The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children
INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND GROUP PROCESSES
by Phillip Atiba Goff and Matthew Christian Jackson, The University of California, Los Angeles; Brooke Allison Lewis Di Leone, National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Boston, Massachusetts; Carmen Marie Culotta, The Pennsylvania State University; and Natalie Ann DiTomasso, The University of Pennsylvania
This article was published Online First February 24, 2014. Editor’s Note. Stacey Sinclair served as the action editor for this article.—JAS
© 2014 American Psychological Association 0022-3514/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0035663 526
Received September 11, 2011
Revision received November 5, 2013
Accepted November 14, 2013
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-- The Ceremony of Innocence is Drowned, by Charles Carreon
-- Comparing Black People to Apes: It's Worse Than You Thought, by Jenee Desmond-Harris
-- Conservatism and Cognitive Ability, by Lazar Stankov
-- San Francisco Cops Said It Was Legal to Murder Black Man Because He Was an "Animal," by Esther Yu-Hsi Lee
-- Trust No Fox on Green Heath and No Jew on His Oath, by Elwira Bauer
-- What Dilemma? Moral Evaluation Shapes Factual Belief, by Brittany Liu and Peter H. Ditto
The social category “children” defines a group of individuals who are perceived to be distinct, with essential characteristics including innocence and the need for protection (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000). The present research examined whether Black boys are given the protections of childhood equally to their peers. We tested 3 hypotheses: (a) that Black boys are seen as less “childlike” than their White peers, (b) that the characteristics associated with childhood will be applied less when thinking specifically about Black boys relative to White boys, and (c) that these trends would be exacerbated in contexts where Black males are dehumanized by associating them (implicitly) with apes (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008). We expected, derivative of these 3 principal hypotheses, that individuals would perceive Black boys as being more responsible for their actions and as being more appropriate targets for police violence. We find support for these hypotheses across 4 studies using laboratory, field, and translational (mixed laboratory/field) methods. We find converging evidence that Black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a less essential conception of childhood than do their White same-age peers. Further, our findings demonstrate that the Black/ape association predicted actual racial disparities in police violence toward children. These data represent the first attitude/behavior matching of its kind in a policing context. Taken together, this research suggests that dehumanization is a uniquely dangerous intergroup attitude, that intergroup perception of children is underexplored, and that both topics should be research priorities.
Keywords: dehumanization, racial discrimination, police bias, intergroup processes, juvenile justice
The most important question in the world is, “Why is the child crying?”
—Alice Walker
Families, laws, and cultures try to protect children from the harshest realities adults face (Ariès, 1965; Lampinen & Sexton- Radek, 2010). It is troubling, therefore, to learn about contexts in which children experience harsh realities similar to those experienced by adults. In the U.S. criminal justice system, for example, thousands of children are sent to adult correctional facilities every year (Redding, 2010), and to chilling effect. Relative to peers sent to juvenile facilities, children who are sentenced as adults are twice as likely to be assaulted by a correctional officer, five times as likely to be sexually assaulted, and eight times as likely to commit suicide (Poe-Yamagata & Jones, 2007; Young & Gainsborough, 2000). These outcomes are particularly worrisome for Black children, who are 18 times more likely than White children to be sentenced as adults and who represent 58% of children sentenced to adult facilities (Poe-Yamagata & Jones, 2007). Given the near universal protection society attempts to afford children, why are Black children so vulnerable to being treated like adults?
When Black adults are treated more harshly than Whites, research often confirms that racial bias, explicit or implicit, is at least partially responsible (Dovidio, 2001). But racial prejudice has not previously been linked to treating individuals as if they are older than they are. In fact, racially disparate treatment of children has rarely been studied by social psychologists, and, when it has been, racial prejudice was not linked to estimations of maturity (Graham & Lowery, 2004; Rattan, Levine, Dweck & Eberhardt, 2012). What, then, might be an alternate explanation for the treatment of Black children as adults? In previous research, Harris and Fiske (2006) found evidence that members of dehumanized groups can receive fewer basic social considerations. As the perception of innocence is a central protection afforded to children (e.g., Giroux, 2000; Hendrick, 2003; Kitzinger, 2003), it follows that this social consideration may not be given to the children of dehumanized groups, such as Black Americans (Goff, Thomas, & Jackson, 2008), in equal measure as they are given to their peers. In the context of criminal justice, such dehumanization could explain some of the racial disparities in sentencing and even the disparate use of force by officers. This article, therefore, examines the possibility that the protections of childhood are diminished for Black children in contexts where they are dehumanized.
