Quick decision exercises for the interaction skill. You can now sort by mechanism and explain how each works. These scenarios add specific phenomena — observable patterns worth recognising — and begin to trace how mechanisms interact across levels.

What

Each scenario targets one key phenomenon. Read the scenario, identify the phenomenon, explain the mechanism behind it, and note any cross-level interactions.

Reference: one key phenomenon per level

Moral disengagement techniques

When to use

After mastering level identification and core mechanism explanation. These exercises begin to introduce multi-level interactions.

Preparation

Have the reference tables above available. Write your analysis before checking the answer key.

How

Work through all five scenarios. For each: identify the key phenomenon, explain the mechanism, and note any cross-level interactions.

Scenario 1: Interruption

A sergeant runs the same PT session every Monday. One week he changes the format without warning. Soldiers are unsettled and perform worse than usual, despite the new exercises being easier.

Explain using interruption.

The established pattern (same PT every Monday) was interrupted. The violation triggered arousal — attention redirected to "what's happening?" rather than performance. Even though the new exercises were easier, cognitive resources were consumed by processing the unexpected change. This would settle as the new pattern becomes established.

Scenario 2: Moral disengagement

After a mission with civilian casualties, a soldier says: "It's war — things happen. They shouldn't have been near a military target. And anyway, the insurgents use human shields — they're the ones responsible. Nobody died who wasn't already in danger."

Identify the disengagement techniques.

• Minimising: "Things happen"
• Attribution of blame: "They shouldn't have been near a military target"
• Displacement: "The insurgents are responsible" (displacing responsibility to the enemy)
• Distortion of consequences: "Nobody died who wasn't already in danger"

Four techniques in one statement. The lazy controller is working hard to avoid moral engagement.

Scenario 3: RPD

A paramedic has treated hundreds of chest injuries. A patient presents with chest pain and the paramedic immediately begins a cardiac protocol. But this patient has a rare condition presenting atypically — the pattern match was wrong, and the protocol delayed correct treatment.

Explain using RPD.

RPD: the paramedic's experience created a strong pattern (chest pain → cardiac). The pattern matched, triggering automatic retrieval of the practised response. No deliberation occurred — that's RPD's strength (speed) and weakness (no check against edge cases). The presentation looked familiar enough to bypass deeper assessment.

Intervention: Training with atypical presentations. Procedural pause points for "what else could this be?" checks.

Scenario 4: Bonding vs bridging

A special operations team has worked together for years. They're highly effective internally but resist working with conventional forces, sharing information with intelligence staff, or accepting new members. When problems emerge, they close ranks.

Analyse using bonding vs bridging.

Extreme bonding capital: High trust, loyalty, mutual support internally. But this creates insularity — bridging capital (connections outside) is low. They don't share information across groups (intel staff), don't integrate new perspectives (new members), and bonding capital becomes negative social capital when it's used to close ranks around problems.

Intervention: Mandated bridging activities, cross-postings, explicit information-sharing requirements, external oversight that can't be captured by internal loyalty.

Scenario 5: Tight vs loose

A unit deploys to a remote location with minimal oversight from headquarters. Over weeks, uniform standards slip, language becomes coarser, treatment of locals becomes more casual. When they return to main base, they readjust quickly. Nothing reportable happened, but drift was real.

Explain using tight vs loose.

Main base: tight culture (dense monitoring via rank structure, certain sanctions, constant observation). Remote location: enforcement infrastructure collapses (sparse monitoring, delayed/uncertain sanctions). Culture loosens because the constraint mechanism — monitoring plus sanctions — weakened. Return to base restores the infrastructure.

The drift isn't about character — it's about enforcement infrastructure. Same soldiers, different behaviour, because the constraint mechanism changed.

Why it works

Key phenomena are the observable patterns that make mechanisms concrete. The pattern detector is abstract; interruption — the jolt when expectations are violated — is something you've felt. Moral disengagement techniques are something you can hear in real speech. These exercises train you to match observable patterns to underlying mechanisms, which is the skill that makes mechanism knowledge useful in practice.

The scenarios also begin to show cross-level interactions (RPD involves both the pattern detector and the affordance auction; tight-loose connects enforcement infrastructure to prestige engine dynamics). This previews the full-application skill.

Outcomes

After completing these exercises, you should be able to:

• Name and recognise all eight moral disengagement techniques
• Explain the RPD trade-off (speed vs misrecognition)
• Distinguish bonding from bridging capital and identify the pathologies of each
• Predict how behaviour changes when enforcement infrastructure loosens or tightens