in jury decision-making tasks involving Black men (Wittenbrink et al., 1997). Because the MRS captures complex, symbolic attitudes (i.e., a mixture of beliefs about sources of disadvantage, political beliefs, belief in a just world), we hoped to extend this work to explore the distinct role of affective prejudice toward Black people on construal of lethal interactions with Black men. We propose that participants who are higher in explicit prejudice toward Black people will tend to construe ambiguous evidence in a way that confirms their preexisting attitudes toward Black people (Carlson & Russo, 2001; Nickerson, 1998). If so, the racial attitudes of the perceiver may shift whether evidence seems consistent with the officer experiencing danger or the officer expressing racial prejudice.

Study 2

In Study 2, we test whether people’s racial prejudice affects guilt judgments by affecting how they construe interactions with Black men. We propose that explicit racial prejudice will be associated with perceiving the same evidence as imbued with the White officer experiencing more threat—confirming preexisting racial biases. To the degree that people see the officer’s experience of threat as high, they should also see racial prejudice as less relevant to the officer’s decision making. Together, we expect that both these shifts in construal—increased perception that the officer is in danger and lower perceived relevance of officer racial prejudice—will mediate the relationship between participants’ explicit prejudice and lower perceived guilt of the White officer.

Method

Participants

We recruited 400 participants through Amazon Mturk. Our final sample was 416 people (165 men, 251 women) who were majority White (81.7%, 9.1% Black, 8.4% Asian, 2.6% Native American or Pacific Islander, 4.3% Other), an average age of 34 years old, and with a median education of a 4-year college degree.

Procedure

The procedure was very similar to Study 1 except for a few details. First, we omitted the implicit measure given that the intent of Study 2 was to probe the unique relationship of participant explicit racial prejudice on perceived officer guilt that we observed in Study 1. Thus, participants started by responding to the same measures of explicit prejudice toward Black people and then reading the same court case as Study 1. As a reminder, this court case described a White officer who engaged in a lethal interaction with a Black man named John.

Next, participants completed measures assessing perceived threat experienced by the officer (one of our proposed mediators) with two items: “Based on the information you have, how dangerous do you think the situation was that the officer was in?” and “Based on the information you have, how threatening do you think the situation was that the officer was in?” Participants also reported how justified they thought the officer’s actions were. Each of these ratings was made on a 0 (not at all) to 100 (extremely) scale. Finally, participants responded to these same three items, but from the perspective of John, the Black victim, rather than the officer, and, then reported how likely they would be to determine the officer was guilty as well as their final verdict.

To measure our second proposed mediator—perceived relevance of officer prejudice—we asked participants how important each piece of information from the case was for their decision. Participants sorted the nine pieces of information from “most important in making my decision” to “least important in making my decision.” Our main interest was in how important people perceived the following piece of evidence: “the officer who shot John recently showed a high level of implicit racial bias on a measure administered by the police department.”

To conclude, participants reported their motivations to respond without prejudice as an exploratory moderator of our findings (Plant & Devine, 1998; results were not moderated by this variable; see Supplementary Material) and demographic information.

Results

Data Reduction and Initial Analyses

Explicit racial prejudice on the feeling thermometer (reverse scored; M = 23.07, SD = 25.19) and three basic attitude items (M = 9.22, SD = 15.09, α = .83) were standardized and then averaged as in Study 1. Perceived guilt was also calculated in the same way as Study 1. Perceived threat experienced by the officer was calculated by averaging the danger and threat items (M = 43.95, SD = 28.28, α = .96). Perceived relevance of officer racial bias was calculated by reverse scoring relevance ratings, so that higher numbers would mean greater perceived relevance (M = 5.63, SD = 2.50). All variables were standardized for the following analyses.

Replication of Participant Explicit Prejudice to Officer Guilt Relationship

First, replicating Study 1, we found that participants’ explicit racial prejudice was associated with attributing less guilt to the White officer who killed a Black man, b = −0.09, t = −2.22, p = .027. Having replicated this basic relationship between participants’ own prejudice and officer guilt, we next tested whether this relationship was mediated by shifts in construal of officer threat and officer racial prejudice.

Parallel Mediation

To examine our main hypotheses, we tested a parallel mediation model using the PROCESS Macro in SPSS (Hayes, 2013; Model 4) and 10,000 bootstrapped resamples. As predicted, results revealed significant indirect effects through both perceived threat experienced by the officer and perceived relevance of officer prejudice (see Figure 1; see also Supplementary Material for single mediator models).

Figure 1.

