1 Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, USA.
2 New York University, New York City, NY, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2019 May;45(5):754-766. doi: 10.1177/0146167218796787. Epub 2018 Sep 24.
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.
在美国各地，白人警察杀害黑人男子被判无罪的案件引发了冲突，一些人认为这些情况是种族主义的表现，而另一些人则认为这些情况与种族无关，是警察自卫的行为。在这项研究中，我们探讨了参与者的种族偏见与导致黑人男子死亡的事件的解释之间的关系。在研究 1 中，我们发现参与者的种族偏见预测了白人警察杀害黑人男子时，他们对白人警察的内疚感较低。在研究 2 中，我们发现种族偏见与内疚判断之间的关系是由增加的警官处于危险之中的感知和降低的警官偏见的相关性感知驱动的。最后，研究 3 表明，当受害者是黑人时，而不是白人时，这些模式仍然存在。我们的结论是，种族偏见影响了对与黑人男子致命互动的法律责任的看法。
