RT Article
T1 The formation of suspicion: A vignette study
JF International journal of police science & management
VO 22
IS 3
SP 274
OP 284
A1 Phillips, Scott W. 1961-
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1761102818
AB Being suspicious is part of police training, and is emphasized in police culture. Tversky and Kahneman argued that people make decisions based on a limited number of heuristic factors to reduce a complex task to likely probabilities (Tversky A and Kahneman D [1974] Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science 185[4157]: 1124-1131). This study contributes to the body of scholarship studying police suspicion. It uses vignettes describing an incident involving characteristics important when police officers form suspicion. This design allows respondents to judge a situation before actual engagement. A convenience sample of police officers, supervisors, and administrators from police agencies of different sizes located in two different states responded to an online survey. Results demonstrated that the time of an event, the person’s race, and their manner of dress, contributed to the formation of suspicion. Other factors (i.e., suspect age, neighborhood) were not significantly related to suspicion. Further, respondents with few years of experience were more likely to see the conditions within a vignette as suspicious. The findings indicate that unacceptable stereotyping can result from using scanty or outdated heuristic tools to simplify decision-making. Further, there is a need for additional research examining the conditions related to suspicion formation.
K1 Suspicion
K1 Heuristics
K1 Police decision-making
K1 symbolic assailant
K1 Vignettes
DO 10.1177/1461355720929038