In this chapter I give an account of how our judgments of anger often play out in certain political instances. While contemporary philosophers of emotion have provided us with check box guides like “fittingness” and “size” for evaluating anger, I will argue that these guides do not by themselves help us escape the tendency to mark or unmark the boxes selectively, inconsistently, and erroneously. If anger—particularly anger in a political context—can provide information and spark positive change or political destruction, then (...) we have moral reasons to evaluate it properly. But can we? And what are the limitations and errors we often face when evaluating anger? -/- I will begin by laying out the ways in which we evaluate emotions and the moral and epistemic errors we attribute to the angry agent in judgments of disapproval. Then I attempt to answer the question: How do we judge political anger improperly? An improper evaluation, in my view, does not take into account relevant information that is needed to evaluate the anger. An overly generous, uninformed, biased, or selfish process of evaluation produces an improper evaluation. We see this occur when we immediately evaluate anger. I will also identify two social discursive practices of improper evaluation as well as the moral and epistemic errors committed when anger evaluators participate in these practices. (shrink)

Abstract: If anger is the emotion of injustice, and if most injustices have prominent epistemic dimensions, then where is the anger in epistemic injustice? Despite the question my task is not to account for the lack of attention to anger in epistemic injustice discussions. Instead, I argue that a particular texture of transformative anger – a knowing resistant anger – offers marginalized knowers a powerful resource for countering epistemic injustice. I begin by making visible the anger that saturates the silences (...) that epistemic injustices repeatedly manufacture and explain the obvious: silencing practices produce angry experiences. I focus on tone policing and tone vigilance to illustrate the relationship between silencing and angry knowledge management. Next, I use María Lugones’s pluralist account of anger to bring out the epistemic dimensions of knowing resistant anger in a way that also calls attention to their histories and felt textures. The final section draws on feminist scholarship about the transformative power of angry knowledge to suggest how it might serve as a resource for resisting epistemic injustice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Waiting for CriticismCary Howie (bio)1Critical AttentionIf it is often the case that so much of what we do, as writers in a certain idiom and profession, is to wait for criticism—in the form of peer reviews, book reviews, tenure reviews, and so many other kinds of review that one would not be wrong to characterize the profession as constitutively myopic, incapable of seeing anything without looking at it again—there (...) may nonetheless be another sense in which to understand this work of waiting, this waiting for work, that comes to be called, more often than not, critical. In other words, what would it mean to think criticism as a mode of taking (and making) time? What if one of the most crucial things we do when we read and write—but also, and still more importantly, when we look at or participate in the world—is to wait? This essay aims to give space, and time, to the question of critical attention, even as it will become clear that aiming is really the last thing anyone can be expected to do while they wait.What, then, could it mean to be critically attentive? That is to say, how might it be possible to give an account of those processes and states of suspension and expectation that lie within the moment or the sequence of critical attention? This question may seem less obvious—although there’s nothing wrong with the obvious—if we recall the resonance that attention has, in French or Italian for example, with certain words for waiting, with attente or attesa; if we take seriously how attending to something or someone may also be to wait for them. Critical attention, in this way, would put on hold—for a while if not necessarily forever—the evaluative and policing functions that so frequently attend what comes to be called critical; and it would do so precisely because it would take seriously what it means, and what it feels like, to attend.For Martin Seel, this is a specifically aesthetic question: “It is,” he says, near the beginning of his Aesthetics of Appearing, “a basic characteristic of all aesthetic relations that in them we take time for the moment” [20]. To take time for the moment, as Seel puts it, is also, I’d argue, to give time; to inscribe a kind of waiting at the heart of that moment, to respond, capaciously, to the objects or persons who are convoked there. This encounter—or what I’m tempted to call this convocation—is bound up, for Seel, with the complex presence of the encountered object: “Aesthetic perception,” he writes, “wants to take something in this light, in this movement, in this tone, in this roughness and coldness, in this weather and taste” [34]. This sequence—and notice how Seel returns to that deictic pronominal adjective “this” again and again—shows at least two things: the extent to which aesthetic perception’s mode of “taking” is no mere appropriation, given the drawn out, the literally distracted, effect of the object on the perceiver; and how this deictic disarray, caught up in “this” and “this” and “this” and “this,” is fed and fueled by a kind of wanting. Aesthetic perception, in other words, wants to take; but it ends up being taken. And when it is a matter of wanting—indeed, when it is a matter of being literally for the taking—the question and the encounter become more than just aesthetic. “Attention,” Simone Weil says, “consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, [End Page 43] and ready to be penetrated by the object.”1 To wait for the world, for Weil, is to prepare to be entered by that (or perhaps another) world. The attentive position or disposition is also an erotic one. This preparation—about which more will be said in the second part of this essay—takes place not as prophylaxis but as seduction.I’d like, accordingly, to ask how we, singularly and in common, may be taken or, in Weil’s words, penetrated by the objects and persons we attend to; and how they, more often than not... (shrink)

Anger gaslighting is behavior that tends to make someone doubt herself about her anger. In this paper, I analyze the case of anger gaslighting, using it as a paradigm case to argue that gaslighting can be an affective injustice (not only an epistemic one). Drawing on Marilyn Frye, I introduce the concept of “uptake” as a tool for identifying anger gaslighting behavior (persistent, pervasive uptake refusal for apt anger). But I also demonstrate the larger significance of uptake in the study (...) of affective injustice: just as the concept of credibility names the epistemic behavior whereby we take someone seriously as an epistemic being, the concept of uptake names the uniquely affective cooperative behavior whereby we take someone seriously as an affective being. I answer Miranda Fricker’s epistemic notion of a prejudicial credibility economy with the affective notion of prejudicial uptake economies: uptake, like credibility, can be produced in a deficit for one social group relative to a surplus for another. Deviating from the parallels with Fricker, for whom the injustice of epistemic injustice is due to prejudice in the motives or character of individuals, as well as from accounts that ground it in aptness or affective goods, I suggest that the injustice of anger gaslighting behavior can be located at the structural scale of power relationships between social groups, in the tradition of Iris Marion Young. Anger gaslighting behavior counts as unjust wherever it (re)produces prejudicial uptake economies. Adapting sociological concepts of feeling rules and the emotion work they demand, I introduce the concepts of “uptake rules” and “uptake work” to further enable analysis of uptake economies as affective social structures, and to suggest a site for resistant or reparative affective agency. (shrink)

