BIO

Hello! My name is Rachel Strickland and I am from Fort Mill, South Carolina. I am a sophomore at FSU, studying criminology and sociology. I currently work as a research assistant in both a psychology lab and a criminology lab, studying implicit bias and federal hate crime offending, respectively. I enjoy studying these research topics and would like to one day become more involved in further criminal justice research areas, such as bail reform and firearm violence. I plan on graduating with my bachelor's degree from FSU and pursuing a master's degree and P.h.D in criminology. When I'm not doing research, I love to watch horror movies with my friends, take my dog, Muffin, to the park, and go to FSU basketball games with my roommates!

Physiological Implications for Implicit Threat Evaluations of the Police

Abstract

Black and brown individuals are disproportionate victims of police violence. Though much research has examined the psychological roots of this bias, relatively less work has considered the psychological consequences. That is, whereas prior research has assessed the role of perceived threat in police officers’ decisions to use lethal force, almost no work has examined how civilians may analogously perceive threat when encountering police officers. In order to address this gap, we have begun measuring civilians’ physiological threat responses to police. Specifically, we have measured—but not yet analyzed—participants’ startle eyeblink responses to police images. The startle eyeblink response offers an index physiological threat response by quantifying automatic defensive contractions of the orbicularis oculi muscle around the eye. Larger eyeblinks reflect a physiological preparation to respond to threats. We, therefore, expect that participants will evince larger eyeblinks to police relative to uniformed nonpolice and civilian primes. Given that physiological responses prepare the body to behave in a self-defensive way (e.g., fight, flight, or freeze), our findings may speak to civilians’ defense-like behaviors during encounters with police (such as non-compliance). Ultimately, if we understand certain instances of civilian non-compliance as an automatic self-protective behavior—as many police shootings are currently understood—it will imply a need to fundamentally alter the dynamics of police-civilian interactions.

Keywords: Psychology, Police, Startle, Threat