Interracial public–police contact: Relationships with police officers’ racial and work-related attitudes and behavior
Introduction
Ethnic minorities are likely to hold negative attitudes toward the police, often perceiving police officers as being unfair and prejudiced (Hurst et al., 2000, Tyler and Huo, 2002, Weitzer and Tuch, 2005). Examination of police officers’ attitudes and behavior has shown that these negative perceptions are not completely unwarranted. Indeed, studies across different Western countries have indicated that police officers effectively obtain relatively high racial prejudice scores compared to the general population (Colman and Gorman, 1982, Pitkänen and Kouki, 2002, Wortley and Homel, 1995), which might result in an increased likelihood of ethnic minority members being accosted by police officers on the streets (e.g., Home Office, 2004).
Evidently, police officers often interact with members of ethnic minorities during the exercise of their duty, and several authors have shown that minority members’ negative attitudes toward the police arise from negative personal experiences (Hurst et al., 2000, Tyler and Huo, 2002, Weitzer and Tuch, 2005). An underinvestigated issue, however, is the possibility that police officers’ attitudes and behavior are related to those daily intergroup experiences as well, which can, as we discuss below, be reasonably expected based on the existing contact literature and Allport (1954). Therefore, the present study examines the associations between the frequency of positive and negative contact and police officers’ levels of prejudiced attitudes and (self-reported) behavior toward immigrants (i.e., ethnic minorities with non-European roots). Furthermore, because interracial public–police contact constitutes such a vital part of police work, the present study extends the traditional intergroup contact approach of studying prejudice-related variables by also addressing the relationships with global work-related attitudes and behavior. These two focal issues are addressed in the following sections.
The intergroup contact hypothesis formulated by Allport (1954) proposed that under optimal conditions contact between members of different groups reduces intergroup prejudice. Allport listed four essential features for successful intergroup contact to occur: (1) equal status between the groups, (2) intergroup cooperation, (3) common goals, and (4) support of authorities, norms, or customs. Later on, two factors were added to the list: opportunity for personal acquaintance and the development of intergroup friendships (Pettigrew, 1998, Pettigrew, 2008). A recent meta-analysis of more than 500 studies (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006) provided clear evidence for the association between intergroup contact and positive outgroup attitudes. Of course, part of this association can be explained by the tendency of prejudiced people to avoid intergroup contact, but several studies adopting non-recursive structural equation models (e.g., Pettigrew, Christ, Wagner, & Stellmacher, 2007) or longitudinal designs (e.g., Brown, Eller, Leeds, & Stace, 2007) have demonstrated that contact has a stronger impact on prejudice than the reverse (Pettigrew, 2008). Hence, the available empirical evidence has led to the consensus that “intergroup contact typically reduces prejudice” (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006, p. 751).
However, the majority of studies has typically focused on positive contact and the necessity of Allport's ‘ideal’ conditions, triggering recent criticism that “everyday contact between groups bears little resemblance to this ideal world” (Dixon, Durrheim, & Tredoux, 2005, p. 699). Dixon et al. (2005) argued that this focus not only resulted in theories that are sometimes unusable or even meaningless in practice, but also “has produced a picture of intergroup processes that increasingly obscures and prettifies the starker realities of everyday interactions between members of different groups” (p. 700). While this criticism does not devaluate the importance of contact as a mechanism to reduce prejudice, it emphasizes the need to investigate intergroup contact in its societal context (see also Pettigrew, 2008). Moreover, because of the traditional focus on positive intergroup contact, little is known about intergroup encounters that lead to an increase of prejudice and conflict (Pettigrew, 2008).
Interracial public–police contact constitutes a good example of everyday intergroup encounters devoid of most (if not all) optimal contact conditions. Status inequality, for example, is intrinsic to police work. Nevertheless, based on their meta-analysis, Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) concluded that even though Allport's (1954) conditions facilitate the contact effect, positive outcomes even emerge in the absence of several of the proposed conditions. An important question arising here is how interracial public–police contact is related to the attitudes of police officers toward immigrants, given the situational conditions that are in contradiction to the proposed conditions. Suggestive but inconclusive evidence regarding this issue has been obtained by Liebkind, Haaramo, and Jasinskaja-Lahti (2000) who examined attitudes toward immigrants among various professional groups including police officers. It was reported that contact quality, as indicated by the degree of familiarity of the immigrant who respondents knew best, improved attitudes toward immigrants, even in unequal and non-voluntary contact situations.
Unfortunately, instances of negative intergroup contact may occur more frequently during police work, overruling the potential effects of high quality contact. Dhont and Van Hiel (2009) found in a general community sample that even though negative contact occurs less frequently than positive contact, negative contact had the strongest impact on prejudice, which may be attributed to a higher emotional salience of negative experiences. Along similar lines, Boniecki and Britt (2003) discussed the relationship between negative contact and prejudice of soldiers during peacekeeping operations abroad. Similar to police officers, soldiers often hold negative outgroup attitudes (e.g., Bosman, Richardson, & Soeters, 2007). However, peacekeeping forces are also likely to experience hostile encounters with the local population that foster feelings of threat and anxiety, which eventually strengthen their negative attitudes even more (Boniecki & Britt, 2003).
