The reasonable officer standard: Perceptions of reasonableness and legal decision making

We explored how the reasonable officer standard aligns with the use-of-force judgments.

Reasonable officer standard-related factors of civilian resistance and civilian injury would impact participant judgments in ways inconsistent with reasonable officer standard-based policy. Given a scenario of legally reasonable force, participants would find an officer's actions less reasonable and attribute more punishment when the civilian actively resisted (compared with assaulted) the officer and the civilian incurred a high (compared with low) severity injury. Expert testimony on the reasonable officer standard and policy would weaken this effect and directly impact judgments. Participants with more positive attitudes toward police legitimacy would render more pro-officer judgments. These attitudes would moderate the effects of civilian action, civilian injury, and expert testimony, such that participants with more positive views would be less impacted by these case factors.

Participants (N = 1,462) listened to a use-of-force scenario with consistent officer action but where civilian action and civilian injury severity were manipulated. Study 1 utilized a 2 (civilian action: Level 3 [active resistance] vs. Level 4 [assaultive behavior]) × 2 (civilian injury: high vs. low) between-participants design. Study 2 included the same manipulations in the context of a mock trial and manipulated reasonable officer standard expert testimony (present vs. absent).

In Study 1, civilian action and injury impacted judgments in ways inconsistent with reasonable officer standard-based policy as hypothesized. In Study 2, civilian action and injury had nonsignificant effects, but expert testimony significantly impacted all dependent measures. Participants' police legitimacy attitudes directly influenced our dependent measures and moderated the impact of civilian action and injury (Study 1) and expert testimony (Study 2) as hypothesized.

Individuals' criminal trial, but not general, judgments align with reasonable officer standard-based policy and are impacted by education on police policy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).