Despite recommendations for a more reflexive and theoretical turn to interviewing, the analysis of language and speech still occupies center stage. This study attempts to advance our understanding of the interview by including the use of gesture, gaze, and other embodied resources in concert with speech. Looking at a focus group interview evaluating community policing policy, I show how inclusion of embodied conduct offers a more robust approach to co-constructed meaning in the interview than looking at language practices alone. More (...) explicitly, I investigate how an interviewee’s narrative includes gestures to solicit an affiliative stance from other interviewees and how ambiguous metacommunicative norms in the focus group influence the contributions of other police participants. I show how jurisdictional boundary and professional identity emerge in and through the integration of embodied conduct and sociocultural solidarity. (shrink)

When blame is understood to be emotion-based or affective, its emotional tone is standardly identified as one of anger. We argue that this conception of affective blame is overly restrictive. By attending to cases of blame that emerge against a background of a particular kind of hope invested in others, we identify a blaming response characterized not by anger but by sadness: reactive disappointment. We develop an account of reactive disappointment as affective blame, maintaining that while angry blame and (...) disappointed blame are both condemnatory responses, they have distinct evaluative foci and occupy different but complementary roles in our accountability practices. (shrink)

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that undermines a target’s confidence in their own cognitive faculties. Different forms of gaslighting can be distinguished according to whether they undermine a target’s confidence in their emotional reactions, perceptions, memory, or reasoning abilities. I focus on ‘emotional gaslighting’, which undermines a target’s confidence in their emotional reactions and corresponding evaluative judgments. While emotional gaslighting rarely occurs in isolation, it is often an important part of an overall gaslighting strategy. This is because emotions can (...) help us to understand the evaluative aspects of our situation and thus put us in a position to protest wrongs, which is a context in which gaslighting frequently occurs. I argue that affective empathy constitutes an important antidote to emotional gaslighting. Affective empathy can lead to endorsement of a target’s emotional reaction as appropriate to their situation and agreement with the corresponding evaluative judgment. When it leads to endorsement, affective empathy can counteract the effects of emotional gaslighting because it reassures a target in their ability to make evaluative judgments based on their emotional reactions. Because of its opposing effects, affective empathy with the victim thus constitutes an important intervention to emotional gaslighting on the part of third parties. (shrink)

Les Quatre Saisons de Vivaldi imitent-elles les bruits du monde? Peut-on penser l'histoire de la musique comme une libération progressive de la contrainte imitative, d'un ancrage naturel ou même naturaliste? Beethoven, Berlioz, Schumann, Wagner ou Debussy constituent-ils les étapes qui aboutissent à une musique pure? Le romantisme a fait de la musique le paradigme de l'Art en la concevant comme un langage délivré du poids du sens, un art abstrait » parce qu'autonome. Par la richesse savante des auteurs et des (...) œuvres examinés, par les repères chronologiques et théoriques mis en lumière, l'anthologie proposée ici est une véritable histoire de la pensée sonore et de la pratique musicale du XVIIIe siècle au début du XXe siècle. Le mélomane, le musicologue, comme l'historien ou le philosophe de l'art, pourront évaluer d'un œil neuf les liens de l'imitation et de l'expression, la dispute de l'abstraction et les rapports que les arts entretiennent à la signification. (shrink)

Researchers investigating gender and anger have consistently found that White women, but not White men, are evaluated unfavorably when experiencing anger in the workplace. Our project originally aimed to extend findings on White women’s, Black women’s, and White men’s workplace anger by examining whether evaluations are exacerbated or buffered by invalidating or affirming comments from others. In stark contrast to previous research on gender stereotyping and anger evaluations, however, results across four studies (N= 1,095) showed that both Black and White (...) women portrayed as experiencing anger in the workplace were evaluatedmore favorablythan White men doing so. After Study 1’s initial failure to conceptually replicate, we investigated whether perceivers’ evaluations of women’s workplace anger could have been affected by the contemporaneous cultural event of #MeToo. Supporting this possibility, we found evaluations were moderated by news engagement and beliefs that workplace opportunities are gendered. Additionally, we found invalidating comments rarely affected evaluations of a protagonist yet affirming comments tended to favorably affect evaluations. Overall, findings suggest the need for psychologists to consider the temporary, or perhaps lasting, effects of cultural events on research outcomes. (shrink)

