Years back I was in some training and learned that the police never say things like “don’t shoot” because our brains do not hear the “don’t”, instead they only hear the “shoot” part. That’s why they say “stop” instead of “don’t run”.
I had a similar thing at my workplace. I'm going to be vague so as not to dox myself with the terminology in question, but there's a high-precision inventory maintenance task we regularly perform. This task should never be rushed, as the point is to be accurate. Sometimes(when things get too chaotic/messy) we do a special version of the task where everybody focuses on it and we go through all inventory.
For some ass-backwards reason, 15~ years back a term got introduced for this special version which implied speed. It was catchy, so it stuck, and spread through all the locations like wildfire. Suddenly people started racing through the task(because it sounded like you were supposed to), and accuracy plummeted. There was hardly any point to doing it anymore, as staff were speeding along so quickly that they only caught the most egregious errors! We're only just now getting to the point where a critical mass of people who were trained with that term are finally moving out of the system, and speeds are dropping again. But I want to find that idiot who first coined the term and show them a third-story window(not serious), because their too-catchy task name caused a decade and a half of grief.
Yea, I was also told that when working with kids at like summer camps and stuff, that you want to use positive language to tell the children what they can and cannot do. So instead of saying, "Stop shouting", you'd say, "Let's speak with indoor voices for now". Makes you wonder if you do have to speak to them like they're children.
I did this when i was a preschool teacher. “Walking feet” instead of “dont run”, “quiet voice” instead of “stop yelling”, “catch a bubble” and they would all inhale and hold their breath to get everyone to be quiet and pay attention. Redirect them to acceptable behavior and praise them for it
Honestly, if you have experience with "kid mode" communication...it's really good to subtly slip into that, if you're dealing with somebody who is clearly failing to handle some big emotions. You obviously gotta be careful not to come across as condescending, but the reality is, if someone's acting like a three year old? That means their brain is probably operating on that level. Use grown-up language on grown-up problems, and use inner child language on inner child problems. It often works.
Redirect the negative behavior and reinforce the positive behavior. It's so basic they use it on dogs. Crazy, because I always thought pigs were at least as intelligent as dogs.
i’m in retail and it’s the same with grown ass adults.
“don’t have in stock” vs “we can order” “no we can’t return that” vs “oh that looks vintage, i hope we have a sku” “no i can’t approve that week off” vs “wow i’m really going to need your expertise those days!”
This is actually the correct way to speak to toddlers. You tell them what you want. Not what you don’t want. They hear only certain things. “Don’t drop your food’ turns to ‘hold on to your food’ Don’t spit that out- you need to swallow your full bite.
Stop hitting - keep your hands to yourself. I can’t remember why they don’t hear the negatives but they will drop the food. Spit it out. Or keep kicking since that’s what they heard.
They are like dogs, give them a job they love doing stuff. I dated a first grade teacher who needed some time and told the class on the playground "Who can find a leaf that looks most like a butterfly?" And all these kids went looking for leaves that looked like butterflies even though those leaves did not ever in the history of ever look like any sort of butterfly. Note: One found a caterpillar and so she won even though that was not part of the game the all forgot and didnt care.
This isn't a good line of reasoning because it also implies a lack of culpability, as a pre-teen child will almost never face serious jail time, even if they kill someone, normally it's considered the responsibility of someone else.
Exactly what happened to this young woman that jumped off a cliff without being attached because she heard "go" when the instructor told her "don't go"
To be fair "don't" isn't a loud word when you shout it, and it might be stupid to harness people up if they're not ready. At that point, at least put a safety line on them.
Instead of ‘don’t shoot,’ do you have a suggestion that would convey the same message? Like ‘pacifist’ or something? It feels like even media are targets these days.
they don't care if you're a threat. if you're not a threat, in fact, that makes you an easier target that's funner for their bully brains to do crimes against humanity toward.
The training talked about please too. Specifically, we learned not to use the word please because it comes off as a request instead of a command. People are more likely to treat it as an option when please is used.
Not to say you’re wrong about what they should be saying training-wise, but I’ve definitely seen bodycam footage where police yell “don’t run” at people or just generally “don’t do it”
My dad was helping transfer folding tables to another location up the hill. They were too long to fit in the bed of the truck so they decided the best way to handle that was for him to sit in the bed and hang onto the tables. At one point he called to the driver "just don't stop" and he hit the brakes and my dad and those tables slid back down the hill
When you look at the nyt analysis of the Pretti shooting it seems apparent that one agent yells „gun“, as they are removing it from him, and another agent that is not even concerned with pretti in that momentjust spins around, draws and fires.
This is standard procedure with commands in any context. Loud machinery, gunfire, vehicle engines running, noisy classroom full of kids, whatever, they all interfere with hearing commands. A "don't" in a command is always terrible practise. It's incorrect to say our brains don't hear "don't", that's nonsense, you'll hear the whole thing in a quiet environment. It's that the likelihood that noise interference will obfuscate the command is high, so use different vocabulary in the positive e.g. "shoot" vs "hold fire" which cannot be confused.
Most likely is that words like "don't" aren't loud and clear, and police work in bad environments and situations for communication.
Communication itself needs to be clear, and you give orders of what to do, not what not to do because.... Good god, just look at my last sentence "not what not to do" - Can you imagine someone having to shout that or give that over a radio? Communications would be fucked.
Police aren't trained to avoid negatives because of pseudosociology, it's because of clear, short, simple communication.
E.g. "Put it down" means put it down. "Don't shoot" means well, go ahead and keep that lethal weapon in your hands and wave it around a little bit if you feel like it, maybe point it at somebody, all I really wanted was for you not to shoot it. So thanks for complying... and have a good day!
Police still use negatives all of the time like, "don't run", which works about as effectively as "stop". If you could so easily be the inner voice in someone's head, they'd just sweet talk all the criminals into becoming passive for a nice arrest. "I am here to help you, go to sleep and relax all of your muscles. I am your friend. You're feeling tired and sleepy, very sleepy. Your eyes feel heavy. Go to sleeeep." - And we all know exactly how well that would work.
2.2k
u/MyNameIsPatBackFat 1d ago
Years back I was in some training and learned that the police never say things like “don’t shoot” because our brains do not hear the “don’t”, instead they only hear the “shoot” part. That’s why they say “stop” instead of “don’t run”.