Graduation Date

Spring 2023

Document Type

Thesis

Program

Master of Arts degree with a major in Psychology, option Academic Research

Committee Chair Name

Dr. Amber Gaffney

Committee Chair Affiliation

HSU Faculty or Staff

Second Committee Member Name

Dr. Gregg Gold

Second Committee Member Affiliation

HSU Faculty or Staff

Third Committee Member Name

Stephanie Souter

Third Committee Member Affiliation

HSU Faculty or Staff

Keywords

Intergroup contact theory, Law enforcement, Attitudes, Prototypicality, Negative contact, Positive contact, Group salience

Subject Categories

Psychology

Abstract

Using intergroup contact theory (ICT), which posits that contact experiences with members of outgroups relate to attitudes toward those outgroups as a whole, the current study examines how positive and negative experiences with members of law enforcement predict general attitudes toward law enforcement. It specifically examines how attitudes toward individual members of law enforcement from contact experiences generalize to law enforcement as a whole, and how this generalization process is more or less effective when members of law enforcement are seen as more or less representative of law enforcement as a group (i.e., when law enforcement group membership is salient). I predicted that positive contact experiences with members of law enforcement would relate to positive attitudes toward those individuals, which in turn would predict positive attitudes toward law enforcement in general. However, this process should be more effective when the individuals from those experiences are seen as typical and representative of law enforcement. A similar process should occur for negative contact experiences, except that negative experiences would predict less favorable attitudes. To assess these relationships, I collected data from an online sample of Americans (N = 505) through Amazon Cloud Research. The primary predictions were mostly supported. While the relationship between contact experiences with members of law enforcement and attitudes toward those individuals was inconsistent across analyses, attitudes toward individual members of law enforcement strongly related to general attitudes toward law enforcement, and this depended on the degree to which those individuals were seen as typical and representative of law enforcement. This was true for positive and negative contact. These findings make theoretical contributions to ICT by examining negative contact in conjunction with group salience and have important implications for how law enforcement should interact with members of their communities.

Citation Style

APA

Share

 
COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.