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Personality and cognitive processes in life and death decision making: An exploration into the source of judgment errors by police special squads
Author(s) -
Girodo Michel
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1080/00207590701436728
Subject(s) - psychology , officer , social psychology , neuroticism , personality , cognition , sensation seeking , task (project management) , applied psychology , deliberation , engineering , psychiatry , law , systems engineering , politics , political science
This study sought to understand judgment errors by special police units such as those documented after the assault by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas. The study examined the relation between personality traits, the cognitive organization of safety and survival skills, and past deadly force encounters in 131 tactical and command officers of Violent Crimes and Fugitives Task Forces, and as they executed live high‐risk arrest warrants in an all‐inclusive decision‐making simulation environment. Logistic regressions showed that getting shot on the job was related to very low neuroticism and low sensation (experience) seeking among officers. Getting shot in a deadly force encounter during a simulated team entry was also related to low neuroticism and low experience seeking. Making safety and survival errors in a simulated entry was positively related to toughmindedness in Task Force tactical officers but negatively related to toughmindedness in Task Force leaders. Principle components factor analysis of 27 self‐reported safety and survival competencies showed that, generally, TF leaders reasoned with higher cognitive processes of analysis and deliberation while tactical personnel reasoned more in terms of reactive and procedural knowledge. Getting shot during a simulated dangerous encounter was more likely to occur when there was a mismatch between task demands and an officer's preference of one knowledge system over another. It was speculated that the poor judgment by command staff at Waco might have been related to their use of a procedural knowledge system when higher cognitive processes were needed. Greater experience with executing arrest warrants would have triggered the recognition of a serious anomaly, which would have primed the use of higher cognitive processes.