Social justice demands that we attend carefully to the epistemic terrains we inhabit as well as to the epistemic resources we summon to make our lived experiences tangible to one another. Not all epistemic terrains are hospitable—colonial projects landscaped a good portion of our epistemic terrain long before present generations moved across it. There is no shared epistemicterra firma,no level epistemic common ground where knowers share credibility and where a diversity of hermeneutical resources play together happily. Knowers engage one another (...) on a politically saturated,unlevel knowing fieldwhere members of dominant groups work to forcibly maintain their epistemic home-terrain advantage. I use the metaphor of the unlevel knowing field to capture these oppressive epistemic structures. The unlevel knowing field is a hungry place where all knowledge that fails to nurture and sustain dominant ways knowing risks being dragged onto the dominator's epistemic home turf to be mined, coopted, consumed, or destroyed. Knowledge and willful ignorance circulate with equal vigor in this hungry world. From the standpoint of oppressed/resisting peoples, the unlevel knowing field is a minefield, an epistemic twilight zone, which must be traversed with considerable care and endless attention. The harms epistemic injustice produces are not disembodied harms. Repeated acts of injustice weather our bodies, dull our minds, weaken our hearts, and traumatize the spirit of our communities. They create public-health precarities and invite mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual illness into our being. Epistemic oppression is a cruel thief. It is disorienting, exhausting, and deadly. It triggers anger, anxiety, depression, and resistance. It steals our time, energy, and attention away from more beautiful things. (shrink)

Research has shown that negotiators sometimes misrepresent their emotions, and communicate a different emotion to opponents than they actually experience. Less is known about how people evaluate such negotiation tactics. Building on person perception literature, we investigated in three preregistered studies (N = 853) how participants evaluate negotiators who deceptively (vs. genuinely) communicate anger or happiness, on the dimensions of morality, sociability, and competence. Study 1 employed a buyer/seller setting, Studies 2 and 3 employed an Ultimatum Bargaining Game (UBG). In (...) all studies, participants learned a negotiator’s (the target’s) experienced and communicated emotions (anger or happiness), before evaluating the target. Across studies, targets were evaluated lower on morality if they deceptively (vs. genuinely) communicated anger or happiness. Notably, negotiators deceptively communicating anger were evaluated lower on morality and sociability but higher on competence than those deceptively communicating happiness. Studies 2 and 3 investigated behavioral consequences by examining whether in a future negotiation participants chose the target to be their opponent or representative. Results showed that for opponents, participants preferred targets who genuinely communicated happiness (vs. anger), which was associated with their perceived morality or sociability. For representatives, participants not only preferred targets who had genuinely communicated happiness (vs. anger), but also targets who had deceptively communicated anger (vs. happiness), which was associated with their perceived competence. These findings show that when evaluating deceptive (vs. genuine) communication strategies, people distinguish between morality, sociability, and competence. The importance they attach to these dimensions is also contingent on the behavioral decisions they face. (shrink)

This commentary expands the discussion of Cesario's Missing Forces Flaw by identifying and discussing variables that influence police shooting decisions but are often absent from bias-based research. Additionally, the closing identifies novel recommendations for future contextually related research.

Audio-visual material is extremely useful in the teaching of Business Ethics, yet no bibliography of the commercially available films and videotapes seems to be available. We have prepared a formal listing, complete with titles, descriptions, sources, prices and a brief evaluation, and have explained our selection and use of this material.

We examine when and how police officers may avoid costly errors under stress by leveraging theoretical and empirical work on the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat. According to the BPS model, in motivated performance contexts (e.g., test taking, athletics), the evaluation of situational and task demands in relation to one’s perceived resources available to cope with those demands engenders distinct patterns of peripheral physiological responding. Individuals experience more challenge-like states in which blood circulates more efficiently in the periphery (...) when they evaluate their coping resources as meeting or exceeding the task demands. Conversely, individuals experience more threat-like states in which blood circulates less efficiently in the periphery when they view the situation or task demands as exceeding their coping resources. Patterns of response consistent with challenge and threat states have been shown to predict important performance and decision-making outcomes in stressful contexts, and repeated experiences of threat-like patterns of physiological activity are thought to have detrimental effects on long-term cardiovascular health. To date, however, research has not used the biopsychosocial model to understand police decision-making under stress. Here, we review relevant empirical work from the perspective of the BPS model concerning how minority status and power can shape challenge and threat responding and contribute to decision making under stress. We then detail a research agenda aimed at improving the translational value of research being conducted within the BPS model for understanding complex performance and decision making in the real world, including among law enforcement personnel. (shrink)

As we wrestle with the role and limits of policing, a political philosopher who spent over two decades as a New York City police officer and Vermont chief of police presents a normative account of what it means to police a pluralist democracy. Invoking his vast experience, Brandon del Pozo argues that we all have the prerogative to use force to protect others, but police embody the government's unique duty to do so effectively and with restraint. He recasts order maintenance (...) as brokering and enforcing the fair terms of social cooperation in our public spaces, for the protection of minority interests, and for a society where diverse conceptions of the good can flourish. The reasons why we police, he says, must be ones that all citizens can evaluate as equals. His book explains the democratic commitments of policing, and lays the groundwork for meaningful police innovation and reform. (shrink)

Executive functions represent higher order top-down mechanisms regulating information processing. While suboptimal EF have been studied in various patient groups, their impact on successful behavior is still not well described. Previously, it has been suggested that design fluency —a test including several simultaneous EF components mainly related to fluency, cognitive flexibility, and creativity—predicts successful behavior in a quickly changing environment where fast and dynamic adaptions are required, such as ball sports. We hypothesized that similar behaviors are of importance in the (...) selection process of elite police force applicants. To test this hypothesis, we compared elite police force applicants with a control group of police officer trainees. Although both groups were better than the norm, the elite police force applicants had a significantly better performance in DF total correct when adjusting for sex and age [F = 18.98, p < 0.001]. To understand how this capacity was altered by stress and tiredness, we re-tested the elite police force applicants several days during an extreme field assessment lasting 10 days. The results suggested that there was a lower than expected improvement in DF total correct and a decline in the DF3-subtest that includes a larger component of cognitive flexibility than the other subtests. Although there was a positive correlation between the baseline session and the re-test in DF3 [r = 0.49, p = 0.001], the applicants having the highest scores in the baseline test also displayed the largest percentage decline in the re-test [r = −0.46, p = 0.003]. In conclusion, our result suggests that higher order EF that include cognitive flexibility and creativity are of importance in the application for becoming an elite police officer but relatively compromised in a stressful situation. Moreover, as the decline is different between the individuals, the results suggest that applicants should be tested during baseline conditions and during stressful conditions to describe their cognitive capacity fully. (shrink)

