Wow; baseballguy2001 resurrected and old Topic, didn't he?mr.72 wrote:I bet that on reflex, most of us fall into one of two clear categories:
1. draw and fire, and keep firing until the BG is down, then call 911 and look and see whether we hit the good guy
- or -
2. duck and hide, hope the bad guy goes away before he finds you, and pray that you don't have to actually use the gun you are carrying. wait to call 911 until there is no threat or maybe not at all because you don't want the cops to interview you after you peed your pants.
Something tells me all of this reasoned response stuff is just fluff. We are most likely going to react on instinct and reflex. Either we are aggressive or passive. We either advance or retreat. We're an alpha or a beta. I don't believe in the gray areas. Our involvement in this situation is over in 5 seconds. Either we fired, or we hid.
mr.72, the problem I have with your appraisal is that, by definition, "reflex" is "an involuntary response to stimulus." You can't control it.
And the last thing you want to be in a violent confrontation is uncontrolled.
What you are going to do is revert to your lowest-common-denominator level of training. If that is none or little, then you're correct: you will react instinctively.mr.72 wrote:Something tells me all of this reasoned response stuff is just fluff. We are most likely going to react on instinct and reflex.
Are you familiar with Boyd's OODA Loop? A major military tool that also translates to business, Boyd's concept is, essentially, that the key to victory is the ability to create situations where you can make appropriate decisions faster than your adversary.
Observe -> Orient -> Decide -> Act.
You've had Psychology 101. The very basic platform is Stimulus -> Integration -> Response. You perceive a stimulus, your brain does an amazing job to evaluate that stimulus in microseconds, and an activity is initiated.
In an emergency situation, that Stimulus phase may be a startle pattern. Everyone reacts the same to these: physiological reflex.
If you're in a small room and somebody lobs in a flash-bang, you will duck your head, scrunch your shoulders, and raise your open hands in front of your head.
You can't do anything to modify your reflexive responses.
But you can modify your trained responses. To do so, you need to TRAIN.
If I were an innocent bystander in that Stop-and-Rob, I'd prefer to bet my life on your training rather than your instincts.