The Luxurious Illusion of Certainty

The Luxurious Illusion of Certainty

Perception, Hindsight, and Decision-Making at the Speed of Life

Brian D. Baxter

When the Texas Court of Appeals overturned the deadly conduct conviction of former Austin Police Officer Christopher Taylor, many observers focused on the legal outcome. Some viewed the decision as a vindication of the officers’ actions, while others questioned whether alternative tactics might have produced a different result. Yet beneath the legal arguments lies a more fundamental question that extends far beyond any single case.

How should we evaluate decisions made during rapidly unfolding, life-threatening encounters when the people making those decisions do not have the luxury of time?

The answer matters because officers do not make decisions under courtroom conditions. They do not have access to pause buttons, slow-motion, repeated viewings, expert testimony, or unlimited opportunities for reflection. They make decisions in real time, under conditions of uncertainty, while confronting threats that may be evolving faster than the human brain can fully process.

The Taylor case provides a compelling example. According to court records, officers responded to a report of a man armed with a knife. As the elevator doors opened, the officers found themselves confined within the elevator car while facing an armed individual at close range. The appellate court later emphasized several critical facts: the subject was holding a knife, he turned toward the officers, he moved in their direction, and the officers had no meaningful avenue of retreat or ability to create distance.¹

These facts are important, not because they determine whether every observer will agree with the officers’ actions, but because they illustrate the realities of human performance under severe time pressure. The central issue is not whether a different decision can be imagined after the fact. The central issue is what kinds of decisions human beings can reasonably be expected to make during events that unfold in fractions of a second.

The Time Problem

Most discussions of police use of force begin with tactics. Human performance research suggests they should begin with time. Every available option requires time to perceive, evaluate, select, and execute. Options that appear to have been available in hindsight may not have been available in real time.

That is where the distance evidence becomes important. Public reporting and trial testimony placed DeSilva within only a few feet of the officers when the decision to shoot was made.² While exact measurements vary across accounts, the available evidence suggests distances of five to five and one half feet.

Time compression occurs when events unfold so rapidly that multiple cognitive and behavioral tasks must be completed within a shrinking response window. As threats move closer and conditions become more dynamic, officers are required to perceive, recognize, decide, and perform in progressively less time. The result is not simply stress, it is a measurable reduction in the number of options meaningfully available to the decision-maker.

Research examining human movement during rapidly unfolding critical incidents found that motivated subjects covered just over seven feet in an average of 0.65 seconds using only two steps.³ Keep in mind, that’s almost two feet farther than the distance DeSilva would have to cover. Also important, while averages do not predict the performance of any particular individual, they provide a useful illustration of how rapidly a determined person can move over short distances.

Those findings become particularly relevant when considered alongside research examining officer movement during simulated ambush scenarios. Officers holding a handgun in a ready position required an average of 0.83 seconds to raise the firearm and fire one aimed shot after receiving an auditory stimulus.⁴ Importantly, this was a relatively simple stimulus-response task. The officers did not need to determine whether a threat existed, interpret ambiguous behavior, assess intent, identify a pattern, or select a response that matched the pattern. Those tasks had effectively been completed for them by the design of the experiment.

The comparison is instructive. A motivated subject was capable of covering more than seven feet in less time than officers required to raise an already unholstered firearm and fire in response to a known, audible stimulus. Encounters such as the Taylor incident involve a far more complex cognitive challenge. Before responding, officers must perceive movement, recognize the significance of that movement, assess the threat, select a response that matches the recognized pattern, and then physically execute that response.

This is why the most relevant question is not how many feet separated the officers and DeSilva. The more relevant question is how many fractions of a second those feet represented.

