A Book Review<\/em><\/h2>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I am probably the largest distributor in the world of two books, my own Keeping It Simple <\/u><\/em><\/strong>and Matthew Sharps\u2019 book Processing Under Pressure<\/u><\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 When a person comes into my office, there is a bookcase on the right with hundreds of books on policing. Topics like Chinese gangs, Mexican gangs, shooting well, booby-trapping, ![\"Police](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/SHarps.jpg?resize=182%2C293\")
Intelligence, counterintelligence, etc.\u00a0 Keeping it Simple <\/u><\/em><\/strong>is a natural since I wrote it and is always there. \u00a0I had bought back the rights in the late 90\u2019s because the publisher could keep it in stock and get it to me when I was on the road doing speeches.\u00a0 Cops always pick it up and keep it, which is fine.\u00a0 They should.\u00a0 Processing Under Pressure<\/u><\/em><\/strong> is the other book everyone picks up and starts to read when I make my hourly trip to the bathroom and then they say \u201cCan I borrow this book?\u00a0 I\u2019ll bring it back.\u201d\u00a0 Cops never bring it back.\u00a0 They talk about it non-stop for three or four sessions, but it never sees my office again.\u00a0 That\u2019s not fine as I have to buy those copies.<\/span><\/p>\nHow does Processing Under Pressure<\/u><\/em><\/strong> grow legs or wings or whatever?\u00a0 Well, the cops that take it, don\u2019t want to give it up.\u00a0 The book is extremely engaging, explains a lot that cops see in everyday life, and it makes good common sense.\u00a0 I would say if you were only going to read one other book in policing, Processing Under Pressure<\/u><\/em><\/strong> is the one I would chose. \u00a0\u00a0How does one think, what do they miss, what are they likely to say when the situation goes bad, all things covered by Processing Under Pressure<\/u><\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter whether you are a boss, dealing with a boss, you\u2019re an ES guy dealing with an operation, a military man sizing up a mission, you are a shrink dealing with a client, or a guy or girl scoping out a Saturday night date (I know I am aging myself, young people don\u2019t date anymore), this applies to your life.\u00a0 So read on, I have 900-1000 words to get you to read this book sooner rather than later in your life.<\/span><\/p>\nSo, the first two chapters are about stress.\u00a0 You can get that a lot of places and probably have.\u00a0 These chapters talk about the brain<\/a> and how it functions in high stress and acute stress<\/a> and frankly Dr. Sharps does a great job but you are probably mostly aware of these things.\u00a0 Then you get to the third chapter the book moves so fast, you need a seat belt.\u00a0 He starts getting into what happens in eyewitness testimony.\u00a0 Dr. Sharps talks about how Bartlett showed an abstract picture of \u201can Easter Egg crossed with a football\u201d and it changed into a human face as people drew and re-drew it from memory.\u00a0 Barlett repeated it several times with several pictures.\u00a0 Then Dr. Sharps talks about other manipulations by the individual of memory.\u00a0 He ends with \u201cmemory is not static, eternal or unchanging.\u201d\u00a0 Dr. Sharps goes on to say it changes through brevity, loss of detail and personal belief.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 Think about that sentence, essentially everything that happened, that we relive, that we listen to from others, will get changed according to some general principles.\u00a0 That\u2019s saying a lot.
