Training with anxiety: short- and long-term effects on police officers’ shooting behavior under pressure

Abstract

We investigated short- and long-term effects of training with anxiety on police officers’ shooting behavior under pressure. Using a pretest, posttest, and retention test design, 27 police officers executed a shooting exercise against an opponent that did (high anxiety) or did not (low anxiety) shoot back using colored soap cartridges. During the training sessions, the experimental group practiced with anxiety and the control group practiced without anxiety. At the pretest, anxiety had a negative effect on shot accuracy for both groups. At the posttest, shot accuracy of the experimental group no longer deteriorated under anxiety, while shot accuracy of the control group was still equally affected. At the retention test, 4 months after training, positive results for the experimental group remained present, indicating that training with anxiety may have positive short- and long-term effects on police officers’ shot accuracy under pressure. Additional analyses showed that these effects are potentially related to changes in visual attention on task-relevant information.

Effects of anxiety on running with and without an aiming task

“…Despite the extra mental effort invested, dart performance deteriorated with anxiety. Similar results have been reported by Causer et al (2011) for skeet shooting, Nieuwenhuys and Oudejans (2011) for handgun shooting, and Wilson et al (2009aWilson et al ( , 2009b for basketball and penalty shooting, respectively. Causer et al (2011), for example, showed that with anxiety, shooters had less efficient gun motion and higher mental effort scores as well as decreased shooting performance.…”

“…Causer et al suggested that the drop in performance was caused by a decrease in goaldirected attention as participants' final fixation on the skeet became shorter with anxiety (cf. Nieuwenhuys & Oudejans, 2011;Wilson et al, 2009aWilson et al, , 2009b). In the current study, the available attentional resources might not have been sufficient to address attention towards worries, running, and dart throwing simultaneously, an interpretation that would again be in line with attentional control theory.…”

“…An important question that remains is if and how the negative effects of anxiety in those tasks may be countered. Recent studies by Oudejans and colleagues on aiming tasks without running (dart throwing, basketball free throw shooting, and handgun shooting) show that training with elevated levels of anxiety holds promise in this regard (Nieuwenhuys & Oudejans, 2011;Oudejans, 2008; Oudejans & Effects of anxiety on running and aiming Pijpers, 2009Pijpers, , 2010. Whether training with anxiety is also effective in preventing negative effects of anxiety in tasks that rely heavily on the aerobic system needs to be established in future research.…”

The thin blue line-up: Comparing eyewitness performance by police and civilians.

“…As far as we know, there is no research examining whether the threshold at which the average police officer experiences stress differs from that of the average civilian. However, correlational research does show that officers with additional martial arts training perform better in high-pressure arrest and self-defense situations (Renden, Landman, Savelsbergh, & Oudejans, 2015) and experimental research shows that training in high-stress situations can significantly improve shooting performance (Nieuwenhuys & Oudejans, 2011) and arrest and self-defense skills (Renden, Savelsbergh, & Oudejans, 2016). If training or experience in stressful situations helps police officers to stay calm, then that might benefit their subsequent memory performance.…”

Efeitos de estresse e treino na latência e acurácia de respostas motoras a estímulos visuais.

“…although not necessarily at the same levels as encountered in competition Nieuwenhuys, Oudejans, 2011;Oudejans, 2010;Oudejans, Pijpers, 2009). A second method seeks to increase automaticity of task performance as previously described (in Introduction, section 2.3.2).…”