Hyperviligance Toward Black Women's Anger and Its Influence on White Americans' Attitudes Toward Police Violence Against Women

Research on police interactions with the Black community, and perceptions of these interactions, has focused almost exclusively on men (Crenshaw et al., 2015). This fact is striking given that Black women are more likely to be murdered by police than White women are (Edwards et al., 2019). The current work plays a crucial role in investigating perceptions of police interactions with Black and White women. I interrogate the role of gendered racial stereotypes in the perception of Black and White women’s anger expression, and how these perceptions may, in turn, lead to greater acceptance of police use of force against women suspects. In the Pilot Study and Study 1, I investigated whether White participants perceived Black and White women differently when their anger expressions varied from neutral to very angry. Consistent with my hypotheses, participants perceived Black women to be angrier at low levels of anger expression, but perceived White women to be angrier at high levels of anger expression. In Study 2, I extended this perceptual framework to investigate how images of Black and White women expressing a little or a lot of anger may lead White participants to perceive Black (vs. White) women as angrier and, in turn, that escalating use of officer force is appropriate. Critically, this pattern of results was more extreme when women expressed a little (vs. a lot) of anger, suggesting that White Americans are hypervigilant toward Black (vs. White) women’s anger expression. Overall, these findings suggest that subtle shifts in anger expression may influence White Americans’ perceptions that police use of force is more appropriate when the suspect is Black (vs. White).