Johnson James, Sattler David, Van Hiel Alain, Dierckx Kim, Luo Shanhong, Vezzali Loris
The University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji.
Western Washington University, Bellingham, USA.
J Interpers Violence. 2023 Mar;38(5-6):4640-4661. doi: 10.1177/08862605221118964. Epub 2022 Aug 29.
Police sexual violence has been ranked as the second most common form of misconduct among police officers. Moreover, there is evidence that Black women are at heightened risk of being victims of such police violence. A report titled has brought international attention to the minimal empirical focus on such police violence toward Black women. To address this lacuna in the literature, using an incident of police sexual assault of a woman, we assessed whether victim's race and participants' level of crime-related stress (i.e., stress due to crime victimization) would influence empathic responding toward the victim. participants ( = 411) first completed a measure of crime-related stress. They then read an article describing a White police officer's sexual assault of a Black or White woman. Next, participants completed a racial stereotype-related measure (i.e., Black women's higher sexual proclivity) and a stereotype-unrelated measure (i.e., perceived victim untrustworthiness), and reported their victim-directed empathic responding. At high stress levels, participants reported less empathy for the Black (relative to White) victim. At low stress levels, there was greater Black victim-directed empathy. The race effects on empathy were mediated by heightened attribution of Black women-related stereotypical beliefs to the Black victim at high stress levels and by diminished attribution at low stress levels. In sum, we addressed the lacuna in the literature on police sexual violence against Black women while providing evidence that stress can play a critical role in the occurrence of the oft-cited outgroup-directed empathy deficit.
警察性暴力已被列为警察不当行为的第二常见形式。此外，有证据表明黑人女性成为此类警察暴力受害者的风险更高。一份名为《 》的报告使国际社会开始关注对警察针对黑人女性的这种暴力行为的实证研究极少这一情况。为了填补文献中的这一空白，我们以一起警察对一名女性的性侵犯事件为案例，评估了受害者的种族以及参与者与犯罪相关的压力水平（即因犯罪受害而产生的压力）是否会影响对受害者的共情反应。411名参与者首先完成了一项与犯罪相关压力的测量。然后他们阅读了一篇描述一名白人警察对一名黑人或白人女性进行性侵犯的文章。接下来，参与者完成了一项与种族刻板印象相关的测量（即黑人女性更高的性倾向）和一项与刻板印象无关的测量（即对受害者不可信的认知），并报告了他们对受害者的共情反应。在高压力水平下，参与者对黑人（相对于白人）受害者的共情较少。在低压力水平下，对黑人受害者的共情更强。种族对共情的影响在高压力水平下是通过将与黑人女性相关的刻板印象信念更多地归因于黑人受害者来介导的，而在低压力水平下则是通过减少归因来介导的。总之，我们填补了关于警察对黑人女性性暴力的文献空白，同时提供了证据表明压力在经常被提及的对外群体的共情缺陷的发生中可能起关键作用。
