A recent study from Carnegie Mellon University suggests that the reason many security guards don’t recognize obvious security threats is that they are infrequent. By nature, humans typically ignore rare situations because they aren’t looking for them. Poor training isn’t the same as incompetence. That is, just because a security guard didn’t see a threat, doesn’t mean he or she isn’t good at the job.
Detection and attention are learnable skills, however, and it’s possible to strengthen them by practice, the same way a person would improve physical stamina or memory.
In the study, security guards failed to detect threats 45% of the time when exposed to two incidents over the course of 2 hours. When the incidents increased to 25 in 2 hours, however, the error rate dropped to 25%. This suggests that when guards encounter incidents more frequently, they are more likely to spot them.
The results from this study is something Curtis Protective Services has known via intuition since its inception. Curtis Protective Security Guards undergo training for how to spot incidents and properly neutralize them. Many of our security guards have military backgrounds, meaning that they bring with them additional training and expertise. Whether you’re looking to keep safe an airport, commercial building, or gated community, you can rely on our security guards to be well-trained, professional, and alert at all times.
