Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2013, pp. 310--326

Gender Differences in Attitudes Toward Police Use of Tasers Following the Dziekanski Case David R. Mandel* DRDC Toronto and York University

Prior research has shown that men and women respond differently on a variety of behavioral, attitudinal, and affective measures related to agentic and communal interpersonal orientation, yet research on such measures seldom disaggregates findings by gender. The present study examined how gender moderated a range of affective and cognitive responses to an important social and policy issue— police use of Tasers. The study followed the Dziekanski case in which an e´ migr´e to Canada died after being repeatedly stunned with a Taser by police officers. Compared to men, women were significantly more opposed to police Taser use, they were likelier to blame police for Dziekanski’s death, and they reported stronger emotional responses to the case. The findings extend support for the view that men and women exhibit different patterns of response to situations that evoke communal values, and they highlight the importance of theoretical guidance in disaggregating responses in opinion research.

Important social issues not only generate public opinions, but they also prompt opinion research aimed at capturing public sentiment on those issues and how that sentiment might be changing over time. In some cases, surveyed attitudes are disaggregated by demographic or other grouping factors, such as sex, age, or political affiliation, while in other cases they are not. Disaggregation along demographic lines can serve an important purpose if the groups examined hold quite different attitudes on the topic. In such cases, the overall average is likely to provide a rather poor measure of citizens’ views. For instance, if men strongly support an issue, which women just as strongly oppose, it hardly seems descriptively accurate to say that citizens, on average, are neutral, even if such a claim were technically ∗ Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David R. Mandel, Ph.D., DRDC Toronto, 1133 Sheppard Avenue West, Toronto, Ontario M3K 2C9, Canada, Tel: (416) 635-2000 ext.3146 [e-mail: [email protected]]. The author thanks Quan Lam and Oshin Vartanian for their research assistance.

310 DOI: 10.1111/asap.12022

 C

2013, Crown Copyright

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correct. Yet, there are several areas of opinion research where we have good reason to expect such differences. The present research examined one such social- and policy-relevant area of opinion research—namely, how attitudes toward the use of Tasers by police differ as a function of the participants’ gender. Police use of Tasers is a controversial social issue, especially following high-profile cases in which the Taser victim dies (Amnesty International, 2006, 2007). On the one hand, there is some evidence to suggest that Taser use by police results in less harm both to police officers and Taser victims than traditional “hands-on” policing methods (Alpert & Dunham, 2010; MacDonald, Kaminski, & Smith, 2009; Smith, Kaminski, Rojek, Alpert, & Mathis, 2007). On the other hand, most Taser-related deaths in police use-of-force cases involve victims who were not armed with any sort of weapon. Amnesty International (2007) reported that of the 291 Taser-related deaths they identified, only 25 of the victims were armed with a weapon, and in no case was the victim’s weapon a firearm. Such statistics may support the view that police tend to use Tasers indiscriminately. Given that public policies concerning police use of Tasers represent an area of law enforcement policy that is susceptible to public opinion pressure, it is of interest to better understand how men and women think and feel about the issue. To date, no research has examined the degree of concordance between women and men on views of this topic. The present research tested the hypothesis that women are significantly less supportive of police Taser use than men, and that other consistent gender differences would be evident in attributional and emotional responses to the high-profile Canadian case in which a Polish e´ migr´e, Robert Dziekanski, died after being repeatedly shot with a Taser by police officers (Braidwood Commission on the Death of Robert Dziekanski, 2010). Like the majority of cases involving Taser-related deaths, in the Dziekanski case, the Taser victim was unarmed. The predictions of this research are guided by an overarching theoretical perspective, which posits that women have a more communal-expressive orientation than men, whereas men have a more agentic-instrumental orientation. Indeed, these orientations play a large role in defining gender stereotypes (e.g., Abele, 2003; Gilligan, 1982). Agency and communion have long been regarded as orthogonal dimensions defining the two main axes of interpersonal life (Bakan, 1966; Wiggins, 1991). Prototypical communal-expressive traits include being caring and emotional. A recent meta-analysis (Hall, 2011) shows that among same-sex friends, females had stronger friendship expectations than men in areas related to communion (e.g., intimacy), solidarity (e.g., companionship), and symmetrical reciprocity (e.g., loyalty). Gender differences in communality can be used to organize three lines of research that underlie key predictions of the present research.

