Race, Ambivalent Sexism, and Perceptions of Situations When Police Shoot Black Women

The current research investigates people’s attitudes toward an ambiguous situation of police violence against a woman suspect. We hypothesize that the suspect’s race and participants’ ambivalent sexism, particularly benevolent sexism, will jointly inform perceptions of the suspect’s femininity, and in turn, perceptions of the suspect’s pain, judgments of who is to blame, and perceptions the officer was justified in using force against the suspect. Across two studies, we found support for our hypotheses: participants who reported more benevolent sexism thought the suspect were more feminine, but this association was only present when the suspect was White, as opposed to Black. Perceived femininity, in turn, predicted perceptions the suspect felt more pain, was less blameworthy for the situation, and perceptions that the officer’s use of force was less justified (Study 2).