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A Criminal Schema: The Role of Chronicity, Race, and Socioeconomic Status in Law Enforcement Officials' Perceptions of Others
Author(s) -
Ruby C. L.,
Brigham John C.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1996.tb01840.x
Subject(s) - schema (genetic algorithms) , psychology , socioeconomic status , social psychology , law enforcement , perception , race (biology) , value (mathematics) , suspect , cognition , criminology , law , political science , sociology , population , gender studies , demography , machine learning , neuroscience , computer science
This study investigated the extent to which law enforcement (LE) officials' perceptions of criminality are biased by the chronic nature of, and the racial and Socioeconomic status (SES) features of, their cognitive schemas of the typical criminal. One‐hundred twenty undergraduate psychology students and 121 LE officers participated in this study. Part 1 of this study hypothesized that a chronic criminal schema used by LE would result in LE subjects perceiving criminality in ambiguous situations. Contrary to the hypothesis, laypersons were more likely to view an ambiguous situation as criminal than were LE subjects. Part 2 of this study hypothesized that when exposed to the actions of a Black and/or lower SES criminal suspect, LE subjects would perceive more guilt, perceive more deceptiveness, place less value on exculpatory information, and place more value on incriminating information than would students. The results supported this second hypothesis with regard to race, but not SES.