Dehumanization Versus Prejudice
Previous research suggests that, in contexts where individuals are dehumanized (defined as the “denial of full humanness to others;” Haslam, 2006, p. 252), social protections from violence can be removed or reduced—even when that dehumanization is not paired with explicit prejudice (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008). Consequently, in this article, we explore the possibility that, if human childhood affords strong protections against harsh, adult-like treatment, then in contexts where children are dehumanized, those children can be treated with adult severity.
This is consistent with previous formulations of dehumanization and infrahumanization, sometimes referred to as “a lesser form of dehumanization” (Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006, p. 805). These formulations assert that traditional prejudice and dehumanization take distinct routes to discrimination and predict distinct outcomes (Eyssel & Ribas, 2012; Leyens et al., 2000, 2001). Several researchers have argued in particular that dehumanization is distinct from prejudice because prejudice is a broad intergroup attitude whereas dehumanization is the route to moral exclusion, the denial of basic human protections to a group or group member (Opotow, 1990; Powell, 2012; Staub, 1989).
This conception of prejudice and dehumanization would predict that, whereas prejudice may prompt one to devalue a job candidate from a disliked group (e.g., Dovidio & Gaertner, 2000), prejudice would not predict endorsement of genocide or extreme violence toward that individual or group (Staub, 1989, 1990, 2000). Dehumanization, on the other hand, would. Consequently, although prejudice toward Black children might result in negative academic evaluations and social exclusion (Farkas, 2003; Lareau & Horvat, 1999; Skiba, Trachok, Chung, Baker, & Hughes, 2012), dehumanization of Black children might conflict with perceptions of children as needing protection. In other words, children may be afforded fewer basic protections in contexts where they are dehumanized, making them vulnerable to harsh treatment usually reserved for adults.
In this context, dehumanization serves to change the meaning of the category “children.” Individuals tend to understand “children” as an essential category (i.e., biologically innate, stable, discrete, and natural), the principal characteristics of which are age (i.e., young) and innocence (Giroux, 2000; Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000; Hendrick, 2003; Kitzinger, 2003).
Because dehumanization involves the denial of full humanness to others (Haslam, 2006), one would expect a reduction of social considerations afforded to humans for those who are dehumanized. This reduction violates one defining characteristic of children— being innocent and thus needing protection—rendering the category “children” less essential and distinct from “adults.” This may also cause individuals to see Black children as more like adults or, more precisely, to see them as older than they are. As a result, dehumanization may reduce prohibitions against targeting children for harsh or adult treatment (Rattan et al., 2012). The present research tests the hypothesis that contexts where Black children are dehumanized reduce the human protections given to those children in two ways: making them seem older and decreasing the perception of “children” as essential— each rendering them less innocent and more vulnerable to harsh, adult-like treatment.
A History of Dehumanization
Historians of genocide often argue that dehumanization is a necessary precondition for culturally and/or state-sanctioned violence (Frederickson, 2002; Jahoda, 1999; Santa Ana, 2002)—a view echoed by some social psychological theorists (Opotow, 1990; Staub, 1989). The logic of this assertion is that dehumanizing groups morally excludes them (Opotow, 1990), making it permissible to treat people in a way that would be morally objectionable if they were fully human. U.S. history is replete with examples of this kind of moral exclusion of Black children. For instance, the policies of chattel slavery (mostly pertaining to peoples of African descent) permitted children to be separated from their parents and forced into labor at any age (Guttman, 1976). In 1944, a Black 14-year-old, George Junius Stinney Jr., became the youngest person on record in the United States to be legally executed by the state (electrocuted without the benefit of a lawyer, witnesses, or a record of confession; Jones, 2007). And, notoriously, in 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy named Emmett Till was dragged from his bed, disfigured, and lynched for allegedly whistling at a White woman (Crowe, 2003). What psychological context could explain this treatment of children? Again, there is reason to believe it may be contexts that provoke dehumanization.