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Gender Differences in Victim-Focused Empathy First, consistent with the idea that women are more communal than men, there is a wealth of empirical evidence indicating that women are more empathic than men (Baron-Cohen, Knickmeyer, & Belmonte, 2005; Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983; Smith, Lindsey, & Hansen, 2006; Toussaint & Webb, 2005). Muncer and Ling (2006) report that women scored significantly higher than men on both the cognitive (tuning) and emotional reactivity subscales of the empathy quotient scale. A recent event-related brain potential study by Han, Fan, and Mao (2008) found that an early-latency empathetic response that differentiated painful and neutral stimuli over the frontal lobe was related to subjective reports of the degree of perceived pain of others in women but not in men. As well, only women showed task sensitivity to long-latency P3 amplitude such that the P3 response was greater in a pain-judgment task than in a number-counting task. The finding is intriguing because the P3 component is implicated in the process of stimulus evaluation and classification (Duncan-Johnson, 1981), suggesting that the stronger empathic responses of women are at least partly due to top-down processing of empathy-inducing stimuli. Of course, gender differences in empathy do not necessarily imply that women would empathize with a Taser victim more than men. Women could conceivably direct their empathy toward police officers, who have to make difficult judgment calls about how to best handle a variety of conflict situations. Nevertheless, other research indicates that this possibility is unlikely. More often that not, female empathy is directed at the victimized member of an aggressive interaction, again in accordance with the notion that women are more communal (and care-focused) in their interpersonal orientation. For instance, in considering hypothetical cases of animal abuse or neglect, Sims, Chin, and Yordon (2007) found that gender of the participant was the strongest predictor of restrictive forms of punitiveness assigned to the perpetrator, such as preventing the perpetrator from owning animals in the future. That is, women were more inclined than men to place restrictions on harm-doers, suggesting that they empathized with the victim of harm. This gender difference is unlikely, moreover, to be reflective of a more general inclination toward punitiveness by women compared to men because women are less inclined than men to support the death penalty (Halim & Stiles, 2001; Whitehead & Blankenship, 2000), which again is consistent with a communal orientation. As well, Applegate, Cullen, and Fisher (2002) found that, compared to men, women were more supportive of rehabilitation goals for offenders (a communal goal), but they were no more supportive of punitiveness goals (a non-communal goal). Moreover, the predictive effect of the participant’s gender on perceived importance of rehabilitation goals was significant even after controlling for more than a dozen demographic and attitudinal variables.

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Finally, consistent with the notion than women express greater communality than men, there is evidence to suggest that women exhibit stronger emotional reactions to unfair treatment in conflict situations than men. Kluwer, Tumewu, and Van den Bos (2009) examined the reactions of Dutch men and women to relationship conflicts they had experienced with their partners. They found that, compared to men, women showed a stronger relationship between perceived fairness of treatment in the reported conflict and how positive they felt after the conflict. For instance, in one study, women reported feeling significantly less positive than men when the conflict was perceived as unfair, whereas women and men showed no affective difference when the conflict was perceived as fair. Kluwer et al. (2009) view their findings as providing additional support for the view that women are more communally oriented than men and, accordingly, more sensitive to violations of procedural fairness norms in interpersonal contexts (Blader & Tyler, 2003; Gagne & Lydon, 2003). Taken together, the previous lines of research suggest that, compared to men, and owing to their stronger communal orientation, women will experience more victim-focused empathy in conflict cases where there is a perception of procedural injustice to the victim. Moreover, prior work (Jackson & Sunshine, 2007; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler & Huo, 2002) has already indicated that citizens’ views of policing, in general, are sensitive to procedural justice concerns. Extrapolating to the present context, it was predicted that, in the wake of the Dziekanski case, men and women would exhibit significantly different attitudinal, attributional, and affective responses to the case and to the issue of Taser use by police, more generally. The Dziekanski Case and the Present Research The Dziekanski case is attributionally complex, providing a rich context for studying observers’ reactions to the case. It is complex in the sense that there are plausible reasons why blame might be directed at several of the parties involved. Dziekanski was unable to speak or understand English. His mother had misinformed him of where she would meet him (she had specified an airport location that was inaccessible to non-travelers). Thus, he arrived and could not communicate with anyone. Airport officials did not detect the problem for several hours and then took hours longer to process his case. After being released, Dziekanski, still unable to communicate effectively, became highly erratic and destructive (at one point, attempting to force his way back into the secured zone and, at another, throwing an airport computer). The police officers called to the airport tried to calm him, but then stunned him with a Taser when he continued to respond erratically and with some signs of aggression (e.g., at one point, he pointed a stapler at the officers). Even after that, he continued to resist the officers, which prompted further Taser shots, just moments before his death. These and other facts of the

