Downward spiral: Police-threat associations and perceptions of aggression during arrests are mutually reinforcing

In the United States, encounters among police officers and civilians are laden with the potential for dangerous outcomes. At the same time, the ubiquity of digital and social media has made observing violent police-civilian encounters easier than ever. Perhaps consequently, recent evidence suggests that Americans automatically associate the police with and behaviorally respond to officers as a source of physical threat. However, little is known about the interplay between observations of violent police encounters and automatic police-threat associations. Four studies (N = 857) reveal a mutually reinforcing dynamic in which (a) automatic police-threat associations shape perceptions of aggression during arrests, (b) perceptions of aggression during arrests influence automatic police-threat associations, and (c) changes in automatic police-threat associations influence downstream perceptions of aggression. That is, people perceive aggression during arrest encounters through the lens of their existing police-threat associations, and these perceptions in turn reinforce those associations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).