The relationship between participants’ explicit prejudice and perceived officer guilt is mediated by shifts in perceived roles of threat experienced by the officer and officer racial prejudice.

Perceived officer threat

First, participants’ explicit prejudice predicted marginally more perceived threat experienced by the White officer, b = 0.11, t = 1.89, p = .059, and more perceived threat, predicted less perceived officer guilt, b = −0.39, t = −14.81, p < .001. Critically, there was also a significant indirect effect of participant explicit prejudice on perceived officer guilt through perceived threat experienced by the officer, b = −0.04, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [−0.09, −0.001].

Perceived relevance of officer prejudice

Second, participants with higher explicit racial prejudice rated the officer’s prejudice as less important in making their decisions, b = −0.17, t = −3.00, p = .003; and, perceived importance of officer racial prejudice was associated with more perceived officer guilt, b = 0.21, t = 7.80, p < .001. Finally, there was a significant indirect effect of participants’ explicit prejudice on perceived officer guilt through perceptions of the relevance of officer prejudice, b = −0.04, 95% CI = [−0.06, −0.01].

Discussion

Together, Study 2 findings indicate that one’s own explicit racial prejudice affects how one construes multiple components of an interaction between a White officer and a Black man. The data suggest that the more explicit racial bias a person has, the more that they construe such a scenario as possessing danger for the (White) officer, and the less that they perceive the officer’s racial biases to matter. Broadly, these findings corroborate the results from Study 1 and build on work that finds that beliefs about sources of Black disadvantage can influence construal of interactions involving Black people with implications for jury decision making (Wittenbrink et al., 1997). Critically, because jury members are tasked with determining whether an officer was justified to use force to defend his own life, perception that the officer was in danger is a key factor determining perceived guilt. The present findings indicate that attitudes toward Black people can fundamentally shift how people perceive a fatal interaction with a Black man. In particular, given the strong societal message that links Black men with threat (DuVernay, 2016), the present findings indicate that the decisions of jury members about the level of danger in a fatal police–civilian interaction may be inextricably intertwined with the presence of a Black man.

Finally, in Study 3, we examine whether the prejudice-driven shifts in construal of lethal interactions are distinctly tied to interactions with Black victims. To do this, we hold everything constant except for manipulating whether the victim is Black or White. We expect that participants’ explicit racial prejudice will shift perceived officer threat, but only when the interaction is with a Black man rather than a White man. Such a finding would indicate that participants’ racial prejudice shifts threat distinctly related to Blackness, rather than threat that stems from other nuances of the situation. Likewise, we expect that the perceived relevance of officer racial prejudice should only affect guilt judgments when the trial involves a Black, but not a White, victim.

Study 3

In Study 3, participants read the same court case as in the previous two studies, with one exception—we directly manipulated the race of the victim. Some participants read about a Black victim (as in previous studies) and others read about a White victim. We expected that victim race would moderate the pathways through which participants’ explicit racial prejudice influences perceptions of officer guilt. In particular, we predicted that Study 1 and Study 2 mediation patterns would replicate when the victim was Black, but would no longer hold when the victim was White.

Method

Participants

We recruited 400 participants through Amazon Mturk and 408 people completed the study. Because 24 participants skipped the section on perceived relevance of officer prejudice (one of the mediators in our model), we could not include those participants in the following analyses. Our final sample was 384 people (146 men, 234 women, four other) who were majority White (81.8%, 10.4% Black, 7.3% Asian, 3.1% Native American or Pacific Islander, 4.4% Other), an average age of 32 years old, and with a median education of a 4-year college degree.

Procedure

The procedure was identical to Study 2, except we now manipulated the race of the victim in the legal case. Some participants were randomly assigned to learn that the victim was a Black man named Jamal. Others were randomly assigned to learn that the victim was a White man named John. All other measures were the same, except that in Study 3, we measured perceived relevance of the officer’s implicit racial biases in making their decisions before, rather than after, participants made their final guilt judgments. This ordering of the measures better captures the temporal causal process that we propose is driving the relationship between participants’ explicit racial bias and guilt judgments. Finally, participants concluded with measures of motivations to respond without prejudice (again results were not moderated by this scale; see Supplementary Material) and demographic information.

Results

In Study 3, we hypothesized that our manipulation of victim race would moderate the simultaneous mediation tested in Study 2. We expected our parallel mediation model from Study 2 to replicate, but only among those who learned of a Black (but not White) victim.