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Dziekanski case are well-documented (see Braidwood Commission of Inquiry on Conducted Energy Weapon Use, 2009; Braidwood Commission on the Death of Robert Dziekanski, 2010; Criminal Justice Branch, 2008). The Dziekanski case drew international attention (e.g., Austen, 2007) and ignited public opposition to police use of Tasers. A poll taken in May 2008 showed that 49% of Canadians supported a moratorium on police use of Tasers, and that figure was unchanged when Canadians were polled two years later (Angus Reid Public Opinion, 2010). In Canada, the Dziekanski case led to a public inquiry, which recommended stricter guidelines for both training and policy governing Taser use by police officers (Braidwood Commission of Inquiry on Conducted Energy Weapon Use, 2009). In a separate report, the Braidwood Commission, tasked under the Public Inquiry Act of the province of British Columbia to investigate the circumstances surrounding Dziekanski’s death, concluded that had the police officers not used Tasers on Dziekanski, he would almost certainly have survived (Braidwood Commission on the Death of Robert Dziekanski, 2010). Although some of the conclusions of the Braidwood Commission have been recently challenged (Williams, 2012), a majority of Canadians (69%) agreed with Justice Braidwood’s conclusions (Angus Reid Public Opinion). Earlier polling results, however, were not disaggregated by gender nor intended to test hypotheses. Thus, they do not provide any indication of whether the hypothesized gender differences in response to the case were evident. The present research, therefore, aimed to test these hypotheses in a systematic manner. Several interrelated, directional predictions were tested. First, it was predicted that a significantly greater percentage of women than men would assign primary blame to the police officers for Dziekanski’s death. Second, it was predicted that women would show stronger emotional responses (namely, anger and fear) to the case than men. While fear is associated with perceived risk, anger tends to be associated with attributions of blame directed at others (Lerner & Keltner; Mandel, 2003), reflecting the notion that the cognitive structure of anger involves disapproval of another individual’s moral wrongdoing (Lazarus, 1994; Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988). While it is expected that women would be more angered by the case than men, given the evidence of their greater communal focus and victim concern, there is also evidence to suggest that women perceive greater risk than men (e.g., Lerner, Gonzalez, Small, & Fischhoff, 2003) and have greater fear reactions than men in the domain of crime (Clemente & Kleinman, 1977; Liska, Sanchirico, & Reed, 1988; Stafford & Galle, 1984; cf. Reid & Konrad, 2004). Thus, it was hypothesized that both fear and anger in response to the Dziekanski case to be greater among women than men. Additionally, building on earlier findings (e.g., Lerner & Keltner; Mandel, 2003), it was predicted that, across men and women, blaming the police would be more strongly related to anger (as well as the perceived preventability of Dziekanski’s death) than fear.

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A third prediction, however, was that participants (both women and men) would feel more angered than fearful in response to the Dziekanski case. This prediction is based on the idea that Taser deaths caused by police will not evoke a particularly strong sense of fear in the general public, given the infrequency of such events and the improbability of personally being a victim of a police Taser incident. In contrast, a higher degree of anger, or moral outrage, may be experienced in response to perceived abuse of police power even from a third-party observer’s perspective. It was expected that the case would prompt a high level of anger, especially among those participants who assigned primary blame to the police. Among this subsample, it was further predicted that Dziekanski’s death would be seen as highly preventable. A related hypothesis tested in this study was that the predicted difference between reported fear and anger would be stronger among women than among men. A key prediction of the study was that, compared to men, women would be less supportive of police use of Tasers and that this predictive effect would be mediated by participants’ emotional reactions to the Dziekanski case. Finally, in addition to testing the preceding predictions, participants’ views of the importance of fighting crime and their confidence in the police were also elicited. No gender difference on these measures was expected. However, it is important to rule out such differences as alternative determinants of the predicted effects. Method Participants A community sample of 123 participants was recruited for the study through newspaper advertisements in Kitchener and Guelph, Ontario. Earlier polling results had revealed that Ontarians were highly representative of the national average on all questions pertaining to the issue of Tasers and the Dziekanski case (Angus Reid Public Opinion, 2010). The study was conducted between December 2007 and January 2008, roughly 2–3 months after the Dziekanski case. Although participants were not screened for their familiarity with the case, given the high-profile nature of the case at the time, it is likely that most, if not all, participants were already familiar with the case. No participant spontaneously indicated that they were unfamiliar with the case. Participants were paid $30 for their time. Two participants did not complete all the relevant measures and were excluded from the study. Of the remaining 121 participants, 58% were women. The sample ranged in age from 18–87 years (M = 39.75, Mdn = 38, SD = 16.45). Procedure and Materials Participants completed a questionnaire that comprised multiple parts. The present study focuses mainly on Part 6, which began by instructing participants

