Archive for the ‘Motives and Opportunity’ Category

Police Psychology | Are You Cooperative or Competitive?

 

This question resonates for all police psychology from testing to operational to consulting to working with the officer in a therapeutic role.  Are you cooperative or competitive? In order to understand this question better, we need to understand the specific Police psychology, competitivedifferences between these two mental attitudes. Cooperation is when people act together for the mutual benefit of all involved parties, so that all of them can obtain a specific goal. Competition is when an individual acts for his own personal benefit so that he can obtain a goal that is of limited availability. So when you are playing a board game with only one winner, chances are you will feel a sense of competitiveness, because the goal (ie. being the winner) is of limited availability, what with only one spot available. Yet when you are working on a team project, chances are you will tend to exhibit cooperative behavior because the goal (getting a good grade) is not awarded to only one person in the group.

Game Theory

In this post I want to discuss something known as game theory, specifically the prisoner’s dilemma,and how it realates to something we all want—Trust. The prisoner’s dilemma is based on a hypothetical case in which you have two prisoners (prisoner A and prisoner B, creative huh?) taken into custody and placed in separate interrogation rooms. In order to convict these individuals, the police needs a confession from at least one of the prisoners. Obviously each prisoner has two options: he can either confess or not confess. The outcome depends on how each of the prisoners respond. If both prisoners remain silent and do not confess, they are charged with a misdemeanor. If both prisoners confess, they will be charged with a felony, but recommended for a moderate sentence. If prisoner A confesses and prisoner B remains silent, prisoner A will have his charges dropped and prisoner B will be charged and receive the maximum sentence (and vice versa). To make this a little clearer, let’s examine a chart. The numbers used for sentencing in the chart below should just be seen as placeholders representing any range of larger sentencing.

police psychology, game theory

Obviously the best option for each prisoner is to confess while the other remains silent, because then they do not get punished at all in that case. In other words, each prisoner gains the most if they choose to cooperate while the other prisoner competes. However, it is likely that both prisoners will weigh their options and come to this same conclusion, leading to a scenario where they both decide to confess (hoping the other stays silent), thus causing them to both serve a moderate sentence. However, there is a better option for these prisoners: if they both remain silent and do not confess, they will only get charged with a misdemeanor, a slight offense with very low consequences. It would make the most sense for the prisoners to mutually agree to just stay quiet.

The Power of Trust

But studies in which people were placed in this type of situation show that most individuals choose to compete. Why? I can suggest two possible reasons. One, each person is trying to look out for their own best interests, which would fall into the category of confessing and hoping the other person does not. Another reason is that the individuals don’t trust each other. In the prisoner’s dilemma, the police count on this: they are hoping each person confesses, or at the very least that one person confesses, so that they can get their conviction. They are counting on the fact that the prisoners won’t trust their partner, and they will get the conviction they need.  Police psychology must be aware of this because psychologists are dealing with people who must trust their partners everyday in very different ways.

There are many other examples of cooperation and competition that crop up in the media. One recent example came from a teacher at the University of Maryland. The teacher included a very controversial question on his final examination for the semester:

“Here you have the opportunity to earn some extra credit on your final paper grade. Select whether you want 2 points or 6 points added onto your final paper grade. But there’s a small catch: if more than 10% of the class selects 6 points, then no one gets any points. Your responses will be anonymous to the rest of the class, only I will see the responses.”

Obviously the best option for each individual student is to select the extra 6 points (and hope most of the class doesn’t pick this too), but if every student makes this judgment call, then no one will receive the extra points. In this case, cooperation is really the only way that the class can benefit…but cooperation requires trust, and trust is hard to come by. (In case you are curious, more than 10% of the students selected 6 points, and so no one received the extra credit.)

Studies like these suggest a very simplistic idea: cooperation is better than competition. And yet in practice, cooperation requires something elusive and often lacking: trust. If only people trust each other more, everyone can benefit from something that is of limited availability.