Data Reduction

As in previous studies, explicit bias was calculated by reverse scoring feeling thermometer scores (M = 23.79, SD = 24.71), averaging responses on the basic attitude items (M = 9.16, SD = 13.74, α = .73), standardizing these two variables, and then averaging them together. Perceptions of officer threat (M = 44.40, SD = 25.82, α = .95) and perceived relevance of officer racial prejudice (M = 4.88, SD = 2.71) were also calculated as in Study 2.

Moderated Mediation

To test our main hypotheses, we needed to assess whether the parallel mediation model from Study 2 was moderated by our manipulation of victim race. Thus, our critical analysis was to run a moderated mediation model using 10,000 bootstrapped resamples through the PROCESS macro in SPSS (Hayes, 2013; Model 58; see Supplementary Material for full model results). All variables were standardized before analysis. As predicted, the parallel mediation model from Study 2 was moderated by whether participants learned that the victim was Black or White. In particular, the Study 2 model replicated, but only when the victim was described as Black (see Figure 2), but not when the victim was described as White (see Figure 3). Below, we report the results separately by each mediator.

Figure 2.

When people read about a Black victim, the relationship between participants’ explicit prejudice and perceived officer guilt was mediated by shifts in perceived officer danger and perceived relevance of officer prejudice.

Figure 3.

When people read about a White victim, there was no direct effect of participants’ explicit prejudice on perceived guilt, and no statistically significant indirect effects through either mediator.

Moderated mediation through perceived officer threat

As predicted, there was significant moderated mediation through perceptions of officer threat, b = −0.03, 95% CI = [−0.07, −0.004]. Critically, this significant moderated mediation effect was driven by a significant conditional indirect effect, but only among those in the Black victim condition, b = −0.02, 95% CI = [−0.05, −0.003] (see top panel of Figure 2). In particular, when the victim was Black, greater explicit bias predicted greater perceived officer threat, which led to lower ratings of officer guilt. Among those who learned of a White victim, this conditional indirect effect was not statistically significant, b = 0.01, 95% CI = [−0.01, 0.04] (see top panel of Figure 3).

Moderated mediation through perceived relevance of officer prejudice

Finally, although the pattern of moderated mediation through perceived relevance of officer prejudice did not quite reach statistical significance, b = −0.02, 95% CI = [−0.04, 0.002], the conditional indirect effects were in the hypothesized pattern. In particular, the conditional indirect effect was significant among those in the Black victim condition, b = −0.02, 95% CI = [−0.05, −0.007] (see bottom panel of Figure 2). As predicted, this indirect effect reveals that, among those who learned the victim was Black, participants’ explicit prejudice was associated with decreased perceived relevance of officer prejudice; and, perceived relevance of officer prejudice predicted more perceived officer guilt. In contrast, there was no comparable conditional indirect effect among those who learned the victim was White, b = −0.005, 95% CI = [−0.02, 0.004] (see bottom panel of Figure 3).

Discussion

The results of Study 3 both replicate and extend our previous studies. First, replicating Study 1, participants’ own explicit prejudice toward Black people was associated with determinations of White officer guilt in a jury decision-making task. Moreover, replicating Study 2, participants’ explicit prejudice affected perceived guilt by shifting construal of affective components of the situation (i.e., officer threat and officer racial prejudice). Critically, Study 3 provides evidence that these findings are moderated by the race of the victim. Consistent with our theoretical perspective, we find that participants’ explicit racial prejudice increased perceived officer threat specifically when the victim was Black, but not White. This finding suggests that people with more prejudice toward Black people may be specifically attuned to threat indicated by the presence of a Black man. Moreover, this race-related shift in construal of the same ambiguous situation mediated determinations of whether a White officer should be found guilty for killing a Black man.

Second, there was a tendency for people who have more prejudice toward Black people to perceive evidence of officer racial prejudice (i.e., scores of high implicit race bias by measures administered by the police department) as less important information in their deliberations. However, unsurprisingly, these shifts in perceived relevance of officer racial bias only predicted lower perceived officer guilt when the victim was Black (but not White).

Together these findings indicate that, holding all else constant, explicit racial prejudice is associated with perceiving lethal force as more justified, and, thus, less punishable by law, when the victim is Black than when the victim is White. Given the complexity of any given court case, these data provide an important message about the isolated influence of victim race on construal of evidence. When the victim is Black, the same details become imbued with threat and danger; and, because level of threat is integral to legal definitions of guilt, this confounding of race and threat can shift whether a civilian death is viewed as legally just.

