Impact of Suspect Race on Perceived Legitimacy of Police Use of Force

Recent social movements have drawn attention to the excessive use of police force on African American men. The purpose of this research is to examine whether police use of force is perceived as more legitimate when used on African American compared to European American male suspects. Participants will read one of six scenarios describing a police encounter with a male suspect. The scenarios vary on two dimensions: (1) whether the suspect is threatening, non-threatening, or ambiguous and (2) whether the suspect is African American or European American. After reading the scenarios, participants will rate their perceptions of the legitimacy of police use of force. We hypothesize that participants will rate police use of force as more legitimate when used on African American vs. European American suspects, but only when threat of suspect is ambiguous. We did not expect differences based on suspect race for the threatening and non-threatening conditions