ABSTRACT

Procedural justice theory posits that people care at least as much about how a decision was made as they do about the outcome. Although policymakers and researchers argue that procedural justice-based interventions can improve police-civilian interactions, little research has examined how authorities evaluate decision-making processes. This research examined whether police officers and civilians evaluate fairness in police-civilian encounters through the same mechanisms. 69 police officer and 113 civilian participants, recruited through Qualtrics professional panels and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk respectively, read a vignette describing a police-civilian interaction in which the civilian explained why they violated the law (procedural justice) or were interrupted by the officer (procedural injustice) and made evaluations of the interaction. Multiple-group analyses using bootstrapping revealed that both police officers and civilians rated the procedural justice condition as more fair because they rated the officer as more respectful and trustworthy and because they perceived the civilian had more voice than in the procedural injustice condition. Further, direct and indirect pathways through respect were not present when police officer pathways were allowed to vary, suggesting police may rely on social information differently than civilians.

摘要

程序正义理论认为，人们对决策如何做出的关心至少与他们对结果的关心一样多。尽管政策制定者和研究人员认为，基于程序正义的干预可以改善警民互动，但很少有研究调查当局如何评估决策过程。这项研究检查了警察和平民是否通过相同的机制评估警察与平民相遇的公平性。分别通过 Qualtrics 专业小组和亚马逊的 Mechanical Turk 招募的 69 名警察和 113 名平民参与者阅读了一段描述警察与平民互动的小插曲，其中平民解释了为什么他们违反法律（程序正义）或被警察打断（程序正义）不公正) 并对交互进行了评估。使用自举法的多组分析显示，警察和平民都认为程序正义条件更公平，因为他们认为警察更受尊重和值得信赖，而且他们认为平民比程序不公正条件下更有发言权。此外，当允许警察途径变化时，不存在通过尊重的直接和间接途径，这表明警察可能与平民不同地依赖社会信息。