A growing literature demonstrates that individuals tend to associate out-groups and out-group members with nonhuman animals more than they do members of their in-group (Boccato, Capozza, Falvo, & Durante, 2008; Capozza, Boccato, Andrighetto, & Falvo, 2009; Haslam, 2006; Loughnan & Haslam, 2007; Saminaden, Loughnan, & Haslam, 2010). More to the point, research by Goff and colleagues supports the hypothesized link between dehumanization and sanctioned violence (Goff et al., 2008). In this research, White participants who were subliminally exposed to images of apes before watching a video of police beating a Black man were more likely to endorse that beating, despite the extremity of the violence. Participants did not, however, endorse the same beating when the suspect was White or when they had not been primed with the ape image. In a follow-up study, Goff et al. coded newspaper articles about death-eligible criminal cases in Philadelphia for ape-related metaphors. They found that the frequency of ape-related imagery predicted whether or not criminals were executed by the state. Of importance, in neither study was racial prejudice (explicit or implicit) a significant predictor. That is, dehumanization uniquely predicted violence and its endorsement.
“I hate to tell you this but my wife friend is over with their kids and her husband is black! If is an Attorney but should I be worried?” Furminger’s friend, an SFPD officer, responded: “Get ur pocket gun. Keep it available in case the monkey returns to his roots. Its not against the law to put an animal down.” Furminger responded, “Well said!”
-- San Francisco Cops Said It Was Legal to Murder Black Man Because He Was an "Animal," by Esther Yu-Hsi Lee
The Specific Historical Connection Between Blacks and Apes
Although a general association between a group and “animals” is one form of dehumanization, there are reasons to believe that some animals are more strongly associated with some groups than others. For instance, Jews were frequently represented as vermin (particularly rodents) during the Holocaust of World War II (Jahoda, 1999). Similarly, in the context of United States immigration, Latinos are frequently referred to with insect-related language, such as “hordes of immigrants” that “scurry over the border,” “infecting” U.S. culture (Santa Ana, 2002). Likewise, there is a long tradition of peoples of African descent being likened to nonhuman primates—what the philosopher Lott (1999) referred to as the “Negro/Ape metaphor.”
This dehumanizing representation can still be found in depictions of soccer players of African descent, especially in Europe (Jones, 2002; Thompson, 2013), and of the first Black president of the United States (Apel, 2009). Consequently, the research conducted by Goff, Eberhardt, et al. (2008) tested the strength of an association between Blacks and great apes (e.g., gorillas, chimpanzees) in contrast to that between Blacks and big cats (e.g., lions, tigers, cheetahs). This research found that, though big cats were seen as more violent, more negative, and more strongly associated with Africa than were great apes, the Black/ape association predicted violence. This finding suggests that the strong historical association between Blacks and apes specifically—and not Blacks with simply any animal—may still influence the unique ways in which individuals dehumanize Blacks. Consequently, the present research uses the same methods as this previous work (Goff, Eberhardt, et al., 2008) to investigate the reduction in protections afforded to Black children when they are dehumanized.
Dehumanization at the Margins: Adolescence and Felonies
The transition from childhood to adulthood is gradual, resulting in most societies seeing adolescence as an indeterminate mix of adult and childlike qualities (Burton, Obeidallah, & Allison, 1996; Johnson, Berg, & Sirotzki, 2007). This ambiguity is even reflected in the views of the American Psychological Association (APA) on how children should be treated within the criminal justice system. For instance, in its amicus brief in Roper v. Simmons (2005), the APA argued in favor of abolishing the death penalty for children under 18, describing children as developmentally immature and less culpable for their actions. Conversely, in its amicus brief in Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990), the APA argued that children are mature enough to make the decision to have an abortion without parental consent. Most researchers have reconciled these viewpoints by postulating that children have developed the ability to make deliberate, unhurried decisions (such as medical decisions) but do not yet have fully developed the psychosocial skills needed for impulse control (key to avoiding criminal liability and violence; Spear 2000; Steinberg, 2008; Steinberg, Cauffman, Woolard, Graham, & Banich, 2009; Steinberg & Scott, 2003). Given the intermediate position of adolescence between childhood and adulthood and the prediction that the protections of childhood would be reduced for a particular group of children in contexts where that group is dehumanized, it follows that dehumanization would be particularly consequential for adolescents, as those protections may already be waning. Recent research by Rattan et al. (2012) supports this conception of adolescence. In that research, participants perceived Black adolescent offenders as more deserving of adult treatment than an identical White adolescent offender, providing evidence for racial bias in the perceptions of juvenile offenders and for the labile nature of adolescence as a category.
I thought [of] Tamir Rice this weekend. Our son — who, at 13, is the same age Rice would be now — pulled on his hoodie and walked out the door to meet up with a friend. That’s what any 13-year-old should be doing.
