Testing the Efficacy of a 1-Day Police Decision-Making and Autonomic Modulation Intervention

Testing the Efficacy of a 1-Day Police Decision-Making and Autonomic Modulation Intervention

A Quasi-Random Pragmatic Controlled Trial

Paula Maria Di Nota,  Joseph Arpaia,  Evelyn Carol Boychuk,  Peter I. Collins, and Judith Pizarro Andersen | Frontiers in Psychology

This article evaluates police organisation training programs and interventions that have the goal of reducing the impact of occupational stressors and decreasing the instance of lethal force errors. One effective approach that promotes both performance and health includes training police officers’ awareness and adaptive management of internal physiological responses to stress; educating officers about stress physiology and adaptive regulation techniques. Utilising autonomic modulation (AM), such as heart rate and heart rate variability, to provide biofeedback during working hours or stressful critical incident scenarios have been particularly effective in improving lethal force errors as well as measures of physical and mental health.

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Testing the Efficacy of a 1-Day Police Decision-Making and Autonomic Modulation Intervention: A Quasi-Random Pragmatic Controlled Trial, Paula Maria Di Nota,  Joseph Arpaia,  Evelyn Carol Boychuk,  Peter I. Collins, and Judith Pizarro Andersen, Frontiers in Psychology, 2021