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to read a recent newspaper article about the well-publicized death of a Polish immigrant to Canada in Vancouver International Airport. Details about the other parts of the survey are available from the author upon request. The excerpt was taken from the New York Times (Austen, 2007) and is reproduced in Appendix A. The excerpt was characteristic of the descriptions that appeared in newspapers across Canada and other countries and participants were not told of the newspaper source. It was selected because it well-written for the purposes of extracting a comprehensible, descriptive excerpt. After reading the excerpt, participants were asked to indicate who or what was to blame for Mr. Dziekanski’s death, starting with what they regarded as being most to blame. They were able to list up to three factors. Participants were then asked to rate how preventable they thought Mr. Dziekanski’s death was, how angry the case made them feel, and how fearful the case made them feel. They responded to each question on a 7-point rating scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely). Participants were then asked to rate how strongly they opposed or supported the use of Tasers by police on a 7-point scale ranging from −3 (strongly opposed) through 0 (neutral) to +3 (strongly in favor). In a subsequent section of the questionnaire (Part 8), participants indicated their age and gender. In that same section, as part of a set of items probing participants’ attitudes about various social issues, participants were also asked to indicate how important “the fight against crime” was to them (1 = very important, 5 = not at all important). General attitude toward the police was gauged by asking participants to indicate their confidence in the police (1 = a great deal, 4 = none at all). Coding of Blame Responses The first entry provided by each participant in response to the open-ended blame question was assigned by the author to one of four a priori categories: (a) Dziekanski or characteristics attributed to him (“his inability to ask for help”), (b) communication barriers that were not attributed to a specific party (e.g., “inability to communicate,” which could pertain to either Dziekanski, airport personnel, or the police), (c) airport personnel including customs and immigration or security officials or their characteristics (e.g., “immigration processing” and “airport authority”), and (d) the police or their characteristics, including references to Tasers, which only the police used in this case (e.g., “police aggressiveness” and “Taser”). To assess interrater reliability, a second coder who was na¨ıve to the aims of the study was presented with the newspaper excerpt and participants’ responses. The coder was asked to code the first responses into the four categories (or “other,” if none of the four was deemed to be an appropriate match). Kappa was .92, indicating a high degree of interrater reliability. Aside from the four main categories of response, only one participant provided a response that did not fall into these mutually exclusive categories. That participant blamed scientists for claiming that

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Table 1. Mean Response by Gender Gender Women Measure

M *

Blame police Anger Fear Preventability Taser attitude Crime fighting Police confidence

58.6 6.16 4.11 6.53 − 0.61 1.79 2.11

Men SD

M

1.04 2.16 1.21 2.00 0.99 0.77

41.4 5.37 3.33 6.33 0.43 1.84 2.15

Comparison SD 1.65 2.01 1.18 1.89 0.92 0.79

t(117)

p†

d

− 3.19 − 2.01 − 0.91 2.87 0.28 0.27

.042 .0009 .023 .182 .0024 .390 .390

ϕ = 0.18 0.57 0.37 0.17 0.53 0.05 0.05



The values reported for this variable are percentages assigning primary blame to the police category. Comparison statistics are based on a Fisher exact test with 1-sided significance reported, along with the phi coefficient as a measure of effect size. † Given the predictions in this study are directional, 1-sided probabilities are reported.

Tasers are safe. Therefore, data on the blame variable from this participant was omitted. A majority (51.7%) of participants assigned blame primarily to the police in the Dziekanski case. After the police, primary blame was assigned by 22.5% to airport personnel, by 13.3% to communication barriers, and by 12.5% to Dziekanski. In analyses of blame assignment, participants were grouped into two approximately equal-sized categories: those who assigned primary blame to the police or elsewhere. Results Table 1 shows the mean responses on all variables as a function of gender, with the exception of blame, for which the table reports the proportion of men and women who assigned primary blame to the police. The table shows that all predicted gender differences were observed: Compared to men, women were more likely to blame the police, they showed greater anger and fear in response to the case, and they were less supportive of police use of Tasers. The effects on anger and attitudinal support were of medium effect size, while the other significant effects were small. There were no gender differences in terms of the perceived preventability of Dziekanski’s death, the perceived importance of fighting crime, or in confidence vested in the police. To test the prediction that participants, and perhaps women especially, would feel more anger than fear in response to the Dziekanski case, a 2 (Gender) × 2 (Emotion) mixed analysis of variance was conducted on the two emotion measures, which constituted the within-subjects factor. As predicted, participants were significantly more angered (M = 5.83, SD = 1.38) than fearful (M = 3.79, SD = 2.13), F(1, 117) = 136.90, p < .001, d = 1.14. As Cohen’s d reveals, the effect

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Anger Fear Prevent Taser Crime Confidence

Blame

Anger

Fear

Prevent

Taser

Crime

.46** .21** .39** − .32** .01 .16*

.51** .47** − .39** .13 .17*

.16* − .39** − .13 .19*

− .17* .09 .09

− .26* − .41**

.42**

*p < .05, **p < .01, 1-sided, df = 117.