The world is different for children like Tamir Rice and our son.
They are not safe from police violence anywhere. Not at school, not at home, not at pool parties, not even just walking down the street.
They don’t get to be children. They are “denied the right to be young, to be vulnerable, to make mistakes.” Police see them as “older looking,” and “less innocent” than their white peers. (The police officers at the scene [of] Rice’s shooting thought he was “maybe 20” years old.)
They get punished more harshly than their white peers for the same behavior. They are criminalized for behavioral problems for which their white peers get treatment. They are suspended or expelled from school more than their white peers for the same behavior. Boys are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than their white peers. Police are more likely to “shoot first,” and use force against them. Tamir Rice was shot within two seconds, over a toy gun that he never pointed at the police. Yet, many whites have pointed guns at the police and lived to tell the tale.
No rules can guarantee their safety. There were no rules that could help Tamir Rice in the seconds he had to react.
Of course, I’ve had “the talk” with our son. We loaded him up with advice before he went out the door. We told him to call home if for any reason he wanted us to come and get him. We breathed a sigh of relief when he walked back in the door a few hours later, safe and sound, with no trouble to report.
-- One Year Later: Still No Justice for Tamir Rice, by Terrance Heath
Additionally, any context that provokes consideration of a child as an adult should be particularly susceptible to the effects of dehumanization. Within a juvenile justice context, then, felony cases may be particularly precarious because the serious nature of felonies allows prosecutors to raise the question of whether or not the suspect should be tried as an adult. Misdemeanors, on the other hand, do not. Consequently, a child felony suspect is most at risk of being misperceived as an adult because of her or his intermediate developmental stage and the severity of her or his offense. Therefore, we expected that perceptions of child felony suspects would be more affected by dehumanization than would perceptions of misdemeanor or younger suspects.
Overview of Studies
The present work tested the hypothesis that Black children enjoy fewer of the basic human protections afforded to their peers because the category “children” is seen to be a less essential category (specifically, less distinct from adults) when it is applied to Black children, particularly in contexts where Black children are dehumanized. We also expected that Black children would be seen as less innocent as well as older than their other-race peers. We expected that when children are seen as less distinct from adults, they would also receive fewer protections in both laboratory and field settings. Additionally, this could ultimately result in increased violence toward them relative to their peers in criminal justice contexts. Finally, we expected that the presence of dehumanization, and not traditional prejudice, would moderate each of these relationships. We expected in particular that the dehumanizing implicit association between Blacks and apes found in prior research (see Goff et al., 2008) would predict reductions in seeing “children” as an essential category when applied to Blacks and, thus, also predict age overestimations of Black children and decreases in perceptions of Black children’s innocence.
Because several of our studies involved measuring perceptions in a criminal justice context and because boys are disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice system (71% of children arrested are boys Snyder, 2005), we chose to focus on male Black children in the portions of the present research examining criminal contexts, using them as targets in Studies 2, 3a, and 3b. We designed Study 1 to test whether Black children are afforded the privilege of innocence less than children of other races. Studies 2, 3a, and 3b utilize undergraduate and police populations to test the hypothesis that the presence of anti-Black dehumanization facilitates the perception of Black male children as both older than their age and less innocent than their peers. Of importance, Studies 3a and 3b seek to demonstrate these relationships in the domain of encounters with police, with actual police use of force toward children being used as the dependent variable of interest to test our third hypothesis. Finally, Study 4 tests three of our predictions in a single study by examining whether, first, the category “children” is less essentialized for Black male children than for White male children; second, this difference is exacerbated when Black children are dehumanized; and, third, essentialism mediates the relationship between dehumanization and harmful perceptions of Black male children.
Support for these hypotheses would represent an extension of previous research on intergroup conflict by demonstrating that dehumanization not only reduces the inhibitions against out-group violence (Goff et al., 2008) but also decreases other basic human protections, specifically the affordance of innocence to children (in age, responsibility, and essence). This, in turn, would provide evidence for the conceptual distinction between prejudice and dehumanization. Although these predictions are a logical extension of previous theorizing, social psychological research has yet to examine the role dehumanization might play in the perceptions of children or to contrast that effect with the effects of traditional racial prejudice. Consequently, the present research represents the first attempt to establish a unique contribution of dehumanization to the perceptions and treatment of children. It also represents an expansion of the ways in which essentialism may influence intergroup interactions, as the consequences of essentialized notions of age across groups have not yet been studied. Finally, because the present research uses field data to test our hypotheses regarding violence toward Black male children, it represents a translation of theoretical work on dehumanization and essentialism into the worlds where they are most consequential.
