Perceived Control, Likelihood, and Severity as Explanations of Fear of the Police

Addressing the contemporary relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve calls for nuanced attention to how individuals construct the emotions they experience toward police. One important such consideration is fear. Leveraging three established psychological conduits of fear of crime proposed by Jackson (perceptions of likelihood, severity, and control), we investigate the psychological construction of fear of unjustified police harm and how those relationships may differ across racial/ethnic identities. Results suggest that perceptions of the likelihood and severity of police harm independently predict fear, but that control plays a much more limited role. Additionally, our analyses provide little evidence that these relationships are importantly different as a function of the focal individual's race/ethnicity. We therefore argue that interventions designed to improve public attitudes toward the police that focus on improving perceptions of its likelihood and severity are particularly worthwhile. Given its clear role in many other risky contexts but the lack of strong evidence in our data, we also call for future research to better understand what role, if any, is played by control.