Rethinking the philosophical grounds of police power, Melayna Lamb argues that traditional ideas of sovereignty and the law need to be radically re-evaluated. In placing police at the centre of analysis this book demonstrates the manner in which police power exists in a complex and overlapping relationship with sovereignty and law in a form which is not reducible to implementation. In doing this it argues for the centrality of order in any consideration of police and challenging a common narrative whereby (...) a dynamic, interventionist sovereign power that follows from a belief of order as 'artificial' is replaced by a liberal, limited non-interventionist sovereign power that proceeds from a 'natural' order. Moving through thinkers such as Hobbes, Hegel and Adam Smith the book argues that police power is in fact 'an-archic' in form, in a manner that makes it impossible to hold accountable through the law. Lamb adopts an interdisciplinary approach that turns to philosophy to make sense of global events that see police power at their centre. This includes the history of police brutality in the US, the structural injustices made more apparent by COVID-19 and the growing calls to abolish the police. (shrink)

As the suspect interview is one of the key elements of a police investigation, it has received a great deal of merited attention from the scientific community. However, suspect interviews in child sexual abuse (CSA) investigations is an understudied research area. In the present mixed-methods study, we examine Swedish (n= 126) and Norwegian (n= 52) police interviewers' self-reported goals, tactics, and emotional experiences when conducting interviews with suspected CSA offenders. The quantitative analyses found associations between the interviewers' self-reported goals, tactics, (...) and emotions during these types of suspect interviews. Interviewers who reported experiencing more negative emotions were more likely to employ confrontational tactics. Specifically, anger was positively associated with the goal of obtaining a confession and with aggressive tactics like raising one's voice and emphasizing the seriousness of the crime. Frustration and disgust displayed similar patterns. Somewhat contrasting these quantitative results, the thematic analysis identified a strong consensus that emotions should not and do not affect the police interviewers' work. Furthermore, the police interviewers described a range of strategies for managing emotions during the interview and for processing their emotional reactions afterwards. The present findings highlight the relevance of emotional processes in CSA suspect interviews and provide an initial exploration of the potentially complex relationship between the goals, tactics, and emotional experiences of police interviewers who question CSA suspects. (shrink)

There is a growing sense that many liberal states are in the midst of a shift in legal and political norms—a shift that is happening slowly and for a variety of reasons relating to security. The internet and tech booms—paving the way for new forms of electronic surveillance—predated the 9/11 attacks by several years, while the police’s vast use of secret informants and deceptive operations began well before that. On the other hand, the recent uptick in reactionary movements—movements in which (...) the rule of law seems expendable—began many years after 9/11 and continues to this day. One way to describe this book is an examination of the moral limits on modern police practices that flow from the basic legal and political tenets of the liberal tradition. The central argument is that policing in liberal states is constrained by a liberal conception of persons coupled with particular rule of law principles. Part I consists of three chapters that constitute the book’s theoretical foundation, including an overview of the police’s law enforcement role in the liberal polity and a methodology for evaluating that role. Part II consists of three chapters that address applications of the theory, including the police’s use of informants, deceptive operations, and surveillance. The upshot is that policing in liberal societies has become illiberal in light of its response to both internal and external threats to security. The book provides an account of what it might mean to retrieve policing that is consistent with the basic tenets of liberalism and the limits imposed by those tenets. [This is an uncorrected draft of the book's preface and introduction, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.]. (shrink)

Police vehicle pursuits are inherently dangerous, rapidly evolving, and require police coordination to safely stop and arrest the suspect. Interviews of three US police officers were conducted and the descriptive phenomenological psychological method was used to analyze their naïve accounts of their lived-experiences. The psychological constituents of the experience of leading a successful chase and capture of a fleeing criminal found are: Alert to Possible Car Chase, Suspect Identified, Anxiety and Excitement About the Chase, Awareness of Primary Chase Role, Radio (...) Coordination with Others to Take Actions to Stop the Suspect, Ongoing Evaluation of Chase Situation and Persistence, Reading the Suspect’s Driving Behaviors, Car Chase Transition to a Coordinated Physical Capture, and Making Sense of the Experience Through Inquiry. Insights garnered from this study may be useful to police, policy makers, trainers and others interested in emergency and crisis decision-making. (shrink)

The emotion of anger, when chronic, is especially problematic. Frequent and intense experiences of anger predict quite a few adverse health outcomes and are especially implicated in cardiovascular...

The Roman Inquisition against Heretical Depravity, also known as the Holy Office, established in 1542, and the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books, announced officially in 1572, undertook to protect Italy from ideas and practices that menaced the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in this world and the salvation of its members in the next. This grandiose public-health program required trained and dedicated thought police to receive and evaluate alarms from the public and, when business was bad, to (...) seek out sources of infection themselves. The resultant records of accusations, investigations, trials, condemnations, expurgations, and exceptions, if extant in its entirety, would go far to fill.. (shrink)