Study 1
In order to test our foundational premise, we simply asked participants about the innocence of children. Participants answered questions about how innocent children were in general (i.e., without specifying race) and how innocent White and Black children were.
Method
Participants.
One hundred twenty-three students from a large public university participated in this study in exchange for course credit. Ninety-six percent (128) were female. The median age of participants was 19. When asked to report racial demographics, 111 responded “White,” four responded “Black,” and eight responded “other.”
Design.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of three between-subjects conditions. They were asked to report the perceived innocence of White children, Black children, or children generally (i.e., without race specified). To avoid ceiling effects, where the youngest children (i.e., newborns and toddlers) might invariably be seen as innocent, each survey asked participants to rate individuals within six age subgroups, ranging from birth to young adulthood: 0–4, 5–9, 10–13, 14–17, 18–21, and 22–25. Ratings of innocence were measured with a novel scale and served as the dependent variable. We predicted that participants would rate Black children as less innocent than White children and children whose race was unspecified, particularly for older targets.
Materials
Innocence scale.
We constructed a scale to measure innocence after pretesting revealed seven characteristics that were highly associated with innocence in our subject population. Each characteristic was presented as an item in our seven-item scale, including “How much do ___ (e.g., 10- to 13-year olds) need protection?”; “How much do ___ need care?”; “How well can ___ care for themselves?” (reverse coded); “How much are ___ a danger to others?” (reverse coded); “How much are ___ a danger to themselves?” (reverse coded); “How cute are ___?”; and “How innocent are ___?”
Participants were prompted to respond to the set of seven questions for each of the six age subgroups within their assigned race. For example, a participant assigned to rate Black children was asked, “How much do Black 0- to 4-year-olds need protection?” Alternatively, a participant assigned to the race neutral condition was asked, “How much do 0- to 4-year-olds need protection?” The six age subgroups were presented in one of four randomized orders. Further, the administration of these four orders was counterbalanced across conditions. The innocence scale was acceptably reliable ( .65).
Procedure.
Participants completed the seven-item innocence scale for each of the six age categories within their assigned racial group (White, Black, or race not specified).
Results
Analyses compared the perceived innocence of children of different races for each age group and aggregated across age ranges. We compared the overall ratings of innocence between races by conducting independent samples t tests on the average score for each participant,1 meaning their general ratings of all target age ranges. Blacks were seen as less innocent than Whites and people generally. (See Table 1 for comparisons and significance at every age group and in the aggregate.) Further, for every age group after the age of 9 (i.e., 10–13 through 22–25), Black children and adults were rated as significantly less innocent than White children and adults or children and adults generally. Our analyses revealed no differences in ratings of innocence between Whites and people generally, either within an age group or overall.
Discussion
Study 1 provides evidence that children may not be given the privilege of innocence equally across race. From ages 0–9, children were seen as equally innocent regardless of race. However, perceptions of innocence began to diverge at age 10. At this point, participants began to think of Black children as significantly less innocent than other children at every age group, beginning at the age of 10. Interestingly, after the age of 10, the perceived innocence of Black children is equal to or less than the perceived innocence of non-Black children in the next oldest cohort. In other words, the perceived innocence of Black children age 10–13 was equivalent to that of non-Black children age 14–17, and the perceived innocence of Black children age 14–17 was equivalent to that of non-Black adults age 18–21. This provides preliminary evidence that Black children are more likely to be seen as similar to adults prematurely. What might be the consequences of this innocence gap in criminal justice contexts, where perceiving someone as not innocent has the most severe consequences?
Table 1: Ratings of Innocence for White Children, Black Children, and Children Without Race Specified
Age range / White / Black / Race unspecified
0–4 / 6.19 (.56) / 6.15 (.45) / 6.05 (.42)
5–9 / 5.31 (.63) / 5.38 (.60) / 5.30 (.57)
10–13 / 4.50 (.68) / 3.31 (.59) / 4.39 (.61)
14–17 / 3.33 (.71) / 2.99 (.71) / 3.42 (.61)
18–21 / 2.91 (.83) / 2.33 (.81) / 2.74 (.83)
22–25 / 2.77 (.85) / 2.03 (.86) / 2.61 (.91)
Aggregated /3.97 (.56) / 3.57 (.54) / 4.08 (.52)
Note. Age is in years. Data in parentheses are standard deviations. p .05 (Significantly different from ratings of Black children. There are no differences between White and children whose race was not specified.) p .01. p .001.