size was large. The interaction effect, however, was not significant, F(1, 117) = 0.00. In other words, women and men were about equally more angered than they were fearful. Table 2 shows the bivariate correlations among the measures taken in this study. These correlations confirm that both fear and anger were reported to be experienced more strongly among participants who assigned primary blame to the police than to other sources. Moreover, participants who blamed the police felt that Dziekanski’s death was more preventable than those who assigned primary blame elsewhere. As predicted, anger was more strongly related to blaming the police than was fear, as determined by Steiger’s (1980) test of the difference between related correlation coefficients, z = 2.94, p = .0016. Likewise, anger was more strongly related to the perceived preventability of Dziekanski’s death than was fear, z = 3.82, p = .0001 As Table 2 also shows, attitudes toward police use of Tasers were related to participants’ case-related assessments as well as their assessments of the importance of fighting crime and their confidence in the police. Fear and anger exhibited the highest correlation among the variables studied, and both shared an identical correlation with attitudes toward police Taser use. In order to examine whether case-related emotion mediated the effect of gender on attitudes toward police Taser use, a composite measure of emotion was calculated from the mean of the standardized fear and anger ratings. Figure 1 shows the results of the mediator analysis (see Kenny, Kashy, & Bolger, 1998). As can be seen in the figure, the necessary conditions for mediation were met: First, the unmediated effect from the predictor (gender) to the criterion (attitude toward police Taser use) was significant (see the regression weight on the left side of that link). Second, gender was a significant predictor of emotion. Third, emotion was a significant predictor of attitudes, controlling for gender. Fourth, the predictive value of gender was shown by a Sobel test to have been significantly reduced, z = −2.49, p = .0064. Given that gender was no longer a significant predictor of attitudes, controlling for emotion, emotion may be said to have fully mediated the predictive effect of gender on attitudes toward police use of Tasers.

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Fig. 1. Mediator model showing unstandardized regression coefficients and their standard error terms in parentheses.

Finally, to explore whether fear and anger uniquely contributed to the prediction of attitudes, controlling for gender, a multiple regression analysis with the two standardized emotions and gender as predictors was conducted. Fear and anger predicted attitudes and made roughly equivalent unique contributions (see the squared semipartials, sr2 ): for fear, β = −.25, t = −2.59, p = .011, sr2 = .046; for anger, β = −.22, t = −2.25, p = .026, sr2 = .035. The overall model was significant and explained one-fifth of the variance in attitudes toward police use of Tasers, F(3, 115) = 10.73, p < .001, adjusted R2 = .20. Discussion The present research findings add new evidence to the body of literature showing gender differences in response to interpersonal conflict situations. Compared to men, women were less supportive of police use of Tasers, they blamed the police more for Robert Dziekanski’s death, and they reported feeling more fearful and angry in response to the case. They were not, however, any less confident in the police, in general. Nor did women assign significantly less value than men to the importance of fighting crime in society. Thus, it does not appear that the differences observed reflect a more general attitudinal difference between men and women regarding policing and crime. Rather, the observed constellation of findings was guided by interpersonal theory and research showing that women have a stronger communal orientation than men (Abele, 2003, Gilligan, 1982; for a meta-analysis on the effect of gender on communal orientation, see Twenge, 1997). On the basis of that view, it was anticipated that women would be more empathetic than men (e.g., Baron-Cohen et al., 2005; Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983; Han et al., 2008), and that their empathy would be predictably directed toward those perceived as being most vulnerable