Given the likelihood of negative contact with ethnic minority members during police work, the relationship between negative contact and racial prejudice may also be exacerbated in a police context. Indeed, police officers may be forced to deal with a lot of unpleasant situations involving members of ethnic minorities, leading to stronger associations between the amount of negative contact with prejudiced attitudes and, eventually with their behavior toward ethnic minority members.
In sum, the available evidence suggests that positive interracial public–police contact is linked to less prejudiced attitudes among police officers, and ultimately to less racially biased behavior. Conversely, negative contact between police officers and immigrants is expected to be related to more prejudiced attitudes, and eventually to more racially biased behavior. Therefore, the present study investigates the relationships between interracial public–police contact (positive and negative) and police officers’ attitudes and behavior toward immigrants and aims to demonstrate an indirect relationship between intergroup contact and their behavior through police officers’ prejudiced attitudes.
A host of studies has examined the relationships between intergroup contact and specific intergroup variables (e.g., prejudice, intergroup anxiety, discrimination, and stereotyping). However, bearing in mind Pettigrew's (2008) argument that intergroup contact also needs to be viewed in its specific institutional settings and larger societal context, it is somewhat surprising that other, relatively more distal outcome variables have received little attention. Indeed, the study of intergroup contact within, for example an organizational context makes it possible to investigate relationships with a broader range of variables that are highly relevant in that particular context as well. Frequent intergroup contact ‘on the job’ may thus be related to workers’ perceptions and attitudes toward their work and organization. In the context of police work, there are regular interactions with immigrants and the valence and amount of this contact constitutes an inherent and important part of police work. It is therefore likely that these experiences are linked to other work-related attitudes and behavior. Uncovering such relationships would not only broaden the theoretical framework in which intergroup contact can be studied but would also significantly extend its applied relevance. Therefore, in the present study we broaden the traditional intergroup contact research questions by examining the potential relationship between contact and two important work-related variables: procedural fairness perceptions and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).
Procedural fairness refers to the extent to which people consider the procedures used by the organization and hierarchical authorities to arrive at outcomes as fair. In particular, Leventhal (1980) proposed that procedural fairness is based on elements such as the opportunity for voice and the perception of procedures to be consistent, free of bias, accurate, correctable, and ethical. Some authors have argued that procedural fairness also includes issues of interpersonal treatment, such as politeness, respect, and dignity (e.g., Tyler and Blader, 2000, Tyler and Lind, 1992).
Although procedural fairness is commonly defined as originating from (an authority within) the organization, the multifoci justice model of Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel, and Rupp (2001) emphasizes the presence of multiple sources of (un)fairness, especially in terms of interpersonal treatment, at the level of the organization, supervisor, co-workers or, important in this context, customers (e.g., Rupp and Spencer, 2006, Spencer and Rupp, 2009). Indeed, Rupp and colleagues demonstrated that employees perceive customers as a potential source of unfairness, which influences employees’ adherence to organizational guidelines regarding emotional display rules (i.e., emotional labor). In particular, they demonstrated that injustice perceptions can be triggered by contact with impolite, rude, disrespectful, and deceitful customers.
Even though the multifoci model of fairness assumes the strongest effects to occur at the level of the source of the injustice, there is also evidence of cross-over effects, suggesting that fairness perceptions caused by one source may also spill over to and affect outcomes related to a different source (Liao & Rupp, 2005). This notion can be traced back to social information processing theory which claims that individuals gather information from one's direct social context to judge organizational policies, leaders, and practices (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). Hence, we would not only expect negative contact (characterized by impoliteness, a lack of respect, etc) with immigrants to be related to perceptions of ‘customers’ (i.e., prejudice), but these perceptions may also be related to perceptions of other potential fairness sources in the work environment as well, such as organization-focused fairness.
In the context of this study, we thus expect intergroup contact to be associated with fairness perceptions related to the organization as well. Indeed, because an important part of police officers’ job is to interact with immigrants, positive or negative intergroup contact may be closely entangled with fairness perceptions. For example, hurtful and undeserved criticism, exaggerated accusations and derogations from immigrant civilians might not only be associated with police officers’ levels of prejudice toward immigrants, but could also linked to the extent to which they perceive their organization as fair. More specifically, frequent pleasant and constructive public–police contact is assumed to be accompanied by the perception of a positive, supportive and fair working climate, or in other words, by increased levels of police officers’ procedural fairness perception whereas frequent negative contact may be accompanied by the perception that one is not being sufficiently backed by the organization when encountering immigrants, and thus, associated with lowered levels of perceived organizational fairness. An additional interesting issue here is to look at the extent to which positive intergroup contact can counteract the relationship between negative intergroup contact and organization-focused fairness perceptions (for a similar suggestion, see also Spencer & Rupp, 2009).
