Psychology, Violence, and the Transfer of Learning

Source: Matthew Sharps

The infamous North Hollywood Shootout took place in 1997. Two bank robbers confronted Los Angeles police officers, who were initially armed only with handguns. The robbers, wearing homemade body armor, were far better armed, carrying rifles. Although ultimately defeated, the robbers inflicted substantial human cost. Several officers and civilians were wounded. Some were maimed for life.

If the police had had rifles, they could have equaled that firepower. Law enforcement experts suggest that this would have resulted in fewer casualties among citizen bystanders and police officers alike (Sharps, 2022).

Many types of weapons are inappropriate for law enforcement. Paradoxically, however, if perpetrators have weapons far superior to those of the police, many more people can be killed or maimed. The police need, at least, to match the firepower of their assailants.

Why didn’t the Los Angeles officers at the time have rifles? Why weren’t they properly armed for the modern crime environment?

The answer is psychological.

Battles of the past involved horses and swords; battles of the present involve high-tech weaponry. However, if we look past the technological issues, the basic principles of psychology are remarkably similar in the past and present. We can learn a great deal by looking at the high-stress psychology of the past (Sharps, 2022).

This is where the strategic bombing comes in.

In 1942, the United States set a heavy bomber force, based in England, against the German Luftwaffe. The British had already done the same; and in daylight raids, British bombers had been slaughtered, because there were as yet no fighter aircraft able to escort the bombers on the full round trip to Nazi targets. The British changed their tactics. They painted their bombers black on the bottom and attacked exclusively at night. They explained these facts to the American air commanders on arrival.

The American commanders completely ignored them, failing in the transfer of learning from the British situation to their own.

Committed to their principle of “daylight precision bombing,” American commanders sent bombers repeatedly against the Nazis, in broad daylight, with exactly the results you’d expect. Losses were insupportable; on one mission over Holland, bombers suffered 100 percent losses (LeMay, 1965).

Why was the obvious need for fighter escorts ignored? Because “the air force concluded that new bombers… could operate over enemy territory without fighter escort” (Correll, 2008). There was significant tension between fighter and bomber generals at the time (see Sharps, 2022). The bomber generals sent the bombers, without fighter escorts, to the slaughter.

How does this relate to the North Hollywood Shootout? The bomber generals had conceived a cognitive framework, born up by the principle of cognitive balance in which we tend to coalesce more strongly with our allies against any opposition, that bombers didn’t need the fighter escorts, which were essential for their success against the Nazis. (When they finally did get those escorts, especially P-51 fighter aircraft, the defeat of the Luftwaffe was assured). Yet the American bomber generals simply ignored all the relevant information from the disastrous British experience.

Why?

Bransford and Johnson (1973) demonstrated the importance of prior frameworks for understanding. If the prior cognitive framework is appropriate for a new situation, success is relatively assured. If such a framework is absent, or inappropriate, disaster may result.

The original prior cognitive framework for American air commanders was based on a variety of social and professional considerations (Correll, 2008) that essentially negated the concept of the need for fighter escorts. Until this thinking was reversed by a tremendous loss of American aircraft, a great many American airmen were needlessly slaughtered.

This returns us to the North Hollywood Shootout.

Los Angeles city officials were in the grip of powerful prior cognitive frameworks, acquired in many meetings with community leaders. As a result, they held that rifles were unnecessary for law enforcement agencies. Even in the presence of clear information on the need for heavier weaponry in the new policing environments of the time, these prior frameworks prevailed.

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American air officers were in the grip of powerful prior cognitive frameworks, acquired in many meetings with other bomber (as opposed to fighter) commanders. As a result, they held that fighter escorts were unnecessary for bomber forces. Even in the presence of clear information on the need for fighter escorts in the new combat environments of the time, these prior frameworks prevailed.

Despite the contextual differences between the two situations, nearly identical failure of the transfer of learning was observed in both cases.

Technology and contexts change, but roughly similar human brains confront these technologies and contexts in roughly similar ways over time; this fact gives us a strong edge for predicting the forensic future. Looking at critical situations of the past, from a psychological more than a technological perspective, gives us the ability, at least in broad strokes, to anticipate potential consequences. There is a great need for the transfer of learning from situation to situation, sometimes with little reference to technology but with absolute reference to the psychological principles involved. If the Los Angeles authorities in 1997 had considered the early air campaigns of World War II and had substituted “rifle” for “fighter escort,” the North Hollywood Shootout might have resulted in far fewer casualties.

Law enforcement weapon policy should operate to resolve tactical interactions quickly, with the fewest casualties possible. This critically humane goal may require weapons that, again paradoxically, may initially appear more threatening. This can include patrol rifles.

But reasoned policy requires awareness of tactical realities and of the psychology that underlies them. In 2009, more than a decade after the debacle of the North Hollywood Shootout, the mayor of Boston refused the request of the Boston police department for patrol rifles, apparently on the advice of community leaders.

The tragic example of the North Hollywood Shootout, let alone the psychologically isomorphic lessons of the air war against the Nazis, were nowhere in evidence.