I have to admit that, prior to the shooting of Eric Courtney Harris, I had never heard of the psychological theory of capture, or capture error, or slip-and-capture error, as I have found it variously referred to. But, my skepticism aroused, I looked it up to see if it was an actual thing. Apparently it is. But I am very surprised to hear that it is being used to defend Deputy Bates by Sgt. Jim Clark of the Tulsa Police Department, who had been brought in to review the case. Clark finds the deputy’s behavior completely excusable, and claims the deputy was a “victim” of slip and capture. But I have a problem with this defense, as I explain below the fold, and I was irritated enough about it to write my first diary.
First a little psychology background: A skill-based behavior is a highly practiced activity, performed routinely, with little conscious effort. So you drive to work every day and it becomes so routine that sometimes when you get there you can’t remember anything about the drive. Not that that has ever happened to me.
A “slip” is a lapse in skill-based behavior that occurs especially when attention is diverted, for example, by a situation of high emotion. So you’re driving to the store when this awesome song that you love from 20 years ago comes on the radio and the next thing you know the song is over and you’re half-way to work. Not that that has ever happened to me.
So “slip” likes to hang with “capture” and capture follows slip all over the place. Capture makes you do the thing you do automatically, instead of the similar thing you intended to do. In more academic language, capture error is a type of slip where a more frequent and more practiced behavior takes place, when a similar, but less familiar action was intended.
So Deputy Bates is the victim of slip and capture. So instead of tasing Eric Courtney Harris, in the heat of the moment, without thinking, he didn’t do the less familiar thing, the taser thing; he did the automatic thing, the thing for which his training had so well prepared him, the more frequent and more practiced thing that was so familiar he could do it on autopilot:
He unholstered his weapon and discharged it point blank into the back of a prone, subdued, unarmed citizen.
“I’m sorry your honor, but in my defense I must say I was trained to do that.”