Machine Learning has become a popular tool in a variety of applications in criminal justice, including sentencing and policing. Media has brought attention to the possibility of predictive policing systems causing disparate impacts and exacerbating social injustices. However, there is little academic research on the importance of fairness in machine learning applications in policing. Although prior research has shown that machine learning models can handle some tasks efficiently, they are susceptible to replicating systemic bias of previous human decision-makers. While there (...) is much research on fair machine learning in general, there is a need to investigate fair machine learning techniques as they pertain to the predictive policing. Therefore, we evaluate the existing publications in the field of fairness in machine learning and predictive policing to arrive at a set of standards for fair predictive policing. We also review the evaluations of ML applications in the area of criminal justice and potential techniques to improve these technologies going forward. We urge that the growing literature on fairness in ML be brought into conversation with the legal and social science concerns being raised about predictive policing. Lastly, in any area, including predictive policing, the pros and cons of the technology need to be evaluated holistically to determine whether and how the technology should be used in policing. (shrink)

Hot spot policing is an established concept that is proven to reduce crime. It is mostly done through foot patrol or car patrols. In the present study it is tested whether helicopters can produce a deterrent policing effect to reduce the amount of vehicle arsons in Sweden on larger hot areas. Sweden tends to have elevated levels of vehicle arsons in August, with about 20% of police districts responsible for 50% of the cases. The risk narrative revolves around youth congregating (...) in public places in deprived neighborhoods to generate disturbances, and the disruption of the risk narrative tested here is based on providing deterrence through helicopter police presence. During 6 weeks in August and September of 2019 police helicopters patrolled four police districts in Sweden to attempt to prevent vehicle arsons. Our data comprise police reports of vehicle arson, and time stamped satellite data over the location for police helicopters. The evaluation considers whether there is an intention to treat effect from this project, in addition to whether there is an effect of actual helicopter presence. The study finds no significant effect of intention to treat, nor of actual dosage. (shrink)

Police officers often encounter potentially dangerous situations in which they strongly rely on their ability to identify threats quickly and react accordingly. Previous studies have shown that practical experience and targeted training significantly improve threat detection time and decision-making performance in law enforcement situations. We applied 90-min traditional firearms training as a control condition and a specifically developed intervention training to police cadets. The intervention training contained theoretical and practical training on tactical gaze control, situational awareness, and visual attention, while (...) the control training focused on precision and speed. In a pre- and posttest, we measured decision-making performance as well as response preparation and execution to evaluate the training. Concerning cognitive performance training, the number of correct decisions increased from pre- to posttest. In shoot scenarios, correct decisions improved significantly more in the intervention group than in the control group. In don’t-shoot scenarios, there were no considerable differences. Concerning the training of response preparation and execution in shoot scenarios, the intervention group’s response time, but not hit time, decreased significantly from pre- to posttest. The control group was significantly faster than the intervention group, with their response and hit time remaining constant across pre- and posttest. Concerning the training of tactical action control, the intervention group performed significantly better than the control group. Moreover, the intervention group improved the tactical handling of muzzle position significantly. The results indicate that a single 90-min session of targeted gaze control and visual attention training improves decision-making performance, response time, and tactical handling of muzzle position in shoot scenarios. However, these faster response times do not necessarily translate to faster hit times – presumably due to the motor complexity of hitting an armed attacker with live ammunition. We conclude that theory-based training on tactical gaze control and visual attention has a higher impact on police officers’ decision-making performance than traditional firearms training. Therefore, we recommend law enforcement agencies include perception-based shoot/don’t-shoot exercises in training and regular tests for officers’ annual firearm requalification. (shrink)

BackgroundPublic Safety Personnel are routinely exposed to human suffering and need to make quick, morally challenging decisions. Such decisions can affect their psychological wellbeing. Participating in or observing an event or situation that conflicts with personal values can potentially lead to the development of moral injury. Common stressors associated with moral injury include betrayal, inability to prevent death or harm, and ethical dilemmas. Potentially psychologically traumatic event exposures and post-traumatic stress disorder can be comorbid with moral injury; however, moral injury (...) extends beyond fear to include spiritual, cognitive, emotional or existential struggles, which can produce feelings of severe shame, guilt, and anger.ObjectiveThis scoping review was designed to identify the extant empirical research regarding the construct of moral injury, its associated constructs, and how it relates to moral distress in firefighters, paramedics, and police officers.MethodsA systematic literature search of peer-reviewed research was conducted using databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, APA PsychInfo, CINHAL PLUS, Web of Science, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar. Included studies were selected based on the inclusion criteria before being manually extracted and independently screened by two reviewers.ResultsThe initial database search returned 777 articles, 506 of which remained after removal of duplicates. Following review of titles, abstracts, and full texts, 32 studies were included in the current review. Participants in the articles were primarily police officers, with fewer articles focusing on paramedics and firefighters. There were two studies that included mixed populations. Most studies were qualitative and focused on four topics: values, ethical decision-making, organizational betrayal, and spirituality.ConclusionPublic safety organizations appear to recognize the experience of moral distress or moral injury among public safety personnel that results from disconnects between personal core values, formal and informal organizational values, vocational duties, and expectations. Further research is needed to better understand moral distress or moral injury specific to public safety personnel and inform training and treatment in support of public safety personnel mental health. (shrink)

This article explores issues in the evaluation of research through an examination of the situation in the field of international development. It is increasingly recognized that traditional evaluation, which served largely a policing function, is not useful in assessing the impact of the development research process. It is argued that the role and perception of evaluation must change if it is to provide a reflection of the learning which takes place in research. The field of international development research provides a (...) rich ground in which to explore the argument. The field is subject to the difficulties of evaluating research and to the difficulties of evaluating development—in both cases, we are dealing with long time frames and the influence of many factors other than the activity itself. If evaluation is to serve a learning function, then the shift must be to a purpose ofempowerment. This article explores the changes which are implicit in such a shift through an examination of three key areas: changing perspectives on evaluation; changing patterns in development; and changing patterns in research for development. (shrink)

