Police Uniforms Change How Our Brains Process Information

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A study from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, has found that wearing a police-style uniform puts people in a mindset that promotes bias against people perceived to be of lower social status.

Participants were tasked with looking at a simple shape on a screen while images of white men, black men, people in suits, and people in hoodies (hooded sweatshirts) were flashed on the screen. Their reactions were measured, with the researchers finding no real difference between how long people were distracted by the faces, white or black.

However, there was a difference when it came to dress. The images of people in hoodies held the attention for longer, and this was especially noticeable when the participants were dressed in a police-style uniform. The results would seem to indicate that people who appear to be from lower classes are more distracting, and thus net more attention, than those from higher classes, and what’s more, that simply wearing a uniform makes one more attentive to such differences.

While this is just one study and more research is needed in order to draw more solid conclusions, the researchers stand by what they’ve discovered so far.

“We know that clothing conveys meaning and that the hoodie has to some extent become a symbol of lower social standing and inner-city youth,” said study senior author Sukhvinder Obhi. “There is a stereotype out there that links hoodies with crime and violence, and this stereotype might have been activated to a greater degree when donning the police style uniform…Given that attention shapes how we experience the world, attentional biases toward certain groups of people can be problematic.”

Over the last few years, discussions of police violence have been prominent in the United States, where police have been accused of using excessive violence against suspects with increasing frequency. In several notable cases, the people harmed by the police were not even suspects; they were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There have been a number of attempts to address the causes of this increased violence, many of which have rested on attempting to deal with institutional racism. Investigations of what mental processes police go through in these situations, and how being a police officer might influence their reactions, are also important to understanding the problem.