'A gun is a gun, handcuffs are handcuffs. When officers are in full gear it definitely has an impact on their jobs as opposed to officers without.' (photo: Alamy)
Mere Sight of a Gun Makes Police and Public More
Aggressive, Experts Say
By
Alan Yuhas, Guardian UK
05 August 15
A large body of psychological research on
the ‘weapons effect’ may help explain the often violent interactions between
police and the policed
hen police officers put on their badges and blues, do
they somehow change inside? Surrounded by stories of pepper-sprayed protesters, threats at traffic stops,
and sudden bursts of violence
sometimes causing deaths, the US has spent a
year asking itself about police misconduct, circling the question, “why?”
Psychology may give some clues. For decades
psychologists have looked for evidence that weapons affect behavior, and a
large body of research has borne out their suspicions: simply seeing a weapon –
whether a sword, hand grenade, tank or gun – makes people more aggressive.
Speaking to the Guardian, Ohio State psychology
professor Brad Bushman said that research has shown humans respond as quickly
to guns auto spiders and snakes, though unlike that impulse the effect must be
at some level learned.
“Weapons increase all of those aggressive thoughts,
feelings, hostile appraisals and the type of thinking that somebody’s out to
get you, or wants to hurt you,” Bushman said.
Aggressive impulses can sometimes be strong enough to
override common sense, studies have found. Confronted with a pickup truck
driver who had stalled at a green light, drivers in one 2006 study were more likely to
honk at the pickup with a rifle than they were at the pickup without a rifle.
The study developed a similar 1975 experiment that
also included a bumper sticker reading “vengeance”.
“You’d have to be complete idiot to honk your horn,”
Bushman said, “but that’s the power about the weapons effect, people don’t
think about it much. The effects are very automatic.”
Studies have also shown that carrying a gun tends to
make people more likely to deliver electric shocks, increase paranoia about
people and objects, and increase testosterone. (The “vast majority” of
perpetrators of gun violence are men, according to the APA.)
The toolkit of police in America often includes a
handgun, Taser and nightstick, and many departments also have the assault
weapons, riot gear and armored vehicles that transformed Ferguson, Missouri,
into an illustration of
militarized police action. The surfeit of weapons probably makes both officers
and people around them more aggressive, the experts said, regardless of the
type of weapon.
“Tasers can be as deadly as a gun, and the nightstick
is not a peaceful tool, it’s used to exercise coercive force,” said Maria
Haberfeld, a professor of police science at the John Jay College of Criminal
Justice. “A gun is a gun, handcuffs are handcuffs. When officers are in full
gear it definitely has an impact on their jobs as opposed to officers without.”
Haberfeld compared police violence in the US to the
much lower levels in Ireland and the UK, where police usually go without guns,
but she also argued that some gear, and at least the threat of force, is
necessary to effective policing.
“A police officer at any moment is outnumbered by
members of the public,” she said, “so if we eliminate this implied notion of
coercive force then we eliminate the difference between the public and police”.
“In essence, policing as a profession is about the use
of force, not necessarily physically but the notion of it.”
Research supports Haberfeld’s assertion that
perception affects policing. A 1984 study on the Menlo Park police force, which
adopted civilian “blazer-style” uniforms for
eight years, found that the more casual uniform had no positive effect on the
department, and that people thought officers with traditional uniforms “more
honest, more active, more helpful”, and even “more ‘good’”.
Researchers have studied the effects of clothing for
decades, finding it cues both wearer and witnesses on how to think and feel.
Some results are common sense – people judge by appearances – and other results
are more subtle.
Style, color and even the type of hat all affect
policing, according to University of Toledo psychologist Richard Johnson.
Johnson wrote in a 2005 paper that
“the crisp uniform of the police officer conveys power and authority” and that
civilians cooperate more and misbehave less in the presence of a person in
uniform.
“The uniform also serves to establish order and
conformity within the ranks of those who wear it by suppressing individuality,”
he wrote. “The psychological and physical impact of the police uniform should
not be underestimated.”
In 2005 Johnson concluded that civilians prefer
traditional “paramilitary” uniforms, but found darker, blue or black uniforms
more aggressive. People also thought the traditional “bus driver” garrison cap
and the “smoky bear” campaign hat conveyed more authority than a ballcap or no
hat.
Just as civilians read aggression into dark uniforms,
Johnson notes, so a study has shown that people wearing black uniforms seem to
prefer football and rugby to less violent sports. Mixed uniforms of light
shirts and dark pants might send the best message, he reasons.
Numerous studies have shown that uniforms
influence behavior and self-perception, spawning a field of study called “embodied
cognition”. People wearing doctor’s lab coats are more attentive, school
uniforms may spur rivalries and better study habits, and
people wearing hooded, KKK-like robes are more likely to zap a stranger with
an electric shock.
The most famous experiment, the controversial,
scientifically dubious Stanford prison experiment,
involved college students playing guards (in khaki uniforms with dark glasses)
quickly descending to brutality toward students playing inmates.
The likely effects of riot gear, gas masks, shields
and goggles are not hard to deduce, the experts said: a feeling of anonymity and power,
perhaps increasing feelings of aggression and impunity, protected by the
symbolic shield of the state and sometimes literal armor.
In turn, civilians (and protesters) are more likely to
see the militarized officers as a more threatening force, priming both sides
for increasingly aggressive feelings, thoughts and actions.
Even sunglasses, the preferred eyewear of highway
patrol everywhere, seem to influence self-perception. A 2010 University of Toronto study found
that students who wore sunglasses, perhaps feeling more disguised and thus more
powerful, were more likely to cheat on a test or act selfishly than people
wearing clear glasses or none at all.
In the absence of an official police killing or abuse
database, sheer numbers bear out police and psychologists’
observation that the vast majority of officers do
their jobs well and with good intentions.
“The slippery slope of misconduct can begin with
nothing more than simple policy violations,” Los Angeles police psychologist
Brian Fitch wrote in 2011, noting that
small offenses and department cultures primed officers to worse misdeeds.
Most studies note that a variety of factors, including
a person’s background and the culture around them, strongly influence actions
and perception. Training for instance may mitigate the weapons effect, but it’s
not clear how much.
A 2000 study, for instance, put civilians and police in front of a video game in
which they had to quickly decide whether to shoot various armed and unarmed
men, black and white, as they reached into a bag. Civilians and police were
more likely to shoot the black men, but officers showed no racial bias in the
case of armed or unarmed killings, a detail the researcher chalked up to
training.
Others remain less convinced of training’s efficacy.
“My hunch is that it’s not so easy to turn that switch off,” Bushman said.
Haberfeld agreed, adding she believes people who are
attracted to policing “have a certain predisposition to aggression”. She
suggested a minimum recruitment age for officers of 25 years old, when people
are more emotionally and psychologically mature, and more likely to make good
leaders.
“I don’t think that everybody who is wearing the
uniform should be on the job,” she said, “but here the stakes are a little bit
higher. Giving a gun to somebody who’s barely out of their teens is
irresponsible.”
C 2015 Reader Supported News
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has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
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