Do they Aggress Earlier? Investigating the Effects of Ego Depletion on Police Officers’ Use of Force Behavior

Abstract

Endowed with the state monopoly on the legitimate use of even potentially lethal force, it is intolerable for police officers to act outside the governing legal and ethical framework. At the same time, officers are expected to exert self-control and refrain from excessive use of force when they deal with provocative and perilous situations. This study sought to investigate corresponding selfcontrol and self-control failures through the role of ego depletion in the decision to use force by police officers. Two experiments were conducted using officers from a German State Police force, requiring the participants to use force against a provocative role player. Experiment 1 found that the ego depletion measure failed and there were no differences between the groups. Using a different ego depletion method, experiment 2 found that ego-depleted participants aggressed earlier than controls. These results indicate that circumstances that produce ego depletion could lead to the inappropriate use of force through reducing self-control. This has major implications for the police use of force and how we understand police officers' decision-making in response to provocation.

Psychological and sociological factors influencing police officers' decisions to use force: A systematic literature review

“…However, it may not always be possible to observe officers' characteristics (Ericson, 1981). For example, there has been no research on this issue in France, and we found only one article from Belgium (Verhage et al, 2018), one from Netherlands (Renden et al, 2017) and two from Germany (Staller et al, 2018(Staller et al, , 2019.…”

“…Self-control has been observed to play a key role. Staller et al (2018 and2019) found that when police officers' self-regulation resources are depleted, impairing their self-control, they show less patience and react earlier to provocative resistance by using force. This phenomenon was defined by Baumeister (1994 and1998) as "ego depletion", based on the theories of Freud (1961aFreud ( / 1923Freud ( and 1961bFreud ( / 1933, and it can be seen to affect police officers' decisions to use force.…”

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities for Managing Potentially Volatile Police–Public Interactions: A Narrative Review

“…Furthermore, self-control has been associated with enhanced decision-making in both simulated and real-world settings within policing (e.g., Brown and Daus, 2015 ; Donner et al, 2017 ) and non-policing contexts ( de Ridder et al, 2012 ). For example, in one study, police who completed a task that was previously shown to reduce one’s self-control (i.e., the cold pressor task; Hagger et al, 2010 ) were faster to initiate aggressive action toward a role player ( Staller et al, 2018 ). Some researchers have also created proxies for self-control using background information on police officers (e.g., whether the officer had ever had their driver’s license suspended) to examine the relationship between complaints against officers and the use of force ( Donner and Jennings, 2014 ; Donner et al, 2017 ).…”

Addressing the inappropriate use of force by police in the United States and beyond: A behavioral and social science perspective

“…Police use of force in general, and inappropriate use of force in particular, rarely have been subject to detailed behavioral or social science inquiry as unique behaviors separate from the broader set of police practices (Goff & Kahn, 2012), although Terrill and colleagues have led the way with several studies (e.g., Paoline & Terrill, 2007;Terrill & Reisig, 2003;Terrill et al, 2018). Nevertheless, the extant research suggests that officers are likely subject to many of the same personal and social-contextual influences in their decisions to apply lethal and nonlethal force, appropriately or inappropriately, as others might be when engaging in aggression and violence, such as anger and related emotional distress (Kleider et al, 2010), diminished selfcontrol (Staller et al, 2017, being "triggered" or primed by carrying weapons (Ariel et al, 2019), and a lack of sensitivity to violence (Kirwil, 2015). Similarly, in contrast to the broad behavioral and social science literature on racial biases and disparities, and even the disproportionate involvement of individuals of color in the justice system, there are relatively few studies on the disproportionate inappropriate use of force toward people of color and other minoritized groups.…”

“…Studies on a variety of personal or dispositional factors related to the inappropriate use of force by police suggest a number of possibilities to account for this finding. For example, ego depletion-a situational lack of self-control in the face of stress or provocation-has been shown to result in earlier use of force in the context of provocative citizen resistance (Staller et al, 2017. Kleider et al (2010) reported that officers with poorer working memory were more likely to shoot unarmed targets in an experimental task when they experienced high levels of negative affect.…”