\n<\/span><\/p>\nDr. Sharps wasn\u2019t done there.\u00a0 He goes on to show experiments that memories change by situation, context, light source, costume, race, conformity, age and a bunch of other variables.\u00a0 And that things change predictably sometimes.\u00a0 And forget when there is a gun involved.\u00a0 The weapon focus is tremendous in disturbing people\u2019s attention to details like how someone looks.\u00a0 If I were training lawyers, they would read Chapter 3 the first day of class and once a week afterwards.\u00a0 This is tremendous.\u00a0 In fact, I think every cop and psychologist should read and understand this chapter well.\u00a0 It explains why lineups are not very accurate, why people see things differently and the need for multiple corroboration, in fact how two people can hardly ever come up with the same story unless one of them changes it, which often happens, because of conformity.\u00a0 And you are only 75 pages into the book.<\/span><\/p>\nI once had a cop who had been in a shooting and he remembered he shot the person because he was nervous but wasn\u2019t sure why he was nervous.\u00a0 The person went down. He remembers he took a few steps back and shot the person again while he was trying to get up.\u00a0 He was having a hard time with the shoot and figured he would get killed by IAB and the newspapers and would probably lose his job at least, if not get charged.\u00a0 It was in a store with a video camera going.\u00a0 We sat and watched the video.\u00a0 The perpetrator was threatening his partner whose head was turned away, with what look like a gun, he double tapped his trigger and the guy went down.\u00a0 \u00a0End of story.\u00a0 Nothing he remembered had happened. \u00a0Dr. Sharps does the best job of explaining this of anyone I have ever read.\u00a0 It all makes sense after reading Processing Under Pressure.<\/span><\/strong>
\n<\/span><\/p>\nDr. Sharps goes on to explain the difference between Gestalt and Feature Intensive Processing and how each leads to errors but have good characteristics also.\u00a0 He explains that they are on a\u00a0 continuum in reality but people do not always take them that way.\u00a0 Gestalt is the perception of the whole and feature intensive is the impression of the pieces of a situation. \u00a0Through historical events he shows how people can best use the understanding of cognitive processing to help them have stronger memory and get better information.\u00a0 He talks about the Washington Sniper, the North Hollywood Shoutout, General Patton in the relief of Bastogne, the Battle of the Bulge, The Amadou Diallo shooting, even Custer\u2019s Last Stand all to show his points about the understanding of cognitive processing.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a damn history lesson like you\u2019ve never had where history comes alive through psychology!\u00a0 This book is fun.\u00a0 He talks about tactical situations which can also be improved if people in law enforcement gain the knowledge in this book.\u00a0 And I have to tell you, he makes a very convincing case.<\/span><\/p>\nA book review couldn\u2019t be complete without some comment about the writing.\u00a0 This\u00a0 book is extremely informational, but written in a very interesting manner.\u00a0 Dr. Sharps has a wit and a sense of humor that is dry but nice and it reads well.\u00a0 Much of it is written in first person which is also nice as you tend to be on a journey through the material.\u00a0 You will not be able to absorb this book on first reading, as I read many paragraphs a couple of times because the information was so compelling.\u00a0 A lot of the research is by Dr. Sharps and his students, and that is what makes it compelling.\u00a0 You\u2019re not going to get this anywhere else without reading thousands of studies and being a strong consolidator of information.\u00a0 This is a real gem and everyone in law enforcement should read it.<\/span><\/p>\n
Intelligence, counterintelligence, etc.\u00a0 Keeping it Simple <\/u><\/em><\/strong>is a natural since I wrote it and is always there. \u00a0I had bought back the rights in the late 90\u2019s because the publisher could keep it in stock and get it to me when I was on the road doing speeches.\u00a0 Cops always pick it up and keep it, which is fine.\u00a0 They should.\u00a0 Processing Under Pressure<\/u><\/em><\/strong> is the other book everyone picks up and starts to read when I make my hourly trip to the bathroom and then they say \u201cCan I borrow this book?\u00a0 I\u2019ll bring it back.\u201d\u00a0 Cops never bring it back.\u00a0 They talk about it non-stop for three or four sessions, but it never sees my office again.\u00a0 That\u2019s not fine as I have to buy those copies.<\/span><\/p>\nHow does Processing Under Pressure<\/u><\/em><\/strong> grow legs or wings or whatever?\u00a0 Well, the cops that take it, don\u2019t want to give it up.\u00a0 The book is extremely engaging, explains a lot that cops see in everyday life, and it makes good common sense.\u00a0 I would say if you were only going to read one other book in policing, Processing Under Pressure<\/u><\/em><\/strong> is the one I would chose. \u00a0\u00a0How does one think, what do they miss, what are they likely to say when the situation goes bad, all things covered by Processing Under Pressure<\/u><\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter whether you are a boss, dealing with a boss, you\u2019re an ES guy dealing with an operation, a military man sizing up a mission, you are a shrink dealing with a client, or a guy or girl scoping out a Saturday night date (I know I am aging myself, young people don\u2019t date anymore), this applies to your life.