Study 2
In Study 2 participants were asked to make evaluations within a criminal justice context, examining whether perceptions of innocence differed by target race and the severity of crimes committed. Because we were interested in testing whether being perceived as less innocent was unique to Black children (as opposed to outgroups in general), participants also rated Latino children. Latinos, similar to Blacks, are stereotyped as criminal and violent (Levy, Stroessner, & Dweck, 1998). If racial differences in the perceived innocence of children are due to stereotypical associations with crime or simply due to in-group bias, we should see similar perceptions of innocence for Black and Latino male children. However, if anti-Black dehumanization (i.e., a Black/ape association) facilitates racial differences in perceptions of innocence, we would expect Black male children to be uniquely perceived as less innocent.
In addition to determining whether Black children are perceived as less innocent than other children, we seek to test the hypothesis that contexts of Black dehumanization facilitate this racial disparity. Following evidence in Study 1 that the perceived innocence of Black children was similar to perceptions of older non-Blacks, Study 2 was also designed to test whether participants would overestimate the ages of Black children and whether dehumanization of Blacks predicts age overestimations. We expected, consistent with other investigations of severe intergroup conflict (Goff et al., 2008), that dehumanization would predict racial differences in age estimations but measures of racial prejudice would not. Consequently, Study 2 included measures of both explicit and implicit racial prejudice.
Finally, we predicted racial differences in perceived innocence and age accuracy would be especially pronounced when Black children were suspected of felonies (as opposed to misdemeanors), because felonies are the crimes that make children eligible for adult punishments in the justice system. As opposed to relatively benign misdemeanors that can more easily be rationalized as youthful indiscretions, felonies are more likely to motivate consideration of attributing adult culpability for one’s actions, as reflected by the availability of adult sentencing in the juvenile justice system.
Method
Participants.
Fifty-nine students from a large public university participated in this study in exchange for course credit. Fifty-eight percent (34) were female. The median age of participants was 19. When asked to report racial demographics, 53 responded “White,” one responded “Black,” two responded “Latino,” and four responded “other.”
Design.
Participants were randomly assigned to a 2 (crime type: misdemeanor vs. felony) 3 (race of target: White vs. Black vs. Latino) mixed-model design, with crime type as a within-subjects factor. As in Study 1, participants were assigned to assess males from a single racial group.
Materials
Age assessment task.
Because Study 1 found that racial differences in assessments of innocence emerged beginning at age 10, participants were shown pictures of young males from one of three races (White vs. Black vs. Latino) age 10–17.2 There were eight pictures of children age 10–17. Pictures were matched on attractiveness and racial stereotypicality within age ranges. Participants saw each picture on a separate sheet of paper, and each picture was paired with the description of crime type (either a misdemeanor or a felony, described in greater detail below). Participants were asked to estimate the age of the child—ostensibly a criminal suspect—in each picture. The actual age of each target was subtracted from the participants’ age assessment. This score represented age overestimation. For each race of target, an average age overestimation score was created for misdemeanor suspects and felony suspects both within age ranges and overall.
Culpability scale.
A novel culpability scale assessed participant’s perceptions of each suspect’s innocence in this criminal context. This scale consisted of four questions: “How responsible is he for his own actions?” “How much can he care for himself?” “How likely is he to persist in these negative behaviors?” and “How likely is it that he did NOT intend the negative consequences of his actions?” Participants responded to the set of four questions for each of the eight targets within their assigned race. This scale was designed to measure the perceived innocence of a child within a criminal justice context as opposed to abstract notions of innocence, and it had an acceptable reliability ( .71).
The Attitudes Towards Blacks Scale.
This questionnaire (ATB Scale; Brigham, 1993) is a widely used assessment of explicit anti-Black prejudice. The questionnaire consists of 20 statements such as, “It is likely that Blacks will bring violence to neighborhoods when they move in.”
Personalized Implicit Association Task.
