Social Learning (Bandura/Maslow) Theory in Police Training

Author:Odhinn Kohout

Albert Bandura referred to the nature of cause and effect in human interaction as reciprocal determinism. A person's behaviour while under arrest can vary from complete compliance to extreme violence. This behaviour in turn can dictate the actions/responses of the Officer.

There is a strong parallel between Maslow and Bandura's theories in relation to the four stages of learning. Bandura's first step is attention. If the student is not paying attention then he/she will not be able to either reproduce the material or remember it. In the first stage of competence (generally recognized as created by Maslow), unconscious competence is founded on the principal that the student has paid attention and practiced the learned technique so that it can be called upon without thinking about it IE: “the skill of tying your shoe.”

In the second stage called retention, Bandura points out that the ability to recall a learned skill is integral to the learning process as a whole. Without this, the student even if he could repeat the skill-set after seeing it performed in conjunction with an explanation would lack the ability to use it when required. Unconscious incompetence from Maslow is verbatim. The student in fact does not know what he does not know. The outcome is inevitably the same; by not having the knowledge at his/her finger-tips the student cannot draw upon mentally stored reference material to solve a problem.

Reproduction is the natural outcome of the first two stages being in sync. Bandura states that once proper attention and retention of the materials has been learned by the student, the skill-set can be and should be reproduced. This can be looked at from a Police training perspective as creating muscle memory through repetition. Conscious competence from Maslow also requires attention and retention to properly work.

If the student cannot use his cognitive mind to perform the desired task when required then he/she infect consciously incompetent. The unification principle which ties both Bandura and Maslow together is motivation. Without this, the structure will collapse. In Military/Police training lack of motivation in learning could have catastrophic outcomes in reality. Lack of motivation has the same effect on the four stages of competence as well. If the student does not either believe in the material nor have any interest in learning it, both the unconscious and conscious processes are deeply affected. In a situation where the skill-set needed by the student is a combative technique (the well documented) response of the student will be to freeze.