Research
Research designed to survive contact with the real world.
Phronara studies how communication, psychological processes, and context shape human behavior—and how those findings can responsibly inform practice in consequential settings.
Our Research Philosophy
Evidence is most useful when we are equally clear about what it shows, what it suggests, and what it cannot tell us.
Human behavior rarely produces simple answers. Our research emphasizes transparent interpretation, attention to context, and careful distinction between observed findings and broader inference.
We are particularly interested in questions that emerge from practice and can be examined empirically, then translated back into settings where communication and judgment have meaningful consequences.
Current Research
Questions we are investigating.
01
Language & Psychological Reactance
How controlling, autonomy-supportive, and choice-enhancing language influence resistance, cooperation, engagement, and behavioral response.
02
Communication in High-Stakes Settings
How communication operates when authority, stress, uncertainty, intoxication, crisis, or competing goals shape an interaction.
03
Judgment & Applied Decision-Making
How behavioral evidence can inform professional judgment without reducing complex human decisions to rigid scripts or universal prescriptions.
Featured Research Program
VOICE
Verbal Options to Improve Cooperation and Engagement
VOICE examines whether relatively small changes in language can reduce unnecessary psychological resistance and improve cooperation during consequential interactions.
Research Question
Can communication strategies informed by psychological reactance theory improve behavioral outcomes without sacrificing clarity, authority, or necessary direction?
Research Settings
VOICE has been studied in applied law-enforcement and hospital-based settings, allowing the framework to be evaluated under real-world interpersonal conditions.
Published Findings
Promising results—and important reasons to keep testing.
Place, Carlisle & Boehme (2026) · Police Practice and Research
+12%
Police De-escalation
Police de-escalations were approximately 12% more likely during VOICE treatment shifts than during control shifts. The effect remained significant across robustness checks.
92.7%
Would Recommend
Nearly 93% of post-training respondents said they would recommend the training to a colleague.
87.8%
Worth Their Time
Nearly 88% of respondents reported that they perceived the training as worth their time.
Training Outcomes
Participants showed significant gains in their understanding of core reactance concepts, including the role of word choice and the identification of reactance-mitigating language. Participants also improved significantly on three of four scenario-based measures of applying those concepts.
Other Field Outcomes
The trial did not detect statistically significant treatment effects on physical interventions or staff and officer injuries. Recorded de-escalations among hospital security personnel decreased during treatment shifts, a finding that requires additional context and cautious interpretation.
Understanding the Setting
Same setting. Different roles.
Police officers and hospital security personnel worked within the same environment, but they did not enter encounters with the same authority, discretion, or role.
Hospital Security
Security personnel generally respond at the direction of medical staff and support clinical decisions about patient safety and compliance. Medical staff respond first to patient noncompliance, with security called to support the clinical response when additional assistance is needed.
Importantly, medical staff did not receive VOICE training during the trial. Security personnel therefore operated within a clinical response system they did not independently control.
Sworn Police
Police officers have arrest and use-of-force authority and exercise greater independent discretion once they become involved. Although they were generally called later in the escalation sequence, they were not similarly bound to carry out medical staff directives.
These differences in authority, timing, and decision-making are important when interpreting why VOICE may have operated differently across the two groups.
Interpretation
The findings are promising, not definitive.
The police findings provide initial evidence that reactance-mitigating linguistic training may support de-escalation in applied public-safety encounters. The study does not establish that VOICE will produce the same effects across personnel, settings, or types of encounters.
Interpreting the Evidence
What this study does—and does not—establish.
This was a pilot field trial designed to test whether reactance-mitigating linguistic training could be implemented and evaluated under real-world conditions. Its findings justify continued investigation, not universal conclusions.
01
Pilot Study
The intervention was evaluated during a limited trial period. The study had sufficient power to detect large effects, but was underpowered for some outcomes.
02
Reporting Differences
Treatment personnel were reminded about distinctions between physical interventions and de-escalations before the trial. Because control personnel did not receive the same reminder, reporting differences may have affected some outcomes, particularly among security staff.
03
Setting Matters
The trial occurred within a hospital system where medical personnel, security staff, and sworn police held different responsibilities and entered encounters at different points. Results should not automatically be generalized to other public-safety environments.
04
No Detected Force Effect
The trial did not detect statistically significant treatment effects on physical interventions or staff and officer injuries. Whether VOICE affects these outcomes requires further study.
Published Research
Read the research behind the findings.
2026
The promise of VOICE reactance-mitigating linguistic training for law enforcement: Results from a pilot randomized controlled trial
Police Practice and Research
A pilot randomized controlled field trial evaluating reactance-mitigating linguistic training among sworn police officers and hospital security personnel in an academic health-system setting.
Read the Published Article →Research in Progress
The next questions are already underway.
Ongoing
VOICE Qualitative Study
Qualitative analysis of interviews examining how participants understand, adapt, and apply reactance-mitigating communication strategies in practice.
Development
Implementation & Transfer
Examining how reactance-mitigating communication can be translated across professional roles and settings without assuming that the same strategy will operate identically under different constraints.
Future Testing
Broader Public-Safety Evaluation
Future studies should evaluate VOICE in settings where sworn law-enforcement personnel respond more independently and can apply communication strategies earlier in an encounter.
Research Collaboration
Good applied research begins with questions worth answering.
Phronara welcomes conversations with researchers, agencies, educators, and organizations interested in studying communication, judgment, and human behavior in consequential settings.
We are particularly interested in partnerships that provide opportunities to test behavioral science under real-world conditions while preserving methodological rigor and the complexity of the environments being studied.