While it is theoretically interesting to examine the links between intergroup contact and organizational procedural fairness perceptions, from a more applied point, it is even more important to focus on a behavioral work-related variable, that is, on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). OCB is generally conceived as voluntary extra-role behavior that is beneficial to the organization (Organ, 1990), and which is known to predict productivity and profitability at the organizational level (Koys, 2001, Podsakoff et al., 1997). Procedural fairness, especially organization-focused procedural fairness, is considered as an important antecedent of an employee's willingness to perform OCB (e.g., Konovsky and Cropanzano, 1991, Podsakoff et al., 2000). Indeed, employees’ procedural fairness perceptions not only enhance overall job satisfaction, compliance, and the motivation to do the required tasks, but also motivate employees to go beyond their prescribed role requirements. These voluntary prosocial behaviors are not driven by reinforcements or punishments, but instead motivated by the perception that the organization has one's best interests in mind (Cropanzano & Schminke, 2001) and can be trusted not to exploit its employees (De Cremer & Tyler, 2005). We therefore assume that the previously hypothesized relationships between intergroup contact and procedural fairness perceptions, in turn, translate itself into indirect relationships between intergroup contact and OCB's via procedural fairness perceptions.
The present study focuses on the frequency of positive and negative contact of Flemish (from the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) operational police officers with immigrant citizens. The term immigrants refers here to its consensual meaning in Flanders to denominate members of ethnic minorities with non-European roots, and particularly to people from countries with a Muslim majority, with Moroccans and Turks constituting the two largest immigrant communities in Belgium.
In particular, we examine the relationships between the amount of positive and negative interracial public–police contact and police officers’ levels of prejudice toward immigrants, as indicated by prejudiced attitudes as well as self-reported prejudiced behavior. At the same time, we examine the relationships between the amount of positive and negative intergroup contact and work-related perceptions and behavior, as indicated by procedural fairness perceptions and OCB. Based on the literature discussed in Section 1, the following hypotheses are formulated. Hypothesis 1a The amount of positive intergroup contact is negatively related to police officers’ levels of prejudiced attitudes toward immigrants, while negative contact is expected to be positively related to their prejudiced attitudes. Hypothesis 1b Police officers’ prejudiced attitudes are expected to be positively and directly related to their prejudiced behavior toward immigrants, while intergroup contact (positive and negative) is expected to be indirectly related (i.e., negatively and positively, respectively) to prejudiced behavior toward immigrants through prejudiced attitudes. Hypothesis 2a The amount of intergroup contact (positive and negative) is related (i.e., positively and negatively, respectively) to positive work-related perceptions, i.e., procedural fairness perceptions. Hypothesis 2b Procedural fairness perceptions is expected to be positively and directly related to OCB, while intergroup contact (positive and negative) is indirectly related (i.e., positively and negatively, respectively) to OCB through police officers’ procedural fairness perceptions.
Section snippets
Participants
Respondents were 188 police officers recruited among the active members of the operational staff of one small and two middle-sized local police corps in Flanders (i.e., the Dutch speaking region of Belgium) counting a total of 527 police officers across the three corps (83, 185, and 259 respectively). Data from 16 respondents were excluded from analyses because of too many missing values. The sample (N = 172; n1 = 22, n2 = 77, and n3 = 72 for the separate corps, respectively) comprised 143 males, 28
Hypotheses 1a and 1b: testing the relations between intergroup contact and prejudiced attitudes and behavior
Fig. 1 presents the tested model (Model 1). This model indicated a good fit to the data, χ2(163) = 217.75, p = .003; CFI = .97; RMSEA = .044; SRMR = .068. As can be seen in Fig. 1, all hypothesized relations were significant. More specifically, confirming Hypothesis 1a, positive and negative contact were, respectively negatively and positively, related to prejudiced attitudes, while in accordance with Hypothesis 1b police officers’ prejudiced attitudes were significantly and positively related to their
Discussion
The present study had two major aims. First, we wanted to investigate whether the frequency of positive and negative contact between police officers and immigrants is related to police officers’ prejudiced attitudes and behavior toward immigrants. Simultaneously, we aimed to examine whether interracial public–police contact is related to the general work-related variables of procedural fairness perceptions and OCB.
The present study yielded corroborative evidence for our hypotheses. In line with
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a PhD research grant from the Ghent University Research Council (BOF) awarded to Kristof Dhont (#01D23607). Special thanks are due to Bart Duriez, Johnny Fontaine, Ivan Mervielde, and Sven Pattyn for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper and to Koen Schelfaut for his efforts in data collection.
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