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(e.g., Sims et al., 2007), victimized, or otherwise in need of care (e.g., Applegate et al., 2002). And, following this line of reasoning it was predicted and subsequently observed that, compared to men, women would be more emotionally responsive to the Dziekanski case, they would be likelier to blame police officers and their use of Tasers for his death, and they would be significantly more opposed to police use of Tasers. In the Dziekanski case, there are many reasons why the overriding evaluation of Dziekanski would have him construed as a victim of police aggression. The factors that led to his frustration and erratic behavior seem largely beyond his control. He was unable to communicate in English, he was unable to locate his mother, and he was physically and mentally exhausted. Such case factors, indicating Dziekanski’s weak locus of control, should serve to reduce his perceived culpability or blameworthiness (e.g., Alicke, 2000; Mandel & Lehman, 1996; but see Mandel, 2010). In contrast, the police officers’ use of the Taser to subdue Dziekanski seemed to be only one of multiple options at their disposal. Even though Dziekanski was behaving erratically, there were weak signals that he was a serious physical threat. A desk stapler, after all, is not a lethal weapon. It would seem plausible that the officers could have continued to “talk him down” or that they might have attempted to “take him down” but without the use of Taser shots. The perceived non-necessity of the Taser shots is in fact supported by the finding that participants who blamed the police saw Dziekanski’s death as more preventable than those who assigned blame elsewhere. Such perceptions of choice on the part of the police officers may have contributed to a sense that police force was unfairly applied in this case. As previous research has indicated, women appear particularly attuned to violations of procedural fairness in interpersonal conflict situations (Kluwer et al., 2009). Consistent with Kluwer et al.’s finding that affective reactions to unfair conflicts were greater in women than in men, the present study found that affective responses to the Dziekanski case fully mediated the predictive effect of gender on attitudes toward police use of Tasers. The greater opposition of women to police use of Tasers also provides another example of how victim abuse evokes greater support among women than among men for restrictions aimed at preventing the perpetrators from victimizing others. Recall Sims et al.’s (2007) findings that women were more inclined than men to place restrictions on harm-doers. In a similar vein, women in the present study were significantly more willing than men to support curtailing police officers’ freedom to use Tasers. Taken together, these findings suggest that women are more likely than men to respond to harm-doing through restrictive measures applied to actual or would-be perpetrators. The same findings also highlight the inadequacy of polling results that are not appropriately disaggregated. In the present study, the overall attitude toward police use of Tasers was close to the neutral midpoint of the attitudinal scale. However, it is evident that whereas women, on average, opposed police Taser use,

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men, on average, weakly supported such use. Thus, future polling and attitudinal research on such issues should report averages for men and women along with data on the overall average. It is worth noting that, even at the aggregate level, the present findings do not indicate strong opposition to police Taser use. One possible explanation for the discrepancy with earlier polling results is that in the present study participants were asked to indicate their attitude toward police use of Tasers, whereas the earlier polling questions asked participants whether they supported a moratorium (Angus Reid Public Opinion, 2010). It seems plausible that reference to a moratorium may have biased responses against supporting Taser use. More generally, the findings highlight the putative value of using theory and prior research as a basis for making decisions about how to disaggregate the results of opinion research. The present findings also revealed a pattern of relations among the affective and cognitive measures that corroborate previous findings. For instance, the present findings support the notion that anger is closely related to other-focused blame (Lerner & Keltner, 2001; Mandel, 2003). Blaming the police was significantly related to both anger and fear, yet the relation between blame and anger was significantly stronger than the relation between blame and fear. As well, previous research has shown that anger is associated with upward counterfactual thoughts that implicate the behavior of others for negative self-relevant outcomes. Dhami, Mandel, and Souza (2005) found that sentenced prisoners who reported having “upward” counterfactual thoughts about how their trial or sentence might have turned out better also reported feeling angrier than prisoners who did not report having such thoughts. The former group also perceived their trial and sentence to have been fairer than the latter group. Consistent with those findings, the present findings showed that the perceived preventability of Dziekanski’s death was not only significantly related to anger, but that that correlation was significantly greater than the correlation between preventability and fear. The present findings extend the generalizability of the earlier findings because, in the present case, the negative outcome was not directly self-relevant as in the Dhami et al. (2005) study and because Dhami et al. did not measure fear. Finally, the present findings appear to lend additional support for accounts of policing that emphasize the role of the police in exemplifying and promoting community values and not only fighting crime (e.g., Jackson & Sunshine, 2007). In particular, given the power that the police wield, they are expected to exhibit a keen sense of procedural fairness in their interactions with citizens. In turn, the perceived legitimacy of the police and citizens’ willingness to cooperate with the police depend upon it (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler & Huo, 2002). Those in the present study who blamed the police for Robert Dziekanski’s death showed a distinct constellation of responses that seems to offer additional support for a procedural justice account: Compared to those who laid primary blame elsewhere, they perceived his death to be more preventable, they were more angered by the case, they opposed police use of Tasers significantly more, and they had

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less confidence in the police. It is noteworthy, however, that consistent with a procedural justice account, participants who blamed the police for Diekanski’s death took a no less favorable view on the importance of fighting crime. To the extent that the Diekanski case represented for many Canadians and international observers a breach of procedural justice, the events quickly following the incident may have provided a textbook example of public responsiveness aimed at restoring public trust. First, public officials did not delay in establishing a public inquiry. Second, the Braidwood inquiry culminated in extensive recommendations covering Taser use restrictions, Taser testing requirements, Taser incident reporting, and police training in the use of Tasers (Braidwood Commission of Inquiry on Conducted Energy Weapon Use, 2009)—recommendations that about 70% of Canadians supported (Angus Reid Public Opinion, 2010). Third, law enforcement agencies were quick to respond to the recommendations and did not oppose them (Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, 2009; Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2009). Fourth, the RCMP offered a public apology, along with a financial settlement, to Dziekanski’s mother for their role in her son’s death—an apology that she accepted (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2010). Thus, not only did public officials respond quickly with comprehensive measures to restore public trust in the police, but the RCMP also used a critical element of restorative justice—namely, apology (e.g., Dhami, 2012)—in its official response to the case.

