Objectives

There is little scholarship about what affects calls for service, even as they originate the vast majority of police interventions in the USA. We test how racial perceptions, ambiguous situational contexts, and participant demographics affect desire to call the police.

Methods

We conduct a nationwide survey experiment with 2,038 participants, varying vignette racial composition (subjects described as black or white) and seriousness of event (less serious, more ambiguous or more serious, less ambiguous) to test two outcomes: 1) desire to call the police and 2) perceived threat.

Results

Perceived race does not directly affect mean desire to call the police or perceived threat. However, political views moderate the effects of race: compared to politically moderate participants, very liberal participants express less desire to call the police while very conservative participants express more desire to call the police in a vignette featuring young Black men.

Conclusions

The political polarization of desire to call the police raises questions about racially differentiated risk of more serious criminal justice system events, including arrest and incarceration, for racial and ethnic minorities.

中文翻译：

---

打电话：种族感知如何影响报警的愿望？

目标

尽管美国绝大多数警察干预都是由服务请求发起的，但关于什么因素影响服务请求的研究却很少。我们测试了种族观念、模糊的情境和参与者的人口统计数据如何影响报警的愿望。

方法

我们对 2,038 名参与者进行了一项全国范围的调查实验，改变了种族构成（被描述为黑人或白人的受试者）和事件的严重性（不太严重、更模糊或更严重、更模糊），以测试两个结果：1）渴望打电话给警察和 2) 感知到的威胁。

结果

感知种族并不直接影响报警或感知威胁的平均愿望。然而，政治观点会缓和种族的影响：与政治温和的参与者相比，非常自由的参与者表示不太愿意报警，而非常保守的参与者在以年轻黑人为主角的小插曲中表示更愿意报警。

结论

报警愿望的政治两极分化引发了人们的疑问，即少数族裔和少数族裔面临更严重的刑事司法系统事件（包括逮捕和监禁）的种族差异风险。