Practitioners’ Inclination to Rely on Experience

Tal Jonathan-Zamir; David Weisburd

doi:10.1017/9781108885737.014

10 - Practitioners’ Inclination to Rely on Experience

What Does This Mean for Evidence-Based Policing?

from Part IV - Challenges to the Implementation of Evidence-Based Policing

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2023

Tal Jonathan-Zamir and

Edited by

Gali Perry and

David Weisburd: Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem and George Mason University, Virginia
Tal Jonathan-Zamir: Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Gali Perry: Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Badi Hasisi: Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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Summary

For the last two decades, proponents of evidence-based policing (EBP) have worked diligently to convince police of the benefits of science and make research evidence clear, accessible, and relevant to real-world policing. In doing so, they were aware of a major obstacle: police officers tend to rely on experience, not science, when making decisions. However, policing scholars have paid little attention to the generality of this phenomenon or to the psychological mechanisms at its root. The implications for the future of EBP have also rarely been discussed. In this chapter we review the psychological processes behind practitioners’ preference for experience over science as the basis for decision-making, and empirical studies demonstrating this tendency in policing. Given this literature, we argue that attempts to rationally convince police to abandon their intuitive reliance on experience are unlikely to be successful. We speculate on the implications for the future implementation of EBP, and raise two main suggestions: 1) incorporate scientifically sound practices into police officers’ experience, particularly through training; 2) treat both science and experience as necessary components in successful policing, and begin investigating what their exact roles should be.

Keywords

Evidence-Based Policing Matrix Police officers: decision-making, intuition professional/personal experience training Receptivity to research studies Science-experience paradox Thinking: fast/system I, slow/system II

Type: Chapter
Information: The Future of Evidence-Based Policing , pp. 193 - 210

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885737.014 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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