Analyzing the ancient Greek point of view concerning anger, shame and justice and a very modern one, one can see, that anger has a regulative function, but shame does as well. Anger puts the other in his place, thereby regulating hierarchies. Shame regulates the social relations of recognition. And both emotions also have an evaluative function, because anger evaluates a situation with regard to a humiliation; shame, with regard to a misdemeanor. In addition, attention has to be paid to the (...) correct molding of these emotions and the correct ways of using them in rearing to be good or just (i.e., in personality formation. (shrink)

This paper proposes and showcases a methodology to develop an observational behavior assessment instrument to assess psychological competencies of police officers. We outline a step-by-step methodology for police organizations to measure and evaluate behavior in a meaningful way to assess these competencies. We illustrate the proposed methodology with a practical example. We posit that direct behavioral observation can be key in measuring the expression of psychological competence in practice, and that psychological competence in practice is what police organizations should care (...) about. We hope this paper offers police organizations a methodology to perform scientifically informed observational behavior assessment of their police officers’ psychological competencies and inspires additional research efforts into this important area. (shrink)

As a special group of police officer, prison police have to endure more work stress and have significant work-family conflict, which may lead to more physical and mental health problems and need to be noticed by the society. The Work-Family Conflict Scale is a brief self-report scale that measures the conflict that an individual experiences between their work and family roles and the extent they interfere with one another. However, there is limited data on the scale’s psychometric properties. The aim (...) of this study was to examine the dimensionality and reliability of the Chinese version of the WFCS. The study sample was made up of a total of 717 Chinese prison police. The Rasch Rating Scale Model was used to determine the latent structure and estimate the quality of items and reliability of scale. The principle component analysis showed that the assumption of unidimensionality was fulfilled. The infit and outfit mean square statistics were of a reasonable range, and point-measure correlations indicted good model fit of each item. The item-person separation and reliability indices both met psychometric standards, illustrating good reliability. The person-item map indicated acceptable fit of items and persons, suggesting an alignment between persons and items. In addition, no evidence emerged of differential item functioning across different gender groups. Overall, the WFCS has good reliability and validity, and can be used to accurately evaluate the level of work-family conflict in Chinese prison police. (shrink)

Evaluative judgments imply positive or negative regard. But there are different ways in which something can be positive or negative. How do we tell them apart? According to Evaluative Sentimentalism, different evaluations (e.g., dangerousness vs. offensiveness) are grounded on different emotions (e.g., fear vs. anger). If this is the case, evaluation differentiation requires emotional awareness. Here, we test this hypothesis by looking at alexithymia, a deficit in emotional awareness consisting of problems identifying, describing, and thinking about emotions. The results of (...) Study 1 suggest that high alexithymia is not only related to problems distinguishing emotions, but also to problems distinguishing evaluations. Study 2 replicated this latter effect after controlling for individual differences in attentional impulsiveness and reflective reasoning, and found that reasoning makes an independent contribution to evaluation differentiation. These results suggest that emotional sensibilities play an irreducible role in evaluative judgment while affording a role for reasoning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.1 (2005) 119-135MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Evaluating Klossowski's Le BaphometIan JamesLiterature, under historical conditions which are not simply linguistic, has come to occupy a place which is always open to a kind of subversive juridicity. [...] This subversive juridicity supposes that self-identity is never assured or reassuring.—Jacques Derrida, "Préjugés: Devant la loi"The ControversyOn 14 June 1965, Roger Caillois resigned from the jury of the prestigious Prix des Critiques. (...) His resignation was provoked by the majority decision of the jury to award the critics' prize that year to Klossowski's final novel, Le Baphomet.1 Le Baphomet, a singular, Walter Scott-inspired tale about the Knights Templar, is set, initially at least, at the beginning of the fourteenth century just before the dissolution of the Templar Order at the behest of the then French king, Philippe Le Bel. After the historical prologue the action is transferred to a seemingly atemporal sphere, where the disembodied souls of the former Knights Templar await the moment when the Last Judgment will be pronounced and they will be reunited once more with their earthly bodies. The setting, tone, and style are at first gothic, but with the appearance of the disembodied spirit of Saint Teresa of Avila baroque elements begin to dominate and to mix with evocations of Masonic and esoteric ritual, Gnostic heresy, and theological but also philosophical discussion. These are accompanied by the appearance of Philippe le Bel himself and the figure of Friedrich Nietzsche, the "Antichrist," initially in the form of an anteater. With its unorthodox and often archaic vocabulary and syntax and, after the historical prologue, its discontinuous and fantastical narrative presentation, in which the boundaries between persons and identities appear permeable and insecure, Le Baphomet engages the reader in a textual experience that can be both baffling and obscure. It is also a work that can appear to lack any intellectual or formal coherence, one whose multiplicity and evident complexity may seem to promise rich possibilities of interpretation and literary value but whose narrative disorder and stylistic singularity can ultimately leave the reader frustrated with the sense of having been exposed to something of a literary mess.This, at least, was the view of Roger Caillois when he resigned in protest at the decision of the Prix des Critiques jury to confer its honor on Klossowski's novel. Caillois was himself a singular writer whose work can be situated at the intersection of a [End Page 119][Begin Page 120]number of disciplines, including mythology, sociology, aesthetics, biology, and literary criticism. He had known Klossowski since 1936, when they collaborated along with Georges Bataille and others in the antifascist avant-garde grouping Contre-Attaque and then later, again with Bataille, on the review Acéphale and in the Collège de sociologie.2 Defending his resignation from the Prix des Critiques jury a few days after the event, Caillois published an article in Le Monde in which he drew attention to what he saw as Le Baphomet's primary weakness: its poor formal organization and in particular what he perceived as its stylistic insufficiency and grammatical inaccuracy.3 Perhaps with the desire to avoid accusations of prudery or Puritanism he denied that the content of the work was the cause of his disapproval. The infatuation of certain Knights Templar with an adolescent page, Ogier de Beaséant, oblique references to possible acts of sodomy, together with the stylized description of scenes involving mutilation, penetration, and ejaculation are all elements of the narrative. On the content of the work Caillois writes: "Some may see in this a novelistic exposé of an original and subtle theology, others only mystico-pederastic rubbish. For a literary prize I hold solely to the literary value of a work." According to Caillois the content of such a work may be interesting or absurd depending on one's tastes but has nothing to do with its literary value. The invocation of literary value, here, necessarily implies a set of criteria for the judgment of the standing of a work... (shrink)