Limitations and Future Research While the present research illuminates the effect of gender on attitudes toward police use of Tasers and reactions to the Dziekanski case, it did not directly measure empathy or communal orientation. Although gender differences on such measures are well-established, future research might include them in order to better assess the mediating role of empathy, communality, and other putative intervening factors on the relation between gender and people’s affective, attributional, and attitudinal reactions to social and policy-relevant issues. Future work along these lines might also seek to examine the effect of gender on attitudes toward law enforcement and criminal justice issues in contexts in which specific cases (such as the Dziekanski case, in the present research) are not mentioned. One might expect that, comparatively speaking, under such emotionally pallid conditions, the effect of gender on attitudinal responses might be lessened. Future research might also examine gender effects on other social-cognitive responses where empathetic and communal orientations are expected to affect people’s responses. For example, Mandel and Vartanian (2008) found that a decision involving a tragic tradeoff where one person would have to die in order to save five others produced significantly greater moral conflict than a decision about whether to let a priceless artifact be destroyed in order to save the five people. Although the

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authors did not examine gender differences, it would seem plausible on the basis of the present findings that female participants might experience greater moral conflict than male participants given that all available decision options result in harm to innocent victims. An intriguing hypothesis worth testing is that men and women would choose similarly (with the majority opting to save the five and let the one die), but that women would experience significantly greater moral conflict and perhaps lower confidence in reaching their decision than would men. Conclusion The present research examined the effect of gender on attitudes toward police use of Tasers following the high-profile Dziekanski case. It was hypothesized that, compared to men, women would be less in favor of police use of Tasers, they would be more likely to blame the police for Mr. Dziekanski’s death, and they would be more angered by his death. Each of these directional hypotheses was supported in the present study. Moreover, the effect of gender on attitudes toward police use of Tasers was fully mediated by self-reported emotion regarding the case. These findings are consistent with the theoretical view that women and men reliably differ in terms of their orientation on the two main axes of interpersonal life—agency and communion. Specifically, the present findings are consistent with the view that women are more communal in their interpersonal orientation than men. Thus, they may be expected to respond in systematically different ways to social and policy-relevant issues that evoke agentic or communal consideration. Such considerations ought to be taken into account in opinion research because the averaging of male and female views on social and policy-relevant issues may provide a poor representation of both demographic subpopulations. References Abele, A. E. (2003). The dynamics of masculine-agentic and feminine-communal traits: Findings from a prospective study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 768–776. Alpert, G. P., & Dunham, R. G. (2010). Policy and training recommendations related to police use of CEDs: Overview of findings from a comprehensive national study. Police Quarterly, 13, 235–259. Alicke, M. (2000). Culpable control and the psychology of blame. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 556– 574. Applegate, B. K., Cullen, F. T., & Fisher, B. S. (2002). Public views toward crime and correctional policies: Is there a gender gap? Journal of Criminal Justice, 30, 89–100. Amnesty International. (2006). USA: Amnesty International’s continuing concerns about taser use. www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/030/2006. R use: StateAmnesty International. (2007). USA: Amnesty International’s concerns about Taser ment to the U.S. Justice Department inquiry into deaths in custody. www.amnesty.org/ en/library/info/AMR 51/151/2007 Angus Reid Public Opinion (2010). Braidwood inquiry: Canadians agree with the conclusions of inquiry into Dziekanski death. Vancouver, British Columbia: Author.