To test the possibility that omnibus implicit anti-Black attitudes predict reduced perceptions of Black innocence, we instructed participants to take the personalized Implicit Association Task (IAT; Olson & Fazio, 2004), a modified version of the original IAT (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). This task required participants to categorize stereotypically Black and White first names as Black or White and to categorize words that could be either positive or negative for a given respondent (i.e., peanuts) as good or bad. The task is intended to measure whether participants are faster at categorization when Black names are paired with disliked items, as opposed to liked items, on the response instrument. Such response time disparities are interpreted as implicit negative attitudes. The names and words for the personalized IAT were taken from Olson and Fazio (2004).
Dehumanization IAT. Similar to the personalized IAT, the dehumanization IAT (Goff, Eberhardt, et al., 2008) is designed to capture a form of implicit bias against Blacks. The dehumanization IAT consists of Black/White, ape/great cat response key pairings. The choice of contrasting great cats with apes, again, reflects previous research that revealed great cats to be rated as more violent, more associated with Africa, and less liked by most individuals—minimizing the possibilities that a Black/ape association is due to associations between Blacks and violence, Africa, or general negativity (Goff et al., 2008). The human and animal names for the dehumanization IAT were taken from previous research (Goff, Eberhardt, et al., 2008).
Procedure.
Participants were asked to respond to eight scenarios, each related to a different suspect. Four scenarios were matched with pictures of young males from each age of childhood where significant differences in innocence were found in Study 1 (i.e., 10–17). Of the eight scenarios, four described misdemeanors and four described felonies.
The misdemeanor crimes included cruelty to animals, possession of drug paraphernalia, malicious destruction of property, shoplifting, possession of stolen property, and making unspecified threats. The felony crimes included arson, breaking and entering, aggravated assault, intent to distribute narcotics, rape, and armed carjacking. To maximize realism, we paired offenders with age-appropriate crimes, such that we did not have 10-year-olds accused of rape or armed carjacking. An example of a scenario where a Black male is suspected of a misdemeanor is “Kishawn Thompkins was arrested and charged with cruelty to animals. He attempted to drown a neighborhood cat in his backyard.” After seeing a picture of a target paired with one of the scenarios, participants completed age and culpability assessments for that target. After these assessments were made, participants completed the ATB Scale, the personalized IAT, and the dehumanization IAT (the order of IATs was randomized).
We predicted that our predominantly White subject population would overestimate the age of Black criminal suspects relative to that of White and Latino suspects. We also predicted that participants would rate Black criminal suspects as more culpable (i.e., lacking in innocence) relative to White and Latino suspects. Finally, we hypothesized that implicit dehumanization, but neither explicit nor implicit anti-Black prejudice, would predict these racial differences.
Results
All patterns of data were consistent across ages, allowing us to collapse the data across age.
Age assessment.
The actual age of the target from each scenario was subtracted from the participants’ age assessment to create an age error score. Thus, positive numbers indicate age overestimations and negative numbers indicate age underestimations. To test for racial differences in age errors, we conducted a 2 (crime type: misdemeanor vs. felony) 3 (race of children: White vs. Black vs. Latino) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), with crime type as the repeated measure variable.
Figure 1. A: Participants’ average age estimation accuracy for child suspects of different races (Study 2).
B: Participants’ average culpability rating for child suspects of different races (Study 2). Error bars represent standard errors.
This analysis revealed the anticipated two-way interaction, F(2, 56) 4.30, p .05, 2 .13 (see Figure 1A). Simple effects tests revealed that participants overestimated the age of Black felony suspects (M 4.53, SD 4.05) to a greater degree than that of Black misdemeanor suspects (M 2.19, SD 2.90), F(1, 56) 10.35, p .005, 2 .23. There was no difference in age errors between White suspects (Mfelony 2.57, SD 1.79; Mmisdemeanor 2.78, SD 2.27), nor between Latino suspects (Mfelony 2.42, SD 2.11; Mmisdemeanor 2.58, SD 2.63). Simple effects tests also revealed that participants rated Black felony suspects as older than White felony suspects, F(1, 56) 7.08, p .01, or Latino felony suspects, F(1, 56) 8.44, p .005, but revealed no such effects for misdemeanor suspects (Fs 1).
Culpability.
The culpability scale was acceptably reliable ( .65). To test for racial differences in perceived culpability, we conducted a 2 (crime type: misdemeanor vs. felony) 3 (race of children: White vs. Black vs. Latino) repeated measures ANOVA, with crime type as a repeated measure variable and race of target as a between-subjects variable.