General Discussion

Across three studies, we find that mock jury members’ own explicit prejudice toward Black people predicts whether they perceive a White officer who killed a Black man to be guilty of a crime. And, this prejudice acts on guilt judgments by shifting construal of affective components of the situation. First, we find that people’s own explicit racial prejudice increases perceived threat and, thus, the perceived justification of using lethal force. Second, we find that people’s own racial prejudice predicts less perceived guilt of the White officer for killing a Black man by decreasing concerns about the potential role of the officer’s racial biases.

Critically, the task of jury members who decide the fate of an officer is to determine whether the officer’s life was at stake, thus making lethal force justified. Although this decision rule seems reasonable on the surface, the present data indicate that societal associations between Blackness and threat (DuVernay, 2016) mean that the danger perceived in a situation may be inherently tied to the presence of a Black man rather than nuances of the situation itself. In fact, in Study 3, all factors of the situation were held constant with only the race of the victim varying between conditions. And, it was distinctly among those who learned the victim was Black who showed a significant relationship between their explicit racial prejudice toward Black people, perceived threat in the situation, and determinations of officer guilt. Thus, for people who are high in racial prejudice toward Black people, an ambiguous situation involving a Black person may be viewed in a way that confirms their preexisting negative racial attitudes (Nickerson, 1998).

Although existing work has examined the influence of racial stereotypes (Correll et al., 2006), perceived threat (Trawalter, Todd, Baird, & Richeson, 2008), and implicit biases (for a review, see Cameron, Brown-Iannuzzi, & Payne, 2012) on the likelihood of engaging in lethal acts of discrimination (Correll et al., 2002; Payne, 2001), less research has examined the influence of these factors on construal of others’ potentially discriminatory behaviors. Although Wittenbrink and colleagues (1997) found that structural knowledge about Black disadvantage affects the way that trial evidence involving Black people is encoded, they neither examined the role of general prejudice toward Black people nor examined situations in which Black people lose their lives. Here, we find that participants’ affective reactions to Black people also play an important role in how people construe trial evidence involving lethal force used against Black men.

The present findings are particularly important, given that our samples were relatively low in explicit prejudice overall: In all three samples, average levels of explicit prejudice were well below the scale midpoints. We think this point is noteworthy because it conveys that even low levels of explicit prejudice influence construal of lethal interactions between officers and Black men. Given that juries are overtly selected to avoid jurors who have high levels of overt racial bias (Kovera & Austin, 2016), we reason that these samples are a good proxy for the type of attitudes that selected jurors are likely to have. Critically, we find that even with these relatively low levels of explicit prejudice, racial biases are still predicting meaningful variability in final guilty verdicts. We surmise, and future research could directly test, that the effects of explicit prejudice on construal, and thus perceived guilt, would only become more pronounced as explicit racial prejudice becomes more extreme.

The role of one’s own prejudice in the perceived import of officer racial prejudice raises interesting questions about the effects of disseminating reports about racial injustice within police departments. For example, in 2016, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released reports depicting pervasive racial biases within the Baltimore police department (DOJ, 2016). But, instead of increasing concern about these racial biases, might these data lead some (i.e., those high in explicit prejudice toward Black people) to redouble their perception that racial bias is irrelevant to officer behavior? The present work shows that, at least for reactions to learning that police officers have high implicit racial biases, participants’ own racial biases were negatively correlated with how important they thought this information was. Critically, the perceived relevance of officer racial prejudice to the trial mediated whether participants made “guilty” verdicts for the White officer’s lethal actions. Given these findings, future research should manipulate the type of information people learn about a police department—in particular, whether racial bias is predominant or not—and examine how that information interacts with participants’ racial prejudice to determine perceived officer guilt.

We should also note that we focused on perceptions of the relevance of an officer’s implicit racial prejudice, rather than evidence that conveyed blatant bigotry on the part of the officer. In doing so, we build on other research that has also examined how people attribute moral responsibility (Cameron, Payne, & Knobe, 2010) and intent (Onyeador, 2017) when implicit bias may be a factor determining discrimination. This research finds that the way implicit bias is described can play an important role in whether people are deemed morally responsible for their implicit biases. In particular, describing implicit bias as unconscious leads people to assign significantly less moral responsibility to behaviors that result from that bias than when the same bias is described as automatic (Cameron et al., 2010). In the present work, we find that participants’ own racial biases are also associated with the weight that they give to implicit biases in determining moral responsibility for fatally shooting a Black (but not White) victim. Because implicit bias may mean different things to different people, future research should explore what implicit bias means to participants to better illuminate how it factors into their decision-making process. For example, it seems likely that “implicit bias” may lead to fundamentally different interpretations among those high and low in racial prejudice. Future research could also explore how blatant bigotry on the part of the officer is factored into jury decision making. For example, perhaps more flagrant racial biases lead to greater perception of officer guilt, regardless of observers’ own racial prejudices.

