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The role of implicit processes during police-civilian encounters is well studied from the perspective of the police. Decades of research on the "shooter bias" suggests that implicit Black-danger associations potentiate the perception of threat of Black individuals, leading to a racial bias in the decision to use lethal force. Left understudied are civilians' possible associations of police with danger and how such associations pervade behavior and explicit views of the police. The current work begins to address this gap. In two within-subjects studies, we separately assess police-threat (i.e., safety/danger) and police-valence (i.e., good/bad) associations as well as their relative influences on explicit perceptions of police. Study 1 revealed that implicit threat evaluations (police-danger associations) more strongly predicted negative explicit views of the police compared to implicit valence evaluations (police-negative associations). Study 2 replicated these findings and suggests that individuals evaluate the police as more dangerous versus negative when each response is pitted against each other within single misattribution procedure trials. The possible implications for explicit attitudes toward police reform and behavior during police-civilian encounters are discussed.

Black Americans experience more frequent guilty verdicts and harsher sentences in the criminal justice system. However, recent laboratory work often finds either trivial differences or a pro-Black bias where people provide more lenient verdicts for Black versus White defendants. Across five studies, we find a consistent pro-Black bias even after reducing social desirability concerns. Instead, the pro-Black bias results from a negative relationship between perceived anti-Black criminal justice bias and the Black suspect's verdict. The current work shows the pro-Black bias as a consequence of the newly salient perception of racial bias in the criminal justice system. Consequently, as people's perceptions of racial disparities in the criminal justice system increase, this in-lab effect may manifest in real-world criminal justice outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three pilot studies (Ntotal = 832) revealed that people held more positive attitudes toward targets wearing protective face masks. Therefore, we examined whether knowledge of this self-presentational benefit would increase people's intentions to wear face masks. Participants (N = 997) were randomly assigned to read a passage about the COVID-19 pandemic, the safety benefit of mask-wearing, the self-presentational benefit of mask-wearing, or a combination of the latter two. Although this manipulation failed, findings revealed that preexisting beliefs about masked targets being more likable were positively associated with mask-wearing intentions, particularly among participants less concerned with disease or more politically conservative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How people experience nature influences their attitudes and actions towards it. Having had a negative encounter with an animal may facilitate avoidance and freezing responses which may encourage negative feelings towards it and the environment in which it is found. Animals associated with fear, such as snakes, are often the victims of hunting and killing, possibly in part due to an overperception of their inherent danger.Past research has shown that fear affects approach–avoidance response at both the preparatory and executive stages of movement. However, the way one reacts to different threats may also depend on its proximity and how fearful one is of that specific threat.We employed a mouse‐tracking paradigm where participants (N = 40) categorized pictures of threatening and non‐threatening animals (snakes and butterflies respectively). The picture could appear at the middle, top or bottom of the screen. Participants initiated the movement from the centre of the screen and the category labels appeared on the top of the screen. Participants therefore had to either move towards the picture on the top or move away from the picture (presented centrally or at the bottom). Participants were split into fearful and non‐fearful groups based on self‐report snake fear.Non‐fearful participants were generally slower when a threat was present. But, in the fearful group, we found longer movement initiation times for central threats and shorter initiation times for off‐centre threats (compared to neutral targets). Fearful participants were also slower to initiate movement when moving away from the threat, but faster when moving towards it (compared to neutral targets). The slower start and execution may be due to the lack of active planning and/or may imply the presence of a passive temporary freezing response.Strong negative emotions towards nature and animals serve as crucial factors both in animal phobias and anti‐animal behaviours (i.e. the purposeful decimation of certain species). Understanding the action dynamics of approach–avoid behaviours in response to threatening animals may help to inform both the prevention and treatment of phobias, and relatedly, the promotion of conservationist endeavours. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactions between police officers and civilians incur for both police and civilians the possibility of danger due to a nonzero likelihood of encountering a physical threat. A body of work examining the implications of threat processes during police–civilian interactions focuses almost exclusively on the perspective of police officers, under the auspice that police use-of-force decisions stem from perceptions and misperceptions of threat (e.g., research on the shooter bias). Almost no research has examined these dynamics from the perspective of civilians whose encounter with police involves interacting with an armed and potentially dangerous individual. In the current work, we advance the idea that just as police may respond to civilians as threats, civilians may respond to the police as threats. That is, among civilians, encountering the police may evoke a combination of defensive bodily and behavioral responses. Across three studies (N = 603) each utilizing unique measures of defensive behavioral and physiological responding, we found that people more rapidly avoid police than nonpolice, demonstrate enhanced defensive freeze responses to police than nonpolice, and evince larger defensive physiological preparation toward police than nonpolice. In light of these patterns, we discuss the implications of defensive responses for shaping civilian behavior in real-world encounters with the police. