The Emotional Age Estimate—a Supplement to the Indirect Assessment of the Subject of a Crisis Negotiations Team Activation

Abstract

Three challenges facing police psychologists when performing an indirect assessment of an armed and barricaded subject of a Crisis Negotiation Team activation are (1) the limited amount of information available, (2) the typically very short amount of time in which to perform the assessment, and (3) the need to simultaneously consider the professional ethical issues inherent in the situation. Sharing some of the burden with well-trained crisis negotiators equipped with a non-clinical, uncomplicated system for generating useful hypotheses regarding a subject’s emotional state during the activation and the subject’s emotional capacity when not in crisis can supplement and contribute meaningfully to the assessment. The Emotional Age Estimate responds to the challenges of limited information and time. It aims at contributing a useful supplement to the process of generating an indirect assessment of the subject. The first step is conceptualizing the subject’s current and ongoing behavior as unremarkable for someone with the emotional development of a 2-, 4-, or 6-year-old. The second step is conceptualizing the subject’s behavior on a typical day as demonstrating the capacity of someone with the emotional development of at least a 4-, 15-, or 21-year-old (based on reports by family members, friends, and associates) and other sources of information (criminal history, mental health history, etc.).