Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 4, 2025
09:12
The Resident-intruder Paradigm: A Standardized Test for Aggression, Violence and Social Stress
Published on: July 4, 2013
70.9K
American Policing and the Danger Imperative.
1Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Law & Society Review
|January 29, 2024
Summary
Police culture, driven by perceived danger, leads officers to adopt unsafe behaviors. These actions, while intended for safety, result in accidents harming officers and the public.
Area of Science:
- Criminology
- Sociology of Policing
- Public Health
Background:
- Despite declining violent victimization, the perceived danger in U.S. policing significantly shapes officer culture and behavior.
- Previous research has focused on police deviance impacting the public, overlooking self-harming officer behaviors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine how the "danger imperative" influences police socialization and behavior.
- To analyze how perceived threats lead officers to engage in both policy-compliant and policy-deviant safety practices.
Main Methods:
- Ethnographic observations in three U.S. police departments.
- In-depth interviews with police officers.
Main Results:
- Officers are socialized into a "danger imperative" cultural frame emphasizing violence and safety.
- This perception leads to policy-deviant behaviors (e.g., high-speed driving, no seatbelt) justified by officer safety.
- These behaviors result in severe accidents, causing harm to officers and the public.
Conclusions:
- Seemingly minor policy-deviant behaviors reflect deeper cultural assumptions in policing.
- These assumptions contribute to practices that undermine public well-being and exacerbate inequalities.
More Related Videos
06:42Continuous Theta Burst Stimulation of the Posterior Medial Frontal Cortex to Experimentally Reduce Ideological Threat Responses
Published on: September 28, 2018
11.6K
09:49Holistic Facial Composite Creation and Subsequent Video Line-up Eyewitness Identification Paradigm
Published on: December 24, 2015
14.2K
Related Concept Videos
01:08Obedience
32.9K
According to obedience research, we may harm others under the forceful pressures of an authority figure (Milgram, 1974). How about if the inappropriate orders were delivered with less force? The increasing interdependence between nurses and physicians compelled Hofling and his colleagues to explore nurses’ reactions to a potentially harmful medical request made by the perceived authority figure, the doctor (Hofling, Brotzman, Dalrymple, Graves, & Pierce, 1966). In this situation,...
32.9K
02:09Bystander Effect
9.6K
The discussion of bullying highlights the problem of witnesses not intervening to help a victim. This is a common occurrence, as the following well-publicized event demonstrates. In 1964, in Queens, New York, a 19-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked by a person with a knife near the back entrance to her apartment building and again in the hallway inside her apartment building. When the attack occurred, she screamed for help numerous times and eventually died from her stab wounds.
9.6K
03:20The Stanford Prison Experiment
23.2K
The famous and controversial Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by social psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University, demonstrated the power of social roles, social norms, and scripts.
23.2K
02:55Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
90.2K
Humans are very diverse and although we share many similarities, we also have many differences. The social groups we belong to help form our identities (Tajfel, 1974). These differences may be difficult for some people to reconcile, which may lead to prejudice toward people who are different. Prejudice is a negative attitude and feeling toward an individual based solely on one’s membership in a particular social group (Allport, 1954; Brown, 2010). Prejudice is common against people who...
90.2K
02:20Milgram's Obedience to Authority
6.4K
Obedience to authority is classically demonstrated in a more famous series of social psychology experiments performed by Stanley Milgram. He was a social psychology professor at Yale who was influenced by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal. Eichmann’s defense for the atrocities he committed was that he was “just following orders.”
6.4K
01:03Drug Control Governance: Regulatory Bodies and Their Impact
160
Drug control governance involves the oversight and regulation of pharmaceuticals to ensure their safety and efficacy while preventing illegal drug use and trafficking. Regulatory bodies, including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Union's European Medicines Agency (EMA), play a central role in this process. These agencies evaluate the safety and efficacy of drugs before they can be marketed. They fund clinical trials and assess the benefits and risks associated with...
160