The Effect of Perceived Race and Gender on Police Language Use: Experimental Evidence from VR Simulations
Against the backdrop of violence in police interactions with the U.S. public, we explore how deferentially police officers speak to virtual characters depicted as Black adult males in vir- tual reality (VR) simulations. We evaluate the effect of seeing and communicating with these characters through a causal in- ference lens, where the assignment of the Black man character to a police officer and simulation is the treatment variable. Our (marginal) average treatment effect AT E measures the social impact of the character on the deference of officer statements with each turn of the conversation. Soberingly, we find that most officers speak less deferentially to Black man characters, except...
| Authors | Sandra C. Sandoval, Navita Goyal, Rashawn Ray et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CY |
| Published | 5 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 5 August 2026 |
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