Blink

by Malcolm Gladwell

other words, on the most basic neurological level, for someone with autism, a face is just another object.

How can that be? Yet, in interviews with police officers who have been involved with shootings, these same details appear again and again: extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. This is how the human body reacts to extreme stress, and it makes sense.

At 175, we begin to see an absolute breakdown of cognitive processing …. The forebrain shuts down, and the mid-brain — the part of your brain that is the same as your dog’s (all mammals have that part of the brain) — reaches up and hijacks the forebrain. Have you ever tried to have a discussion with an angry or frightened human being? You can’t do it …. You might as well try to argue with your dog.”

The evolutionary point of that is to make the muscles as hard as possible — to turn them into a kind of armor and limit bleeding in the event of injury. But that leaves us clumsy and helpless. Grossman says that everyone should practice dialing 911 for this very reason, because he has heard of too many situations where, in an emergency, people pick up the phone and cannot perform this most basic of functions.

“The Liberty City riot in Miami in 1980 was started by what the cops did at the end of a chase. They beat a guy to death. In 1986, they had another riot in Miami based on what cops did at the end of the chase. Three of the major race riots in this country over the past quarter century have been caused by what cops did at the end of a chase.” “When you get going at high speeds, especially through residential neighborhoods, that’s scary,” says Bob Martin, a former high-ranking LAPD officer. “Even if it is only fifty miles per hour. Your adrenaline and heart start pumping like crazy. It’s almost like a runner’s high. It’s a very euphoric kind of thing. You lose perspective. You get wrapped up in the chase. There’s that old saying — ‘a dog in the hunt doesn’t stop to scratch its fleas.’ If you’ve ever listened to a tape of an officer broadcasting in the midst of pursuit, you can hear it in the voice. They almost yell.

“When we make a split-second decision,” Payne says, “we are really vulnerable to being guided by our stereotypes and prejudices, even ones we may not necessarily endorse or believe.”

Why? Because when police officers are by themselves, they slow things down, and when they are with someone else, they speed things up. “All cops want two-man cars,” says de Becker. “You have a buddy, someone to talk to. But one-man cars get into less trouble because you reduce bravado.

‘Come here, I hear a noise,’ and as you come around the corner — boom! — you get shot. It’s not with a real gun. The round is a plastic marking capsule, but you feel it. And then you have to continue to function. Then we say, ‘You’ve got to do it again,’ and this time, we shoot you as you are coming into the house. By the fourth or fifth time you get shot in simulation, you’re okay.” De Becker does a similar exercise where his trainees are required to repeatedly confront a ferocious dog. “In the beginning, their heart rate is 175. They can’t see straight. Then the second or third time, it’s 120, and then it’s 110, and they can function.” That kind of training, conducted over and over again, in combination with real-world experience, fundamentally changes the way a police officer reacts to a violent encounter.

But one of the things that Van Riper taught me was that being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous course of education and experience.

When

“When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.”