Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Philando Castile are just a few of the Black Americans killed by police in recent years whose deaths spurred widespread protests about police tactics.
For some observers, the killings can be traced to a few problem officers driven by racial bias or a disregard for policies. For others, poor regulations, inadequate policies, and lax oversight open a window for misconduct. But is it also possible that the cognitive demands of policing and the need to react quickly under stress may lead to hasty and potentially flawed decisions?
University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy’s Oeindrila Dube, University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Sandy Jo MacArthur, and Chicago Booth’s Anuj K. Shah tested that idea by designing a new kind of officer training, one that led to a dramatic drop in the use of force.
The researchers cite the work of Princeton’s Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate, who differentiates between two types of thought, as described in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow. In stressful situations, police officers are likely to default to what Kahneman terms System 1 thinking, which is quick and intuitive but can lead to devastating mistakes. Dube, MacArthur, and Shah suggest that with training, officers can learn to rely on System 2 thinking, which is more deliberative. For example, in System 1 thinking, an officer might misinterpret something shiny in someone’s hand as a weapon, while in System 2 thinking the officer might pause to consider other interpretations, such as it being a cell phone.
“Given how big the problem is, we said, ‘Well, what else can we do about this?’” Shah says. Their proposal draws on research Shah was involved in that taught disadvantaged teens how to pause in moments of conflict, question their assumptions, and try to look at the situation from different perspectives. “That’s something that everybody can benefit from,” he says. “And certainly officers.” (For more, read “A Powerful Tool for At-Risk Youth.”)