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Enhanced threat detection in experienced riot police officers: Cognitive evidence from the face-in-the-crowd effect

Damjanovic, Ljubica
; 
Pinkham, Amy E.
; 
Clarke, Philip
; 
Phillips, Jeremy
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Affiliation
University of Chester; Southern Methodist University
EPub Date
Publication Date
2013-10-24
Submitted Date
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Psychology
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Abstract
We explored how varying levels of professional expertise in hostile crowd management could enhance threat detection capabilities as assessed by the face in the crowd paradigm. Trainee police officers and more experienced police officers specialized in, and having extensive experience with, riot control, were compared with participants with no experience in hostile crowd management on their search times and accuracy levels in detecting angry and happy face targets against a display of emotional and neutral dis- tractor faces. The experienced officers relative to their trainee counterparts and nonpolice controls showed enhanced detection for threatening faces in both types of display along with a greater degree of inhibitory control over angry face distractors. These findings help to reinforce the ecological validity of the face in the crowd paradigm and provide a new theoretical link for the role of individual differences on the attentional processing of socially relevant stimuli.
Citation
Damjanovic, L., Pinkham, A. E., Clarke, P., & Phillips, J. (2014). Enhanced threat detection in experienced riot police officers: Cognitive evidence from the face-in-the-crowd effect. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(5), 1004–1018. doi:10.1080/17470218.2013.839724
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Journal
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Research Unit
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10034/601440
DOI
10.1080/17470218.2013.839724
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PubMed Central ID
Type
Article
Language
en
Description
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology on 24/10/2013, available online: doi: 10.1080/17470218.2013.839724
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ISSN
EISSN
1747-0226
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Sponsors
Funded by the Small Research Grants Scheme [grant number SRG/SP-S] awarded to the first and last authors from the Research and Knowledge Transfer Office at the University of Chester, http://www.chester.ac.uk/business-support-services/rkt-office
Additional Links
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/17470218.2013.839724