Heuristics, Biases, and Police Activity
Tyler Clift
an infographic created as part of Dr. Erchull’s Social Psychology course
(Spring 2021)
Students were asked to “give psychology away” through an infographic designed to educate an audience of their choice about an idea from social psychology that the group would benefit from understanding
TOPIC: heuristics and biases
AUDIENCE: U.S. law enforcement
References
NAACP. (2020, July 10). Criminal justice fact sheet. https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/
Initiative, P. (2020, December 29). Race and ethnicity. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/race_and_ethnicity/
In your research, did you come across any specific questionnaires or workshops that seem to be effective? What would you recommend?
This is all important information to get across! A lot of what people seem to misconstrue about these topics is the proportions. It is not that bias does not affect everyone, it is that bias disproportionately affects minorities (i.e., race, gender, sexual identity, etc.). Making those kinds of statistics clearer and relating them to psychological constructs is a good way to get people informed! Do you think there are ways to get this training/information to people at a broader level? I think more than just law enforcement officers need a better understanding of these biases.
This is a very interesting topic. I think that if this issues were fixed in the academy then there would be fewer issues on patrol (your questionnaire process would help this). I liked how you included the statistic. They were really informative and put what you talked about in the infographic into perspective.