Is bad stronger than good? The impact of police-citizen encounters on public satisfaction with police

Abstract

Purpose– Drawing upon the negativity bias theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of positive and negative perceptions of police-initiated or citizen-initiated contacts on three distinctive dimensions of public satisfaction with police (PSWP).Design/methodology/approach– The data were obtained from a random-sample telephone survey of 1,143 residents in Houston in 2012. The OLS regressions were conducted with variables derived from the contact model and neighborhood context model that were often employed in the PSWP research. Particularly, five dichotomous variables were created to tap into the nature and quality of the police-citizen encounters.Findings– The results confirm the negativity bias theory that “bad is stronger than good,” suggesting that the negative-contact variables have stronger influences on PSWP than the positive-contact variables, net of neighborhood context and demographic background.Originality/value– This study expands the scope of the investigation on PSWP by exploring the effects of the nature and quality of the police-citizen contacts on the respondents’ sentiments toward the police.