People judge Black targets as bigger, stronger, and more threatening even from faces alone

Evidence

Race, however, systematically influences the perception of threat. Classic social psychological studies demonstrate that people make biased judgments and deem the behavior of a Black person to be significantly more aggressive than the identical behavior of a White person (Duncan, 1976; Sagar & Schofield, 1980). Compared to White men, Black men are judged to be bigger, stronger, and more threatening. When participants were shown only the faces of young Black and White target men, they judged the Black targets to be taller, heavier, more muscular, and physically stronger (Wilson, Hugenberg, & Rule, 2017). Both Black and White study participants showed this bias. Differences by participant race emerged, however, when White participants, but not Black participants, judged young Black targets as more capable of doing harm in a physical altercation than young White targets. Going further, when non-Black study participants were shown a series of faces and asked to imagine that each target person “had behaved aggressively toward a police officer but was not wielding a weapon,” they rated police use of force against Black men as more justified than police use of force against White men (Wilson et al., 2017, p. 70). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 411

Categorization

• SEED: The finding that Black targets are judged physically larger and stronger from faces alone is a striking angle for a piece on how implicit bias literally changes perceptual sizing judgments, with direct relevance to excessive-force justifications.
• SHARE: Send to anyone working on perception or implicit bias research — the ‘faces judged as taller, heavier, more muscular’ finding is a compact nail in the coffin of the claim that officers only react to visible physical size.