Experiment on camera perspective bias in videos of police-citizen encounters

Objectives

This study tested camera perspective bias in evaluating a video-recorded police and citizen interaction.

Methods

Using professional actors, a simulated police-citizen traffic stop was recorded from three camera perspectives – police, citizen, and bystander. A sample of 830 participants recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk viewed one of the three randomly assigned videos before rating police behavior and legitimacy during the encounter.

Results

We found no evidence of the effects of camera perspective on how individuals evaluated a police traffic stop. Higher pre-test perceived police legitimacy was associated with more positive perceptions of police behavior and legitimacy during the encounter.

Conclusions

This study highlights the role of general perceptions of police legitimacy in evaluating a video-recorded police-citizen encounter. Possible explanations for the lack of camera perspective bias, as well as potential research uses of custom-recorded videos, are discussed.