The four-factor structure and psychometric properties of the Polish students adaptation of the Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire were investigated. The exploratory factor analyses of the responses of 604 Polish participants generally supported the four-factor model. The factors included Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression, Anger and Hostility. The correlations between subscales, internal consistency and stability over time were evaluated and proved to be satisfactory. Apart from gender differences, 48 prison inmates and 48 students were interviewed to determine the validity of the (...) Aggression Questionnaire by testing for hypothesized differences between groups. Aggression Questionnaire showed cross-cultural differences in aggression between various nations. (shrink)

Professional work is currently based on explicit knowledge and evidence to a greater degree than in the past. Standardising professional services in this way requires repetitive scenarios and might be seen as a challenge to professional autonomy. In the context of policing, officers perform a range of familiar tasks, but they may also encounter novel challenges at any moment. Moreover, police tasks are not well-defined. Therefore, many missions require police officers to rely on common sense, tacit knowledge or gut feeling. (...) In this article, I argue that a values-based methodology may serve as a tool to help evaluate decisions in unfamiliar situations, to learn from experience, as well as be a quality control for established routines. _Keywords:_ ethics, policing, decision-making, values, experiential learning routines. (shrink)

The Black community has a long, well-documented history of being disproportionately harassed by law enforcement. While psychological research has studied this phenomenon, more in-depth research on Black men’s lived-experience of police harassment is needed. This qualitative study used descriptive phenomenology to investigate Black men’s experience of being harassed by law enforcement officers. An analysis of non-structured interviews with a sample of four participants revealed several essential aspects of this experience, including: anxiety in response to the initial awareness of law enforcement’s (...) presence, fear and confusion in response to abrupt escalation of aggression and hostility by officers, a sense of humiliation in response to degrading police tactics, anger over inability to pursue redress through the justice system, ongoing negative emotion, and a sense of having been psychologically harmed by the harassment. The implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

We conducted a narrative review of existing literature to identify the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary for officers who police in democratic societies to successfully manage potentially volatile police–public interactions. This review revealed 10 such KSAs that are frequently discussed in the literature. These KSAs include: knowledge of policies and laws; an understanding of mental health-related issues; an ability to interact effectively with, and show respect for, individuals from diverse community groups; awareness and management of stress effects; communication skills; decision-making (...) and problem-solving skills; perceptual skills; motor skills related to use-of-force; emotion and behavior regulation; and an ability to treat people in a procedurally just manner. Following our review, we conducted semi-structured interviews with researchers who specialize in police training and adult education, interactions with individuals in crisis, and racialized policing, as well as two police trainers with expertise in de-escalation and use-of-force training. These interviews confirmed the importance of the 10 KSAs and highlighted two additional KSAs that are likely to be critical: understanding the role of policing in a free and democratic society and tactical knowledge and skills. To ensure that police–public interactions are managed effectively, police trainers may want to focus on the development and evaluation of these KSAs—something that is not always done currently. (shrink)

This book explores the intersection of evaluation studies and care ethics in contemporary Western societies. In all societies and institutions, large and small, we find forces that can strengthen or destroy their fabric. One new regulation, law, or policy can impact the lives of many who find themselves in precarious positions. Think, for example, about health care reform and migrant policies in various Western countries and their effects on the everyday lives of millions of people. Policies, programs, and those who (...) execute them can threaten the daily routines of our lives, and we can respond by withdrawing or freezing, doing nothing and thinking it will pass. Or we can respond with resistance, anger, and sometimes much worse, like the shootings in several American cities. (shrink)

Fear, anger and hopelessness were the most frequent traumatic emotional responses in the general public during the first stage of outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in the Czech Republic (N = 1,000). The four most frequent categories of fear were determined: (a) fear of the negative impact on household finances, (b) fear of the negative impact on the household finances of significant others, (c) fear of the unavailability of health care, and (d) fear of an insufficient food supply. The pessimistic (...) communications used by the Czech mass media contributed to intensifying traumatic feelings, fears and psychological distress in the general public during the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic. The anxious emotional tone of the messages and the presentation of selectively chosen “bad ending stories” contributed to the psychological traumatization of the Czech population. This form of communication was motivated by an effort to reach the broadest audience possible. Older adults were the most affected part of the population because of their isolation and their very limited opportunity to share their worries and emotions with others. The communication used by the Czech mass media during the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic is a representative example of a traumatizing form of media communication during an epidemic. (shrink)

