The Effects of Police Officer Gender and Ambivalent Sexism on Anticipated Behavior during Traffic Stops

Indianapolis, IN

In America, traffic stops represent the most frequent type of police encounter that a citizen will face, and for many citizens it will be their only encounter with a police officer (Huggins, 2011). Driver behavior during interactions with police officers predicts the likelihood they will receive tickets (Day & Ross, 2011). Yet, no research has explored the possibility that police officer gender predicts a driver's behavior when pulled over for speeding. Yet, because female police officers violate gender norms, they are perceived more negatively than male police officers (Duffin, 2010; Wells & Alt, 2005; Horne, 1980). Specifically, female police officers likely activate both benevolent sexist beliefs and hostile sexist beliefs because female police officers violate norms that women should be protected (benevolent sexist beliefs), but they also are consistent with hostile sexist beliefs' that women are out to get men's jobs. Thus, we experimentally manipulated police officer gender in the context of a hypothetical scenario depicting being pulled over for speeding, expecting that participants would be more rude when the police officer is female as compared to male and that ambivalent sexism would moderate the effects of police officer gender on participants' reactions. Partially supporting hypotheses, as benevolent sexism increases, smiling at a female (but not male) police officer decreases (β = -.30,p= .06), eye rolling behavior toward amale(but not female) police officer decreases (β = -.17,p= .17), and complimenting amale(but not female) police officer increases (β = .24,p= .053).