Complexity Costs Time

One of the consistent findings in human performance research is that decision complexity increases response time. In laboratory studies examining officer response capabilities, participants exposed to a simple visual stimulus demonstrated total response times of approximately 0.31 seconds. Perception and reaction accounted for roughly 0.25 seconds, while motor movement (pressing a trigger to the rear) remained relatively constant at approximately 0.06 seconds.⁵

When researchers increased the complexity of the task by requiring participants to distinguish between multiple visual cues and make a “shoot-don’t shoot” decision, perception and reaction time doubled to 0.50 seconds. Motor movement time remained largely unchanged, increasing total response time to approximately 0.56 seconds.⁵

The significance of these findings extends beyond the laboratory. The increase in response time was not caused by slower movement. It was caused by the additional cognitive demands associated with interpreting visual information and making a decision.

Importantly, the 0.83-second response time (raise the gun from a ready position and fire one aimed shot) mentioned earlier likely understates the demands confronting officers during real-world encounters. Participants were responding to a known auditory cue under controlled conditions. That matters because reaction time to auditory signals is faster than reaction time to visual signals. Additionally, the auditory cue used to signal “time to start” was a very simple beep. In contrast, officers confronting a rapidly evolving threat must process complex visual information, interpret behavior, assess intent, evaluate risk, determine an appropriate response, and often communicate simultaneously. Research examining human performance consistently demonstrates that increasing stimulus complexity increases total response time.

The complexity of the Taylor encounter far exceeded the complexity of either laboratory condition. The officers were not simply identifying illuminated lights or listening for beeps. They were confronting a knife-wielding individual at close range in a confined elevator, issuing commands, interpreting movement, and assessing threat level.

Human performance research would predict that such increases in cognitive complexity require additional time. Yet the available evidence suggests that time itself was rapidly disappearing. The defining feature of many critical incidents is that the time required to make a deliberate decision is increasing at the exact moment the time available to make that decision is decreasing.

The Action-Reaction Gap

The action-reaction gap is the practical centerpiece of this analysis. DeSilva, if moving toward the officers, was the actor. The officers were reacting. The actor does not need to perceive his own movement before initiating it but the responding officer does.

That distinction is critical because total response time includes far more than a trigger press. It includes perception, observation, recognition, decision-making, and then motor movement. Research examining officer response times has repeatedly demonstrated that these processes consume measurable amounts of time even under controlled conditions.⁶

The practical implication is significant. During rapidly unfolding encounters, officers often find themselves reacting to a threat that is already in motion, and sometimes complete, rather than preventing the threat from beginning. This reality becomes especially important in confined environments where opportunities to move, create distance, or reposition are limited.

The appellate court’s analysis in Taylor reflects this reality. The officers were not standing in an open parking lot with unlimited room to maneuver. They were confined within an elevator while confronting an armed subject at close range. The question should not be whether tactical repositioning or choosing an option other than deadly force might theoretically have been possible under these circumstances. That is hindsight. The question should be, what type of decision-making process and what choices were available to the officers? What were they reasonably able to do, within the limits of human performance, before it was too late?¹

This reality also has implications for discussions of de-escalation. Effective communication requires time. Recognition of compliance requires time. Evaluation of changing behavior requires time. Human performance research does not suggest that verbal de-escalation lacks value, rather, it suggests that de-escalation opportunities diminish rapidly as time and distance disappear based largely on the actions of the subject.

In the Taylor encounter, the officers were confined within an elevator and confronting an armed subject at close range. The issue was not whether de-escalation is generally desirable. The issue was whether sufficient time existed for meaningful communication, assessment, and behavioral influence before the threat became imminent. Human performance research suggests that, under such circumstances, those opportunities may be measured in fractions of seconds rather than in conversational exchanges.

Recent research examining firearm simulation dynamics further reinforces the importance of understanding response interruption and behavioral inertia during critical incidents. Bartel and colleagues found that officers require measurable time not only to initiate a response but also to recognize changed circumstances and interrupt an ongoing response.¹²

This finding is consistent with decades of human performance research, the generalized understanding of which can be seen at intersections all over the country in the existence of a yellow light in-between green (go) light and the red (stop) light. Human beings do not possess an ability to start complex actions instantly, nor do they possess an ability to stop them instantly. Once a pattern-matching response has been initiated, perception, recognition, decision-making, and motor processes continue to operate within the constraints of human physiology.