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, major societal events have shaped perceptions of race relations in the US. The current work argues that people's motivations to be nonprejudiced toward Black people have changed in concert with these broader societal forces. Analyses of two independent archival datasets reveal that nonprejudiced motivations changed predictably in accordance with shifts in the social milieu over the last 15 years. In one dataset (N = 13,395), we track movement in internal and external motivations to respond without prejudice from 2004 to 2017. Internal motivation initially decreased before ticking upward following multiple events suggesting worsening race relations (e.g., noteworthy killings of unarmed Black men, resurgent racialized politics). Conversely, external motivation initially increased but reversed course across the same time span. A second dataset (N = 2,503) corroborates these trends in two conceptually related nonprejudiced motivations. Results suggest that changes in nonprejudiced motivations may reflect broader shifts in the sociopolitical climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not everyone engages in COVID‐19 related preventative health behaviors (PHB; e.g., mask wearing, social distancing) despite their demonstrated effectiveness for mitigating the spread of COVID‐19. In the United States, for instance, PHBs emerged as (and remain) a partisan issue. The current work examines partisan gaps in PHB by considering both informational and perceptual factors related to COVID‐19. Specifically, we focus on politically motivated belief in COVID‐19 (mis)information and simultaneously consider the roles of physical threat and disgust perception. We find that poor performance in misinformation accuracy judgments and subsequently lower COVID‐19 threat perceptions sequentially predict less PHB engagement. In Study 1 (N = 87 US undergraduate students), higher conservatism predicted lower COVID‐19 threat perceptions but not COVID‐19 disgust perceptions. Study 2 (N = 168 US undergraduate students) replicated this effect, while demonstrating that the relationship between stronger conservatism and lower engagement in PHB was mediated by higher accuracy judgments of COVID‐19 misinformation and, in turn, lower perceptions of COVID‐19 threat but not disgust. This suggests that considering threat perception is essential to understanding how politically motivated endorsement of COVID‐19 misinformation shapes PHB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning one is similar to a stigmatized group can threaten one's identity and prompt disassociation from the group. What are the consequences of learning of a similarity to a stigmatized group when that similarity implies possible recategorization into the group? We investigated how learning of an immutable, recategorization implying similarity with an outgroup affects implicitly and explicitly assessed prejudice. In Study 1, White participants who believed they had above average genetic overlap with African Americans showed decreased prejudice on implicit but not explicit measures. In Study 2, straight/heterosexual participants who were led to believe they exhibited some same-sex attraction showed reduced implicitly assessed prejudice, but only if they believed sexual orientation was biologically determined. Thus, learning of an identity-implying similarity with an outgroup can reduce implicit prejudice if that group membership is believed to be immutable. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research typically reveals that outgroups are regarded with disinterest at best and hatred and enmity at worst. Working from an evolutionary framework, we identify a unique pattern of outgroup attraction. The small-group lifestyle of pre-human ancestors plausibly limited access to genetically diverse mates. Ancestral females may have solved the inbreeding dilemma while balancing parental investment pressures by mating with outgroup males either via converting to an outgroup or cuckolding the ingroup. A vestige of those mating strategies might manifest in human women as a cyclic pattern of attraction across the menstrual cycle, such that attraction to outgroup men increases as fertility increases across the cycle. Two studies, one using a longitudinal method and the other an experimental method, evidenced the hypothesized linear relationship between attraction to outgroup men and fertility in naturally cycling women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial and ethnic biases often manifest without awareness. The underlying causes of these attitudes are not fully understood. While outgroup bias is well studied, ingroup bias has received far less attention. We examined ingroup biases among Hispanic women and outgroup biases toward Hispanics among White (Caucasian non-Hispanic) females using the startle eyeblink paradigm, the Implicit Association Test (IAT), and an explicit self-report measure. Hispanic and White male faces were used as exemplars during both the startle task and the IAT. A similar pattern of results were observed for indirect measures: both groups displayed startle and IAT responses indicative of negative attitudes toward Hispanic male faces relative to White male faces, although less so for Hispanic participants. Combined groups correlational analyses revealed a significant positive relationship between startle eyeblink amplitude and subtle subscale bias scores. However, no relationships were found between any measures when groups were examined separately. The comparable pattern of startle and IAT results suggests that in spite of the likelihood that these measures index different aspects of attitudes and tap into different processes, inter and intragroup biases are manifested similarly. The finding of negative ingroup biases among Hispanic females is consistent with system justification theory, which posits that members of devalued groups internalize negative stereotypes about their ingroup. This study extends startle eyeblink research of intergroup racial biases, while also expanding this line of research to intragroup biases. In doing so, these results add to our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying the persistent nature of stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]