Section: Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior

56) A police officer carries out hundreds of traffic stops every year. When his supervisor is reviewing the officer’s records for the past year, he notices that the officer is equally likely to stop people of various genders, ages, and races. However, he is significantly more likely to write tickets for middle-aged white males with dark hair and eyes. When confronted with this fact, the officer truthfully states that he has no idea why that is, and that it must simply be a coincidence. Unbeknownst to the officer, this behavior is tied to the fact that these men look like his father, with whom he had an abusive relationship as a child. What psychological framework would directly address the unconscious bias in his behavior?

1. Behaviorist
2. Psychoanalytic
3. Cognitive behavioral
4. Humanistic

Freud’s psychoanalytic framework deals with the interactions between the conscious and unconscious mind. Through talk therapy, free association, dream analysis, etc. patients are helped to see how their early childhood experiences shape their unconscious mind and how that then affects their adult lives. Thus choice B, psychoanalytic framework, would directly address this unconscious component of the officer’s behavior.