The implications extend beyond the number of rounds fired in a particular incident. The broader lesson is that human performance unfolds across time. Decisions are not singular moments. They are dynamic processes occurring while circumstances continue to change. Understanding those processes is essential if we hope to fairly evaluate officer behavior during rapidly unfolding critical incidents.

Thinking Fast is Pattern Recognition, Not Calculation

Many critiques of police decision-making implicitly assume that officers engage in a deliberate analytical process before acting. Psychologist and Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman’s work suggests otherwise.⁷

Kahneman described two broad modes of thinking. System 1 operates rapidly, automatically, and intuitively. System 2 functions more slowly and relies on deliberate, rational and consequential analysis. Under ordinary circumstances, people routinely move between these systems. Under conditions of extreme time pressure, however, System 1 dominates.

This does not mean people become irrational or simply act on instinct. Rather, the brain shifts toward forms of processing that are faster than conscious deliberation. Consider a pedestrian who unexpectedly steps into the path of a speeding bicycle. Before consciously analyzing the situation, he reflexively recoils or steps backward to avoid the collision. Only afterward does he consciously process what happened. The response was neither the product of careful calculation nor pure reflex. Rather, it was the result of rapid perception and automatic processing that occurs faster than deliberate thought.

Kahneman explained how people think under time pressure. Gary Klein’s research on Recognition-Primed Decision-Making (RPD) addresses a different question, How do experienced professionals manage to make effective decisions during time compressed, high-risk events.⁸

After studying firefighters, military personnel, emergency responders, and other experts operating under severe time constraints, Klein found that experienced decision-makers rarely compare multiple alternatives during emergencies. Instead, they recognize familiar patterns and implement responses that have proven effective in similar situations. When a firefighter hears rafters cracking as the roof collapses above her, she doesn’t weigh the strengths and weaknesses of her choices, she immediately recognizes the pattern, mentally confirms that her first response fits, and she moves.

Fast decisions can be the product of expertise rather than its absence. Under severe time pressure, experienced professionals do not necessarily search for the best possible response. Instead, they act on the first response that experience tells them is likely to work. The speed of an officer’s decision, therefore, should not be mistaken for a recklessness lack of consideration. In many cases, it reflects the operation of recognition-based expertise functioning within the realities of severe time constraints.

From the perspective of hindsight, it is easy to imagine that Officer Taylor a menu of possible responses to select from: move back, wait one more second, transition to a TASER, attempt physical control, or raise his handgun and fire. Recognition-Primed Decision Making suggests that experienced decision-makers do not perform this kind of comparative analysis under extreme time pressure. Instead, they tend to implement the first option that is recognized as workable. In other words, they do not necessarily choose the best response after carefully comparing alternatives, they choose the first satisfactory response generated through experience and pattern recognition. 

Officer Taylor’s encounter inside the elevator illustrates another important characteristic of decision-making when time is severely limited. The question confronting him was not, “Which of these five options is best?” Human cognition under severe time pressure rarely functions that way. More likely, the rapidly unfolding threat triggered Taylor’s recognition of a familiar pattern, causing a response option to emerge almost immediately from experience and training. That response was evaluated almost instantaneously. If it appeared capable of addressing the threat, there was little reason, and even less time, to continue searching for a potentially superior alternative.

What the Jury Never Experienced

Perhaps the most important difference between an officer and the people who later evaluate the officer’s actions is that they are experiencing fundamentally different events.

The officer experiences the encounter once and all at once. The juror experiences it repeatedly. The officer does not know how the event will end. The juror does. The officer cannot pause the encounter, rewind it, zoom in, play it back frame-by-frame, or discuss it with others before deciding what to do. The juror can.