The fact that participants’ own explicit racial biases predicted guilt judgments above and beyond their implicit racial biases in Study 1 is consistent with research that finds that deliberative thinking can override implicit biases (Kang et al., 2012). Moreover, the focus of the present work on the role of overt racial animus on consequential, legal decision making is especially important given that social norms regarding the overt expression of racial animus in America may be shifting (Payne, 2016). And, such shifting social norms may, for some, provide sufficient justification to overtly express underlying negative attitudes toward Black people (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003; Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004; Payne, 2016). The present work indicates that such shifts, if they occur, are likely to have important consequences for the social justice system.

We should also note that the present research focused exclusively on perceptions of the guilt of the White officer, rather than exploring shifts in the perceived blame attributed to the person who was fatally harmed. For example, it would be important to see whether perceivers’ racial biases also predict a greater attribution of blame to the victim when the victim is Black (vs. White). Consistent with a vast literature on victim blaming (Alicke, 2000; Niemi & Young, 2016), attributing both less guilt to the officer and more guilt to the Black victim may be a way for prejudiced perceivers to maintain a belief that the world is just (Lerner, 1980). This may also be a way for perceivers high in racial prejudice to reinforce their racial biases (e.g., the belief that Black people are always instigating altercations) without realizing that they are doing so. Future research should explore these important nuances regarding perception of the victim.

Likewise, it is not currently clear what the boundary conditions are for these effects. Our focus was on a White officer and a Black victim; but, officers of other races may also be implicated in these types of interactions. If the interaction involved both a Black officer and a Black victim, participants’ own racial prejudice toward Black people may have different effects on perceived officer guilt. For example, reading about lethal force used by a Black officer on a Black victim might amplify prejudiced participants’ perception that lethal force was justified (i.e., lead them to perceive lower levels of officer guilt). In such a case, the minority race of the officer may be construed as further evidence that the situation was highly threatening rather than imbued with racial animus. Future research could test this possibility empirically.

Finally, although consistent with hypotheses, our findings in Study 1 and Study 2 are correlational in nature. Thus, although we test for statistical mediation in hopes of isolating the process through which participants’ own explicit racial prejudice predicts perceptions of officer guilt, we did not experimentally demonstrate the causal role of prejudice given the ethical considerations of manipulating explicit prejudice toward Black people. However, in Study 3, we did demonstrate that our effects were specific to police interactions with Black (but not White) victims—lending evidence for the causal role of victim race in these processes.

Conclusion

An increasing amount of research in the past couple of decades has focused on the influence of implicit racial bias on discriminatory outcomes. After all, implicit biases are worthy of focus given that they can predict discrimination and prejudice even in the absence of intent to discriminate (Cameron et al., 2012; Dovidio et al., 2002; McConnell & Leibold, 2001). However, as we see in the present findings, at times, explicit racial attitudes are an important determinant of discrimination, shifting construal of situations with implications for decision making that involves sifting through ambiguous evidence and making critical decisions about guilt. As such, racialized construal may help explain the intensity of affective reactions to jury decisions to acquit White officers who kill Black men among people who seem to see the same situation, quite differently.

Supplemental Material

Cooley_OnlineAppendix – Supplemental material for Personal Prejudice, Other Guilt: Explicit Prejudice Toward Black People Predicts Guilty Verdicts for White Officers Who Kill Black Men

Supplemental material, Cooley_OnlineAppendix for Personal Prejudice, Other Guilt: Explicit Prejudice Toward Black People Predicts Guilty Verdicts for White Officers Who Kill Black Men by Erin Cooley, Ryan Lei, Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi and Taylor Ellerkamp in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Supplemental Material

OwnPrejudiceOtherGuilt_SupplementaryMaterials_PSPB_RR_Accepted – Supplemental material for Personal Prejudice, Other Guilt: Explicit Prejudice Toward Black People Predicts Guilty Verdicts for White Officers Who Kill Black Men

Supplemental material, OwnPrejudiceOtherGuilt_SupplementaryMaterials_PSPB_RR_Accepted for Personal Prejudice, Other Guilt: Explicit Prejudice Toward Black People Predicts Guilty Verdicts for White Officers Who Kill Black Men by Erin Cooley, Ryan Lei, Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi and Taylor Ellerkamp in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material is available online with this article.

Notes

ORCID iD

Ryan Lei

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