A Criminal Schema: The Role of Chronicity, Race, and Socioeconomic Status in Law Enforcement Officials' Perceptions of Others

This study investigated the extent to which law enforcement (LE) officials' perceptions of criminality are biased by the chronic nature of, and the racial and Socioeconomic status (SES) features of, their cognitive schemas of the typical criminal. One-hundred twenty undergraduate psychology students and 121 LE officers participated in this study. Part 1 of this study hypothesized that a chronic criminal schema used by LE would result in LE subjects perceiving criminality in ambiguous situations. Contrary to the hypothesis, laypersons were more likely to view an ambiguous situation as criminal than were LE subjects. Part 2 of this study hypothesized that when exposed to the actions of a Black and/or lower SES criminal suspect, LE subjects would perceive more guilt, perceive more deceptiveness, place less value on exculpatory information, and place more value on incriminating information than would students. The results supported this second hypothesis with regard to race, but not SES.