Perceptual and memory distortion during officer-involved shootings - Research Forum

FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin,The, Oct, 2002 by Alexis Artwohl

"If it hadn't been for the recoil, I wouldn't have known my gun was working. Not only didn't I hear the shots but afterward my ears weren't even ringing."

"I saw the suspect suddenly point his gun at my partner. As I shot him, I saw my partner go down in a spray of blood. I ran over to help my partner, and he was standing there unharmed. The suspect never even got off a shot."

"When I got home after the shooting, my wife told me that I had called her on my cell phone during the pursuit of the violent suspect just prior to the shooting. I have no memory of making that phone call."

"I told the SWAT team that the suspect was firing at me from down a long dark hallway about 40 feet long. When I went back to the scene the next day, I was shocked to discover that he had actually been only about 5 feet in front of me in an open room. There was no dark hallway."

"During a violent shoot-out I looked over, drawn to the sudden mayhem, and was puzzled to see beer cans slowly floating through the air past my face. What was even more puzzling was that they had the word Federal printed on the bottom. They turned out to be the shell casings ejected by the officer who was firing next to me."

These representative samples, taken from actual officer-involved shootings, exemplify the quirky nature of perception and memory. Law enforcement officers frilly realize that their superiors, legal authorities, and the public they serve will hold them completely accountable for their every action during an officer-involved shooting. These same individuals also will scrutinize the accuracy and truthfulness of statements made by officers taking part in such incidents. Therefore, it becomes important to understand that expecting officers to have perfect recall of any event is not realistic. Indeed, the body of research on perception and memory supports the fact that people rarely are capable of total and perfect recall of events.

Although the underlying physical processes of perception and memory continue as a matter of research and debate, empirical observation of human behavior can shed some light on the behavioral consequences of these processes. To this end, the author focused her research on the self-reported perceptual and memory distortions experienced by officers involved in shootings. (1)

BACKGROUND

Germane to this topic is how trauma and other highly emotional experiences can impact perception and memory. A noted researcher in the area of stress and fear conducted a comprehensive review of this topic. (2) He came to the conclusion that people have two distinctly different modes of processing information. One, the rational-thinking mode, happens during low emotional arousal states, whereas the second, the experiential-thinking mode, occurs during states of high stress and emotional arousal, such as would occur during an officer-involved shooting.

He pointed out that when people are not under high levels of stress, they have the ability to calmly engage in the conscious, deliberative, and analytical cognitive processing that characterizes rational thinking. However, when a perceived emergency requires quick action, they cannot afford this luxury. Instead, their cognitive processing system automatically switches over to experiential thinking. He stated that "people are angry, sad, or frightened not as a direct result of what objectively occurs but because of how they interpret what happens. The automatic, preconscious construals that are the effective instigators of such emotions are made so automatically and rapidly as to preclude the deliberative, sequential, analytical thinking that is characteristic of the rational system." (3)

He delineated the differences in rational and experiential thinking, including the concept that experiential thinking represents a system that "automatically, rapidly, effortlessly, and efficiently processes information," (4) an obvious advantage in a life-threatening situation demanding an immediate response. Along with facilitating automatic, rapid responses, he pointed out that experiential thinking is more likely than rational to have such characteristics as--

* fragmented memory instead of an integrated narrative;

* based on past experiences instead of a conscious appraisal of events;

* intuitive and holistic instead of analytic and logical;

* oriented toward immediate action instead of reflection and delayed action;

* highly efficient and rapid cognitive processing instead of slow, deliberative thinking;

* "seized by emotions" instead of "in control of our thoughts"; or

* "experiencing is believing" instead of requiring justification via logic and evidence.

He continued with, "In most situations, the automatic processing of the experiential system is dominant over the rational system because it is less effortful and more efficient and, accordingly, is the default option." (5) He noted that people frequently engage in experiential thinking during everyday events simply because it is more efficient, but "emotional arousal and relevant experience are considered to shift the balance of influence in the direction of the experiential system." (6) This clearly applies to officers involved in shootings and other high-stress situations.