Pulled-Over Rates, Causal Attributions, and Trust in Police

Abstract

A growing literature documents racial disparities throughout the American criminal justice system. Yet, even as this evidence accumulates and garners increasing media attention, we know relatively little about the consequences of this type of information for public opinion. We incorporate insights from attribution theory to suggest that people differ in the cause they attribute to racial disparities in the justice system, and these different causal attributions profoundly affect attitudes and responses to information. Using two survey experiments, we find that attributions for the cause of racial disparities in pulled-over rates have a substantial impact on trust in police, and perhaps more importantly, alter susceptibility to persuasion and attitude change. Learning about racial disparities in pulled-over rates reduces trust in police, but only for predictable subsets of the citizenry.