Bottom Line

So where am I going with this you may ask. If you never get arrested, you have no dilemma, right? Not so quick Speedy Gonzales!   Not at least in police psychology.  If you are your kid’s favorite parent, what is your spouse? You can either allow this acclamation from your child or confront it. “You don’t need to pick a favorite, just say we are both your favorites.” Kid will learn quickly that mom and dad are together, and trust it. Or the kid will learn he or she can split their parents and raise the roof as a teen. Believe it or not, adult bosses do the same thing, in fact, it is one of the techniques used in gaining power in the workplace. “Boss, you shouldn’t have favorites, but thank you for liking my work this week. We work as a team though,” is better than revealing in being your bosses favorite. It is hard to gain trust back after you have lost it, and setting yourself apart through this kind of manipulation gets around and divides an office. Trust comes when you let people know your work will set you apart, not other people’s feelings about you.  If trust is broken in a police relationship it can be deadly.

And what happens when you come across that person who says they will be silent but talks to save themselves? The damage they do to anyone who sees this act will be ten times the sentence you will receive. You will come out ahead.

Trust me on that one!

 

Police psychology: simple steps3 Attitudes that Gain Trust

  1. Deflect the credit – Allow your teammates or the people close to you share in the credit. Don’t allow individual praise split your team. “I am the hero today, someone else will be tomorrow,” is the attitude you need to endorse. Many people fake this attitude, but you should live it. People will know who did the individual work, you don’t need to tell them.
  2. Consistency – This one should go without saying. You can be spontaneous in other parts of your life, but in areas where trust is needed you have to respond consistently. People that depend on you need to have some idea how you are going to respond. There is some taking advantage of people who are predictable, but consistency is the major builder of trust.
  3. Always Be the One Who Remains Silent — If you have a cooperative agreement, you must remain the silent one, the one that sticks with the agreement. People who don’t can’t often live with themselves despite the outcome. Don’t allow what others are doing affect your personal belief system and your soul. It may take time, but you will be a lot better off taking the punishment, than living with the broken promise.

Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.

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Police Psychology | Mental Shortcuts

 

Lately police officers are are being accused of using a lot of shortcuts in their psychology and mental processes.  Profiling, prejudice and discrimination are buzz words for mental shortcuts and they have been used with police personnel all too much.  This is a major concern in police psychology and police stress.  We all look for shortcuts, whether it is a shortcut to get to the closest coffee shop before we crash from being overworked (despite already consuming 5 cups today), or a shortcut to help us finish our paperwork faster before the boss come crashing in your door expecting you should work even more than there are hours in a week (okay I am feeling a little overworked lately, what gave it away). Shortcuts, when used correctly, can be extremely useful as they maximize the amount of output you get for your invested time and effort. This is the primary reason shortcuts are so highly revered—we are always looking for tips and tricks, the “cut to the chase” part, the “in conclusion” or “lesson”. We live in such a fast-paced world that we need these shortcuts to help us cope. (That’s one of the reasons I include 3 simple steps at the end of all my blog posts. You’re welcome.)

The Tale of the Dog Poop

man thinking in different directions

In police psychology we encourage people to use heuristics in order to save their cognitive energy.

In psychology, we have a word for mental shortcuts. It’s called heuristics, which are rules of thumb, or tricks we use to speed up problem solving. When you use a heuristic, you are speeding up the cognitive process by immediately jumping to the most likely conclusions and solutions. Often, when you implement heuristics, you focus on one aspect of a problem or situation and ignore everything else. For example, if you see dog poop on the sidewalk, without even thinking about it, you would walk around it. You wouldn’t bother to evaluate the situation and examine the poop to see if it really is poop. You wouldn’t stop to consider if walking over it or around it is the faster route to your destination. You wouldn’t stop and wait and see what other people are doing. Instead, without breaking stride, you would avoid the dog poop and not give it another thought. That’s what heuristics allow us to do: make decisions quickly and effortlessly. Using a heuristic to help you problem solve is like using the escalator for a four-floor incline instead of the stairs. Both things will get you to the top, but one will get you there a little faster and with much less effort on your part.

