Amy Herman Taught Cops and Doctors to Look Harder at What Is in Front of Them

The story

Amy Herman took medical students and later police officers into museums and asked them to describe what they actually saw, not what they assumed.

Mis-seeing costs lives in emergency rooms and on streets. Her “art of perception” classes sound soft until you realize they are about preventing sloppy conclusions.

What happened next

Hospitals and departments kept hiring the method because it changed behavior. Looking carefully is a form of respect.

A lesson you can use this week

In your next tense conversation, describe only what you can point to. Save interpretation for a second pass.

Sources

Amy Herman, “Visual Intelligence”; profiles in the New York Times and Smithsonian on The Art of Perception training.