Thursday, May 17, 2018

Try to See Things my Way? The Role of Perspective Taking in Eliciting Information



The following is an excerpt from the latest CREST Security Review (Issue 8). You'll see how from the snippet below, the material is directly applicable to those working in crisis situations be it as as law enforcement negotiator, crisis intervention specialist, crisis counselor or another type of role. 

PERSPECTIVE-TAKING AND ACHIEVING COOPERATION 
Research suggests that we are overly pessimistic about our ability to get others to cooperate with us. In reality, it can be difficult for someone to avoid cooperating with a reasonable request because of the social factors involved...
The task of forming an accurate model of another person’s perspective is a difficult one, involving a cognitively demanding and time consuming process of anchoring and adjustment. This begins with anchoring our assumptions in our own understanding and then adjusting these through a series of cognitive leaps, forming and testing hypotheses until we reach what we consider to be a plausible approximation of the other person’s perspective. 

Read more from Wayne Thomas and Lorraine Hope [HERE].