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Austen, I. (2007, November 16). After a death, use of Taser in Canada is debated. New York Times. Retrieved November 16, 2007, from http://www.nytimes.com/ Bakan, D. (1966). The duality of human existence. An essay on psychology and religion. Chicago: Rand McNally. Baron-Cohen, S., Knickmeyer, R. C., & Belmonte, M. K. (2005). Sex differences in the brain: implications for explaining autism. Science, 310, 819–823. Blader, S. L., & Tyler, T. R. (2003). A four-component model of procedural justice: Defining the meaning of a “fair” process. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 747–758. Braidwood Commission of Inquiry on Conducted Energy Weapon Use. (2009). Restoring public confidence: Restricting the use of conducted energy weapons. Vancouver, BC, Canada: Government of British Columbia. Braidwood Commission on the Death of Robert Dziekanski. (2010). Why? The Robert Dziekanski tragedy. Vancouver, BC, Canada: Government of British Columbia. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (2010, April 1). RCMP apologizes to Dziekanski’s mother. Retrieved November 15 2012 from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/04/01/rcmpdziekanski-apology.html Clemente, F., & B. Kleinman, M. B. (1977). Fear of crime in the United States: A multivariate analysis. Social Forces, 56, 519–531. Dhami, M. K. (2012). Offer and acceptance of apology in victim-offender mediation. Critical Criminology, 20, 45–60. Dhami, M. K., Mandel, D. R., & Souza, K. (2005). Escape from reality: Prisoner’s counterfactual thinking about crime, justice and punishment. In D. R. Mandel, D. J. Hilton, & P. Catellani (Eds.), The psychology of counterfactual thinking (pp. 165–182). New York: Routledge. Duncan-Johnson, C. C. (1981). P300 latency: a new metric for information processing. Psychophysiology, 18, 207–215. Eisenberg, N., & Lennon, R. (1983). Sex differences in empathy and related capacities. Psychological Bulletin, 94, 100–131. Gagn´e, F. M., & Lydon, J. E. (2003). Identification and the commitment shift: Accounting for gender differences in relationship illusions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 907–919. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Halim, S., & Stiles, B. L. (2001). Differential support for police use of force, the death penalty, and perceived harshness of the courts: effects of race, gender, and region. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 28, 3–23. Hall, J. A. (2011). Sex differences in friendship expectations: A meta-analysis. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 28, 723–747. Han, S., Fan, Y., & Mao, L. (2008). Gender difference in empathy for pain: An electrophysiological investigation. Brain Research, 1196, 85–93. Jackson, J., & Sunshine, J. (2007). Public confidence in policing: A Neo-Durkheimian perspective. British Journal of Criminology, 47, 214–233. Kenny, D. A., Kashy, D. A., & Bolger, N. (1998). Data analysis in social psychology. In D. Gilbert, S. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1, 4th ed., pp. 233–265). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Kluwer, E. S., Tumewu, M., & Van den Bos, K. (2009). Men’s and women’s reactions to fair and unfair treatment in relationship conflict. Personal Relationships, 16, 455–474. Lazarus, R. (1994). Universal antecedents of the emotions. In P. Ekman & R. Davidson (Eds.), The nature of emotion (pp. 163–171). New York: Oxford University Press. Lerner, J. S., Gonzalez, R. M., Small, D. A., & Fischhoff, B. (2003). Effects of fear and anger on perceived risks of terrorism: A national field experiment. Psychological Science, 14, 144– 150. Lerner, J. S., & Keltner, D. (2001). Fear, anger and risk. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 146–159. Liska, A. E., Sanchirico, A., & Reed, M. D. (1988). Fear of crime and constrained behavior: Specifying and estimating a reciprocal effects model. Social Forces, 66, 827–837.

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Appendix: Newspaper excerpt Mr. Dziekanski, a 40-year-old construction worker, arrived in Vancouver on October 14 to begin a new life with his mother. After a 10-hour delay caused by immigration processing, Mr. Dziekanski became upset when he could not find his mother, Zofia Cisowski, who waited several hours before returning to her home in Kamloops, British Columbia, under the mistaken impression that her son had not arrived in Canada. Unable to speak English, Mr. Dziekanski became distressed and began shouting in Polish, moving furniture around, shoving a computer off a desk in an arrival area and, at one point, throwing a chair. His actions soon attracted the attention of other passengers and security officials. The recording shows that when airport security officials first appeared, passengers could be heard shouting to them that Mr. Dziekanski did not understand English. Moments later, four members of the Mounties arrive in the waiting area wearing bulletproof vests. Mr. Dziekanski repeatedly shouted either the Polish word for “help” or “police,” which sound similar, before walking away with his arms raised in the air. There was a brief conversation followed by a loud sound, apparently a Taser shot, and Mr. Dziekanski fell to the ground screaming in pain. The recording captured what appeared to be a second Taser shot as three officers piled onto Mr. Dziekanski to subdue him. One minute and eight seconds after the police arrived, Mr. Dziekanski appeared to have stopped moving, and the recording ended shortly afterward. An autopsy showed no evidence of alcohol or drugs in his system, but was unable to determine a cause of death. DAVID R. MANDEL, Ph.D., University of British Columbia, is a senior scientist in the Sensemaking and Decision Group in the Socio-Cognitive Systems Section of DRDC Toronto, part of the Government of Canada’s Department of National Defence. Dr. Mandel is also Adjunct Professor of Psychology at York University (Toronto) and a Fellow of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI).

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mother, Zofia Cisowski, who waited several hours before returning to her home in Kamloops, British Columbia, under the mistaken impression that her son had not arrived in Canada. Unable to speak English, Mr. Dziekanski became distressed and began shout- ing in Polish, moving furniture around, shoving a computer off ...

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