 Heuristics, Errors and Police Psychology

Here’s an example: Jamal is 6’11’’ 20-something African American that looks very athletic. What is his career? Professional Basketball player or a lawyer? You probably answered the former because it is easier to picture a tall, athletic, African American basketball player than it is to picture the same individual as a lawyer. In reality, there are about 1.3 million lawyers in the US and about 500 NBA basketball players. This is because you typically watch basketball games on TV where you see some people like this, but it is rarer to watch lawyers sit around and debate on TV, so examples of tall, athletic, African American lawyers won’t pop into your mind as easily.  Do we call that height profiling?

Another example of availability heuristics shows up in a different fashion. Studies show that after Shark Week, there are less people who go to the beach. This is because after watching program after program showing various shark attacks, it is relatively easy for you to associate the ocean with sharks and thus scare you away. As soon as some time passes and images of shark attacks become less available to your mind, you will stop associating the two things with each other. You are just as likely to be ‘shark sushi” after a few weeks as before, but it doesn’t feel that way so you use a heuristic.

The representative heuristic, which is when we make decisions based on how close an example matches to our ideal or expected vision, rather than based on facts or probability. For example, I am a balding greying fifty-nine year old man with absolutely beautiful 8-year old daughter who was adopted from Russia. People assume it is my granddaughter and some even say it, “Your granddaughter is beautiful.” When I respond, “that’s my daughter you idiot, so shove your heuristic up your butt,” they get a little embarrassed and sometimes even a little offended, but I GET ENTERTAINED. (okay, I only think it, I do not say it.) Mis-identification is one of the major problems with heuristics.

We also tend to use the confirmatory bias, or the base-rate fallacy when we use heuristics. If I were to give a jar full of 1000 jelly bean to a group of kids and say you could keep them if you guess how many. I would start off with saying 300, all guesses would be in that range despite there being 1000 jelly beans in the jar. As each child guesses closer to 300, it becomes hard to go outside that number. This would involve seeking out information that specifically supports an opinion or certain information you have, while ignoring examples or incidents that would suggest otherwise. More telling is the base rate fallacy in diagnosis. If you have a patient with some very specific symptoms that match an incredibly rare disease, it is still a much more realistic assumption for you to make that he has a more common disease, even if the symptoms don’t match that generic disease perfectly. That is when a heuristic become dangerous.

This is the main problem with using heuristics: it leads us to make many errors in judgment. At the same time, we need to rely on heuristics or else we would expend too much cognitive energy and resources on small problems, like how to avoid dog poop in the middle of the sidewalk. Heuristics help speed along the mental process, increase our efficiency, get our butts moving, and direct us where to focus—but they must be tempered, controlled and evaluated before we give them too much credence. Heuristics lead to prejudice, stereotyping, profiling and media reports of judgement errors that make us look like idiots. Heuristics are often automatic and subconscious, and we need to bring them into the consciousness to control them. And in the age of cell phones, body cameras, and people willing to criticize your every move or lack of filtering, there is less tolerance for our brain farts caused by an old heuristic.

 Police psychology: simple steps3 Steps to Bring Your Heuristics into Consciousness