Every use-of-force investigation begins with an information asymmetry. The officer makes a decision without knowing how the encounter will end. Investigators, jurors, attorneys, and experts evaluate that same decision while already knowing the outcome. Human performance research suggests this difference matters profoundly because outcome knowledge changes how people interpret prior events. What appears uncertain in real time often appears obvious with the luxury of hindsight, even though the decision-maker never possessed that certainty.⁹

This phenomenon is known as hindsight bias. Once an outcome becomes known, people tend to overestimate their ability to predict it. Risks appear more obvious, or absent. Alternative solutions appear more available. Decisions that were uncertain at the time begin to look predictable after the fact.¹⁰

Video evidence can unintentionally magnify this effect. Modern jurors may watch an encounter dozens of times from multiple angles. They may examine details that were impossible for officers to perceive in real time. While video evidence is invaluable, it can also create the illusion that the decision-maker possessed the same information available to viewers after the fact.

The reality is quite different. The officer experienced the reality of uncertainty. The viewer experiences the illusion of certainty. Human performance science helps explain why those are not the same thing.

Reasonable, Not Perfect

The legal framework governing police use of force recognizes these realities. In Graham v. Connor, the United States Supreme Court instructed courts to evaluate force from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene rather than through the lens of 20/20 hindsight.¹¹ Importantly, the legal standard is reasonableness. The standard is not perfection.

Human performance science does not tell us what decision an officer should make. It tells us what decisions a human being might realistically make within the limits imposed by perception, cognition, movement, and time.

The Taylor case serves as a reminder that force encounters occur at the speed of life, not the speed of litigation. Whether one ultimately agrees with Officer Taylor’s decision is, in many respects, a separate question. Before that judgment can fairly be made, we must first understand the conditions under which the decision was made. Human performance science does not excuse decisions, but neither does it permit us to evaluate decisions as though the decision-maker possessed information, time, or certainty that they did not.

Perhaps that is the most important lesson of all. Every officer, investigator, attorney, juror, judge, and citizen brings a common human brain to the task of evaluating critical incidents. That same brain is remarkably capable of constructing coherent explanations after an outcome is known, while simultaneously ignoring how uncertain the future once appeared. The danger is not that we care too much about accountability. The danger is that hindsight quietly convinces us that uncertainty never existed.

The law asks us to judge reasonableness. Human performance science helps us understand what reasonableness looks like when the luxury of certainty has not yet arrived.

References

1. Taylor v. State, No. 07-25-00010-CR (Tex. App. 2025).
2. Angela Shen, “Christopher Taylor Deadly Conduct Trial: Witness Testimony, Surveillance Video Shown,” FOX 7 Austin, Sept. 26, 2024.
3. Lewinski, William J., Ronald Avery, and Kymberly Dysterheft, “The Influence of Officer Equipment and Protection on Short Sprinting Performance,” Force Science News, March 2015 
4. Lewinski, William J., Ronald Avery, and Kymberly Dysterheft, “Ambushes Leading Cause of Officer Fatalities: When Every Second Counts—Analysis of Officer Movement from Trained Ready Tactical Positions,” Force Science News, February 2015 
5. Lewinski, William J., and William A. Hudson. “The Psychology of the Stop Shooting Response.” Law Enforcement Executive Forum 3, no. 4 (2003). (Reporting total response times of approximately 0.31 seconds for simple visual stimuli and 0.56 seconds for complex visual decision-making tasks.)
6. Lewinski, William J., Jeff Martin, and Theresa M. Dysterheft, “The Influence of Decision-Making on Officer Reaction Time,” Law Enforcement Executive Forum 10, no. 6 (2010).
7. Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
8. Klein, Gary. Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.
9. Zsambok, Caroline E., and Gary Klein, eds. Naturalistic Decision Making. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997.
10. Fischhoff, Baruch. “Hindsight ≠ Foresight: The Effect of Outcome Knowledge on Judgment Under Uncertainty.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 1, no. 3 (1975): 288–299.
11. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989).
12. Bartel, Lon, Nicole Florisi, Von Kliem, Tom Cameron, Miranda Fuller, and Jeff Knaup. “Time to Stop:Firearm Simulation Dynamics.” ASEAN Journal of Psychiatry (2024): 1–6. doi:10.54615/2231-7805.24.16.510.