This analysis revealed a main effect of race, F(2, 56) 4.57, p .01, 2 .14. Blacks were rated as more culpable than Latinos, and Latinos were rated as more culpable than Whites (see Figure 1B). This effect was qualified by the predicted interaction, F(2, 56) 17.17, p .005, 2 .38. Simple effects tests revealed that White targets were rated as less culpable when associated with felonies (Mfelony 4.48, SD 1.05; Mmisdemeanor 4.97, SD 0.68), F(1, 56) 18.93, p .001, 2 .18, whereas Black targets were perceived to be more culpable when associated with felonies (Mfelony 5.51, SD 0.45; Mmisdemeanor 5.08, SD 0.54), F(1, 56) 15.35, p .001, 2 .17. There was no difference in culpability for Latinos across crime type. Simple effects tests also revealed that Black felony suspects were viewed as significantly more culpable than either White felony suspects, F(1, 56) 85.30, p .001, or Latino felony suspects, F(1, 56) 17.05, p .001. No simple effects between target races approached significance for misdemeanor suspects (Fs 1).
Age assessment and culpability. Again, we reasoned that there were two perceptual changes that might result from decreasing the protections of innocence afforded to Black children: by viewing them as older than they are (and relative to their peers) and by viewing them as more culpable/less innocent than their peers. However, it was not clear whether these outcomes were independent outcomes or were related. It would not be surprising if greater perceptions of culpability resulted in greater perceptions of age or vice versa. Consequently, we tested the relationship between respondents’ age errors and their ratings of culpability. A simple correlation found that age errors were moderately related to ratings of culpability such that the older a child was rated, the more culpable the child was seen to be, r(58) .28, p .05.
Dehumanization IAT.
Because we measured dehumanization after our manipulations (and because our manipulations affected implicit dehumanization scores),3 we did not formally test the presence of dehumanization as moderating variable. However, the dehumanization IAT significantly predicted age overestimations of Black children. The more readily participants implicitly associated Blacks with apes, the higher their age overestimation for both Black misdemeanor suspects, r(19) .66, p .005, and Black felony suspects, r(19) .75, p .001. Similarly, the dehumanization IAT significantly predicted perceptions of the culpability of Black children. The more readily participants implicitly associated Blacks with apes, the higher their culpability ratings for both Black misdemeanor suspects, r(19) .57, p .01, and felony suspects, r(19) .51, p .05.
Anti-Black dehumanization did not predict age overestimations or assessments of culpability for Latino targets, rs(19) .23, ns; nor did they predict age estimations for White targets, rs(18) .11, ns. Implicit anti-Black dehumanization did, however, predict ratings of White culpability, rs(18) .50, ps .05. In other words, the more participants associated apes with Blacks, the less they found White targets culpable for criminal misdeeds. Of course, with small numbers of observations, it is important to be cautious in our interpretations of these correlational data. Because participants saw pictures from only one of each racial group, we could not test whether or not dehumanization predicted differences between Black, White, and Latino targets within a particular individual.
Measures of prejudice.
There were no differences in responses to the ATB ( .82) nor in responses to the personalized IAT, across conditions, F(2, 56) 1. Further, these measures were not correlated with any other measures (rs .2, ns). Again, this means that measures of prejudice could not be responsible for racial differences in age assessments or culpability.
Discussion
Study 2 aimed to build on the evidence from Study 1 that children of all races may not be afforded the privilege of innocence equally. Participants overestimated the age of Black targets and deemed Black targets more culpable for their actions than White or Latino targets, particularly when those targets were accused of serious crimes. The magnitude of this overestimation also bears repeating. Because Black felony suspects were seen as 4.53 years older than they actually were, this would mean that boys would be misperceived as legal adults at roughly the age of 13 and a half.
This racial disparity appears to be related to implicit dehumanization of Blacks. The more participants implicitly associated Blacks and apes, the greater the age overestimation and perceived culpability of Black children. It is important to note that Latinos were rated neither as more culpable nor as older than Whites and that (not surprisingly) anti-Black dehumanization did not predict either measure of innocence for Latino targets. This suggests that our findings do not represent a general out-group perceptual phenomenon. Rather, the implicit dehumanization of Blacks appears to be related to unique effects on the perception of Black male children. To test the possibility that the dehumanization of Black children predicts worse outcomes in the criminal justice system, we next turned to police officers, a subject population directly responsible for criminal justice outcomes of children.