  1.  Educate Yourself. I know his sound a little too obvious to be in one of my steps, but heuristics is an important concept and you need to know the breadth of heuristics. There are social heuristics like imitating success, conformity and tit-for-tat, and personal heuristics like availability, representativeness and past going forward. You’ve got to understand how these heuristics affect your life in order to make a change. So the first step is to spend an hour reading on heuristics. Even Wikipedia has good articles at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_heuristics. Knowledge will give you the major tool you need to go to the next step.
  2. Recognize. You have to get yourself in the mode of seeing when you are using a mental shortcut in a situation. Prejudices, stereotypes and biases are sometimes good, but often lead you down a wrong path. Remember, the way people change is to first analyze what they are doing, then change while in the process. You must see yourself for what you are doing first, then you can move forward.
  3. Apply Filters.   The last step is to apply filters to what you are doing. Think before your speak or act. Try to see the situation from a different angle. “Why is the person saying this?” “Will I get any advantage from adding my two cents at this point?” These kinds of things will slow you down, but may help you by not making a huge mistake. When solving a problem ask yourself, “how would _____ fix this?” the blank of course being someone you respect to handle the problem. The goal is not to end shortcuts, but to cause yourself to not waste words and energy in areas that could do you detriment.

Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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The Principle of Relativity (or something like that)

 

jet plane

Objects moving at the same speed may not notice they are traveling at a different pace than the people around them.

I like to teach that scientific principles and theories have mental health correlates that we should pay attention to in both police psychology and all denominations of the mental health field. Scientific theory is highly dependent on observation (both inside and outside of experiments) and many of the principles can apply across situation observed in nature. Since many people have problems with science, let me put the concept in a simpler form.

If you and I are flying in a plane, and you choose to toss me a ball, even though we are traveling at 560 miles an hour through the air, the ball will go directly to me as if there was no motion at all. Essentially, because we are moving at the same speed, there is no motion between us and we can act as we regularly would despite being in a plane going 560 or more miles per hour. Now scientists will argue whether this is covered in Newton’s laws, Einstein’s theory of relativity, or even Aristotle’s or Galileo’s theories on motion explains this, but I extend to you that if I toss you a chocolate donut or a bagel with cream cheese in a plane going 560 miles an hour, you will still catch it easily unless I throw it badly. Name it what you want, but bodies that are moving the same speed do not feel motion unless there is something moving at a different speed, such as the wind if you were standing on the wing of the airplane.

I find human interaction is regulated by this same principle. When an officer is assigned to a special unit, such as sex crimes or emergency service, they are moving at a speed that the rest of the world may be a step or two behind. The same happens in business when working on a fast-paced project. It is easy to communicate with other people in the unit or on the project, but it will be more difficult to communicate to people outside of the unit or project. We often find when a spouse comes home and the pace may be slower or just focused elsewhere, they may get very irritable, or impatient. Trying to get a lead on a murder suspect that is time-sensitive is a different pace than waiting for your 7-year old to pick out pants to wear to school or coming home to an indecisive spouse trying to make a decision about dinner that night. Tempo is important in writing, in sports, in speaking well, in holding attention of people, and in life in general. Many people can adjust what they are thinking about, but don’t have a clue about adjusting to the tempo of life from work to home. The other problem occurs when someone comes home and ratchets down to zero, with really no sense of the pace in their house. When you lose tempo, just as in a song, no one can make music together.

Managing the Tempos of Life

Metronome

Adjusting your tempo to fit that of others is important to maintaining the relationships in your life.

I have been trained in music. When I come across a tempo problem, I pull out the old metronome, a tool for staying on the beat. Actually, now I have a metronome on my cell phone that I use. I explain “tempo” describing from the airplane to the song. Then I ask them to give me examples at the different beats per minute on the metronome. What part of life goes at 140 beats per minute, what goes at 40 beats per minute? There is no normal so don’t worry about that. Our lives are regulated by beats per minutes from heart rates, to music, to our mental health. I explore that with the officers I see to get them to realize that the pace of their special unit may be different then their spouse and kids, or their social life. The key is for them to adjust, not to try to push everyone else at their pace.

Tempo is an important concept in your life, and it is a mental health concept as well, that can help you evaluate how to manage your time. Whether you call it relativity, or a law of motion is not as important as getting the person to attend to the natural pace of parts of their life. And if you can do this successfully, you will have a much happier and healthier life

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Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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