\u00a0 So read on, I have 900-1000 words to get you to read this book sooner rather than later in your life.<\/span><\/p>\n So, the first two chapters are about stress.\u00a0 You can get that a lot of places and probably have.\u00a0 These chapters talk about the brain<\/a> and how it functions in high stress and acute stress<\/a> and frankly Dr. Sharps does a great job but you are probably mostly aware of these things.\u00a0 Then you get to the third chapter the book moves so fast, you need a seat belt.\u00a0 He starts getting into what happens in eyewitness testimony.\u00a0 Dr. Sharps talks about how Bartlett showed an abstract picture of \u201can Easter Egg crossed with a football\u201d and it changed into a human face as people drew and re-drew it from memory.\u00a0 Barlett repeated it several times with several pictures.\u00a0 Then Dr. Sharps talks about other manipulations by the individual of memory.\u00a0 He ends with \u201cmemory is not static, eternal or unchanging.\u201d\u00a0 Dr. Sharps goes on to say it changes through brevity, loss of detail and personal belief.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 Think about that sentence, essentially everything that happened, that we relive, that we listen to from others, will get changed according to some general principles.\u00a0 That\u2019s saying a lot. Dr. Sharps wasn\u2019t done there.\u00a0 He goes on to show experiments that memories change by situation, context, light source, costume, race, conformity, age and a bunch of other variables.\u00a0 And that things change predictably sometimes.\u00a0 And forget when there is a gun involved.\u00a0 The weapon focus is tremendous in disturbing people\u2019s attention to details like how someone looks.\u00a0 If I were training lawyers, they would read Chapter 3 the first day of class and once a week afterwards.\u00a0 This is tremendous.\u00a0 In fact, I think every cop and psychologist should read and understand this chapter well.\u00a0 It explains why lineups are not very accurate, why people see things differently and the need for multiple corroboration, in fact how two people can hardly ever come up with the same story unless one of them changes it, which often happens, because of conformity.\u00a0 And you are only 75 pages into the book.<\/span><\/p>\n I once had a cop who had been in a shooting and he remembered he shot the person because he was nervous but wasn\u2019t sure why he was nervous.\u00a0 The person went down. He remembers he took a few steps back and shot the person again while he was trying to get up.\u00a0 He was having a hard time with the shoot and figured he would get killed by IAB and the newspapers and would probably lose his job at least, if not get charged.\u00a0 It was in a store with a video camera going.\u00a0 We sat and watched the video.\u00a0 The perpetrator was threatening his partner whose head was turned away, with what look like a gun, he double tapped his trigger and the guy went down.\u00a0 \u00a0End of story.\u00a0 Nothing he remembered had happened. \u00a0Dr. Sharps does the best job of explaining this of anyone I have ever read.\u00a0 It all makes sense after reading Processing Under Pressure.<\/span><\/strong> Dr. Sharps goes on to explain the difference between Gestalt and Feature Intensive Processing and how each leads to errors but have good characteristics also.\u00a0 He explains that they are on a\u00a0 continuum in reality but people do not always take them that way.\u00a0 Gestalt is the perception of the whole and feature intensive is the impression of the pieces of a situation. \u00a0Through historical events he shows how people can best use the understanding of cognitive processing to help them have stronger memory and get better information.\u00a0 He talks about the Washington Sniper, the North Hollywood Shoutout, General Patton in the relief of Bastogne, the Battle of the Bulge, The Amadou Diallo shooting, even Custer\u2019s Last Stand all to show his points about the understanding of cognitive processing.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a damn history lesson like you\u2019ve never had where history comes alive through psychology!\u00a0 This book is fun.\u00a0 He talks about tactical situations which can also be improved if people in law enforcement gain the knowledge in this book.\u00a0 And I have to tell you, he makes a very convincing case.<\/span><\/p>\n A book review couldn\u2019t be complete without some comment about the writing.\u00a0 This\u00a0 book is extremely informational, but written in a very interesting manner.\u00a0 Dr. Sharps has a wit and a sense of humor that is dry but nice and it reads well.\u00a0 Much of it is written in first person which is also nice as you tend to be on a journey through the material.\u00a0 You will not be able to absorb this book on first reading, as I read many paragraphs a couple of times because the information was so compelling.\u00a0 A lot of the research is by Dr. Sharps and his students, and that is what makes it compelling.\u00a0 You\u2019re not going to get this anywhere else without reading thousands of studies and being a strong consolidator of information.\u00a0 This is a real gem and everyone in law enforcement should read it.<\/span><\/p>\n
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