Why Reform Stalls: Justification and Outrage as Competing Public Responses to Police Violence

Across two studies, we investigate how public justifications of police violence and moral outrage emerge as competing responses with distinct implications for reform. In Study 1, we analyzed 257,401 comments from 57 widely viewed YouTube videos using large language models to detect justificatory rhetoric, expressions of outrage, and calls for accountability. Justifications were consistently associated with reduced reform-oriented discourse, whereas outrage strongly co-occurred with accountability language. When modeled together, each response showed stronger links to reform, consistent with mutual suppression and the idea that they function as opposing interpretive strategies. In Study 2, we experimentally manipulated victim race by exposing participants (N = 159) to severity-matched videos of police brutality. Justification and outrage again diverged, with justification associated with lower reform support and outrage associated with higher reform support. Participants were more likely to attribute superhuman traits to the Black victim—a racialized justification tied to reduced reform support and to weaker translation of outrage into reform. Outrage for the Black victim was also a more consistent predictor of reform than outrage for the White victim. Together, these findings show how justification and moral outrage function as competing responses to police violence, and how racialized justifications can shape the conditions under which outrage mobilizes collective demands for change.