The risks taken into account in legal decision-mak- ing are, often, matters of life and death, but the way we think about risk is flawed. This is a problem. The dominant account of how emotions are involved in risky decision-making follows the standard probabilistic account of risk. If we entertain a modal ac- count of risk, however, this changes the way in which a host of legal actors—members of the jury, judges, defendants, lawyers, legislators, regulators, and police—ought to think about (...) how emotions impact risk evaluation. In what follows, I examine what taking a modal account of risk would mean for the way we under- stand emotions in the evaluation of legal risk: specifically, the risk of wrongful conviction. The present chapter draws on contemporary research in the epistemology of risk to examine how emotions can influence the evaluation of legal risk. I first review a distinction between two understandings of risk—the probabilistic account and the modal account—and demonstrate how the probabilistic account is in- complete. Next, I highlight how emotion can be seen to mediate decision-making in a series of empirical studies on the assessment of gruesome photographic evidence. I then analyse the standard accounts of how emotions play a role in risk assessment, which build upon a probabilistic account of risk. A modal account of risk and emotion is then offered, demonstrating the ways in which emotions can contribute to the evaluation of risk understood modally. Finally, I consider what legal practices and structures need to be refined or abandoned in order to facilitate the condi- tions most conducive to harnessing the evaluative power of emo- tions in legal decision-making. (shrink)

Given the ubiquity of the phenomena of anger and the roots of the emotion in the animal nature, it is not surprising that human languages have a rich vocabulary to express, report, describe, and evaluate the various manifestations and expressions of anger. Different cultures and different languages have evolved their distinctive orgetic vocabularies. This chapter is concerned with the family of concepts of anger, as expressed in English. The doctrine of the humours is reflected in the iconography of anger. Eichler's (...) engraved illustration for Ripa's iconological analysis of Cholericus depicts an angry youth – for the young, Ripa explained, like the choleric, lack judgement. The chapter discusses the physiognomy, behavioural manifestations, and verbal expressions of anger. So much for the connective analysis of anger. People's understanding of the place of anger in human life can be deepened and enriched by scrutiny of some of the ancient literary and philosophical descriptions and analyses of the phenomena. (shrink)

In this study, we assessed the influence of trait anger on decisions in risky situations evaluating how it might interact with some contextual factors. One hundred and fifty-eight participants completed the Trait Anger scale of STAXI-2 and an inventory consisting of a battery of hypothetical everyday decision-making scenarios, representative of three specific domains: financial, social and health. Participants were also asked to evaluate familiarity and salience for each scenario. This study provides evidence for a relationship between individual differences in the (...) tendency to feel anger and risky decisions in different domains and for mediation effects of familiarity and salience perception. The evaluation of the mechanisms with which dispositional anger is linked to risky decision-making could further contribute to an understanding of the role of personality traits in decision-making processes. (shrink)

In this work of normative political philosophy, I consider the ethical status of the South African government's responses to the Marikana massacre, where police shot and killed more than 30 striking miners, in light of a moral principle grounded on values associated with ubuntu. I argue that there are several respects in which the government's reactions have been unethical from an ubuntu-oriented perspective, and also make positive suggestions about what it instead should have been doing. Much of what I recommend (...) amounts to contending that the government should have taken resolute steps towards seeking reconciliation of a specific sort that I show follows from ubuntu interpreted as an ethical theory. (shrink)

This study examined the impact of perceived ethical culture of the firm and selected demographic variables on auditors’ ethical evaluation of, and intention to engage in, various time pressure-induced dysfunctional behaviours. Four audit cases and questionnaires were distributed to experienced pre-manager level auditors in Ireland and the U.S. The findings revealed that while perceived unethical pressure to engage in dysfunctional behaviours and unethical tone at the top were significant in forming an ethical evaluation, only perceived unethical pressure had an (...) impact on intention to engage in the behaviours. Country was also found to have a significant impact, with U.S. respondents reporting higher ethical evaluations and lower intentions to engage in unethical acts than Irish respondents. Implications of the findings and areas for future research are discussed. (shrink)

The objective of this study was to develop and determine the psychometric properties of an instrument designed to detect traits and behavior that are associated with predatory violent behavior, which is defined as a determined, planned, controlled, and proactive aggression. The sample was comprised of 546 students, mostly in their last year of high school or in their first year of college. The initial instrument had 78 items, ultimately resulting in 15 with good internal consistency (α =.825). Factor analysis showed (...) four factors: anger-in, appeal for weapons, suicidal ideation, and the tendency to take justice into one’s own hands. Said factors showed significant correlations of convergent validity. Data shown here allows inferring that the instrument is a novel and concise tool that evaluates and detects the potential of predatory violent behavior. (shrink)

Can a Christian experience virtuous anger? Anger is most commonly understood as a desire for vindicatio, which is the rectification of injustice. Recent discussions of anger in theological ethics have focused nearly exclusively on the possibility and parameters of Christian vindicatio. While this issue is crucial, attending to it alone neglects equally important questions concerning the moral evaluation of an emotion. Does it make sense to label an emotion such as anger praiseworthy or blameworthy? If so, how does one develop (...) virtuous anger? In this essay, I rely on Thomistic moral theology and contemporary neuropsychology not only to argue that anger is a moral phenomenon, but also to explore how one might progressively develop a disposition to experience good anger. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the work of Keith Lehrer, especially in his book Self-Trust has applications to feminist ethics; specifically care ethics, which has become the leading form of normative sentimentalist ethics. I extend Lehrer's ideas concerning reason and justification of belief beyond what he says by applying the notion of evaluation central to his account of acceptance to the need for evaluation of emotions. The inability to evaluate and attain justification of one's emotions is an epistemic failure (...) that leads one not to act on one's own aspirations and desires and treat those desires as if they did not exist. I argue that this is a common condition among women in patriarchal societies because patriarchy can cause women to believe that they are not worthy of their trust concerning what they accept, specifically acceptance of their anger over their own mistreatment. As a result, many women are unable to realize the self-protective role of their anger. All of this reflects a lack of what I shall call epistemic personhood, a concept based on Lehrer's theory concerning the keystone role of self-trust in the epistemic arch of rationality, justification and knowledge. Lastly, I use this concept of epistemic personhood to develop a care ethical account of self-respect that counters the Kantian account. (shrink)