Perception affects most, if not everything, that we as humans, achieve. The way in which we view the world impacts every decision we make, every second of every day. If we perceive a café to be dirty or noisy, it will be obvious why we may decide not to go there. Sometimes that decision is based on something far less understandable such as the colour of the logo, or the name of the café, or maybe it’s something we can’t even put our finger on. In that instant it’s not perception (the thinking part of the brain - higher Brian/frontal lobe) it’s neuroception (from the amygdala/the lower brain) - or ‘detection without awareness’, more later on this.   Either way, our decision will be based on not only the data that is presented to us, but the way in which we interpret that data.

Perception – the way in which something is regarded, understood or interpreted. In previous blogs I offered that the way in which we view the world is through the sensing of primary concepts, things that we have been taught, such as what an apple looks like. Once we have our primary world, we sense secondary concepts, these are self-learnt, that apples are sweet. Secondary concepts are open to individual interpretation; some may think apples are sweet, some may disagree, these are examples of and can be the root of less cognitive pre-conception or bias. The impact of secondary concept perception is understood across many areas, such as the way in which jurors are selected, or challenged. In the 6th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees defendants the right to a trial by a fair and impartial jury. There are two stages designed to ensure this process, each with inherent difficulties. First, the pool from which juries are drawn must be representative of the; the jury selection process in which attorneys for both the prosecution and defence can excuse individual jurors—is then intended to identify and remove jurors who cannot be impartial in a given case. If perception and bias are known to affect the outcome of a trial, then surely it follows that perception* and bias can affect the outcome of a targeting decision. This includes the analysts that have created the intelligence on which the decision is made. In short, lawyers can challenge the selection of a juror if the lawyer perceives that the juror may be biased against their case or client. Jurors are akin to military analysts. Where jurors are presented the data of the case in the form of evidence and argument, the analyst will be presented data, information or intel from sources in order to answer specific questions. Once the juror has assessed the evidence and weighed the arguments, they analyse and offer a report to the decision maker, in this case the Judge. In the same way the analyst will prepare a report for a military decision maker. 

Should the military go down the same route as the legal profession and root out analysts that are biased against a particular problem set? I believe that this is impracticable to implement and would also open a pandora’s box. Image a targeting mission during which the analyst is biased against the intended target? This ideal world cannot be realised in the Military as regardless of good intent, every soldier that has ever served on an operation has likely developed strong feelings about the enemy: maybe they lost a close friend to enemy action, maybe they saw atrocities or maybe they became sympathetic after a long and brutal exchange. 

So…..why didn’t we go to the cafe? Can we even answer that? As Ange Westbrook highlighted in a previous article, the lesser known but equally powerful nueroception is an important factor. According to Dr. Porges, professor of psychiatry and the director of the Brain-Body Centre at the University of Illinois at Chicago, neuroception describes how neural circuits distinguish whether situations or people are safe, dangerous or life-threatening, “Because of our heritage as a species, neuroception takes place in the primitive parts of the brain, without our conscious awareness”. He develops the concept to explain that emotions can be triggered without awareness, “Neuroception explains why a baby coos at a caregiver but cries at a stranger, or why a toddler enjoys a parent's embrace but views a hug from a stranger as an assault.” Neuroception initiates in our autonomic nervous system when our body senses a ‘familiar flavour’ from the past, the Vagal nerve carries that sensing to the brain where it creates a story to match the sense and this forms our belief about the current situation. The trouble is, our body while responding to the here and now, was ‘triggered’ by a familiar flavour from the past! Bessel Van Der Kolk writes of the impact of trauma in the New York Times best seller list ‘The body keeps the score’. In this context trauma is an umbrella term for many things that can affect our neuroception. 

What made Eurpoean families bond with Ukranians and offer shelter, whilst not bonding with Syrians and Afghan families? 

These hidden triggers could lead to an analyst having a negative emotional response to a situation or even their commander (decision maker) without awareness of this occurring. The resulting emotion will create inherent bias in the analysts and has the potential to alter the perception, and therefore response, that analyst provides to a situation. 

So what? Analysts are essential in modern conflict as without analysts and the resulting intelligence, commanders would be forced to guess. In the modern, media driven world where mistakes see the end of careers and reputations, commanders are less likely to make a decision without intelligence. If the intelligence is flawed, if its derived with good intentions but subconsciously through pre-conception, unconscious bias or neuroception, which differs from reality, the resultant intel will be flawed and any subsequent decisions may carry additional margins of error. So what do we do to protect our analysts and our decision makers? The military domain is unique. Military personnel cannot be expected to scrutinise or be scrutinised like the juror. However, cultural and training changes could be made. Imagine a blameless environment, enabling analysts to freely and safely explore ‘self’ allowing them to identify any areas of ‘self’ that could skew their perception, thus empowering them to declare this to the chain of command without personal or professional impact. In the aircrew training environment, crew members are taught about factors that affect flight safety and are encouraged to declare any aspects which may cause flight safety to be eroded. These can often be human factors, which feel harder to flag but are often vital to be alert to. In our intelligence training packages, we introduce concepts such as neuroception and allow the analyst to become aware of how their perception may be skewed by personal experience and this impact decision making. 

In the next article, I explore how we can be manipulated and our perception maliciously disrupted.