How to Improve Decision Making and Acting Under Stress: The Effect of Training with and without Stress on Self-Defense Skills in Police Officers

Abstract

Pressure training (PT) has been shown to counteract performance declines in either a decision-making or a motor task under stress, when the practiced skills were tested in the same task and under the same stressors employed in training. This study tested whether PT also improved performance in a skill that requires both cognitive and motor adaptations to a changing environment. Using a pretest-intervention-posttest design, 84 police officers trained knife-defense skills in various exercises without (control group, n = 33) or with stressors (experimental group, n = 51). Officers’ performance was assessed on several variables in reality-based scenarios before and after training by three independent police trainers using video analyses. Although the experimental group reported more stress and mental effort during the training interventions than the control group, both the experimental and control group improved in all performance variables after training (all p < .05). Contrary to the existing literature, the additional use of simulated stressors did not improve the effectiveness of training. The divergent results may be explained by the type of skill practiced and the difference in training and testing conditions.