WE ARE EMPOWERING CHANGE WITH PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS
The mission of the Solutions Lab is to create accessible, effective, evidence-based solutions that address the root causes of society’s most pressing problems.
To do so, we partner with nonprofits, grassroots organizations, and public service corporations, to conduct high-impact research aimed at solving our communities’ most pressing problems. By partnering through fiscal sponsorships, we function as the research wing of organizations interested in building evidence-based solutions and interventions to improve our communities’ well-being. We build innovative and pragmatic solutions that simultaneously work for practitioners and drive forward scientific knowledge. We get to know your organization, community, and goals for solving the most complex problems we deal with in our day-to-day lives. Our goal is to make the scientific method and solutions accessible to community members.
The Solutions Lab is proudly supported by New Blue.
SERVICES
RELATIONSHIPS
ensuring police departments and their employees transparently communicate their values and intent to those they serve to build close, trusting relationships between communities and their police.
SERVICES-NEEDS FIT
deeply connecting the thoughts, feelings, experiences, and contexts of community members to police, to tailor police services to address the needs of diverse communities.
PROFESSIONAL WELLNESS
attracting growth-minded people who want to improve the well-being of their communities through compassionate service, into organizations that also support the mental health, physical health, and authenticity of their employees.
APPROACH
Design high-impact research that will inform solutions
Listen to the stakeholders closest to the problem
Give back solutions that can be implemented at scale
Conduct rigorous research to build sustainable solutions
OUR TEAM
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Andrea G. Dittmann
CO-FOUNDER • WESTERN REGION DIRECTOR
Andrea G. Dittmann is the Co-Founder and Western Region Director of the Solutions Lab. Andrea’s research centers on identifying the sources of—and solutions to address—inequalities in workplaces, organizations, and society at large. Andrea earned her Ph.D. in Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Andrea is based in Los Angeles, CA.
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Kyle S. H. Dobson
CO-FOUNDER • EASTERN REGION DIRECTOR
Kyle S. H. Dobson is the Co-Founder and Eastern Region Director for the Solutions Lab. Kyle’s research expertise is in building authentic connections: deep understanding of ourselves and others, across boundaries. Kyle earned his Ph.D. in Management and Organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Kyle is based in Central Virginia.
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Arianna Chiappi
OPERATIONS DIRECTOR
Arianna Chiappi is the Operations Director of the Solutions Lab. Arianna oversees the Lab's daily operational functions, ensuring efficiency through coordination of researchers and financial planning. Arianna earned her master's degree in Applied Cognitive Psychology and her bachelor's degree in Social and Work Psychology from the University of Padova. Arianna is based in Italy.
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Jasmine Liou
RELATIONSHIPS PORTFOLIO MANAGER
Jasmine is the full-time Relationships Portfolio Manager for the Solutions Lab. Jasmine’s management focuses on projects that build relationships through trust and transparency between service workers and their communities. Jasmine graduated Rice University with a B.A. in Psychology with honors and Business (Management). Jasmine in based in Los Angeles, CA.
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Additional Members
PARTNERS
PROJECTS
New Study Shows That 10 Words Can Improve Community Relations With Police Officers
Over the past three decades, billions have been invested in community policing to foster positive interactions between officers and community members. Yet, public trust in police continues to decline. Our qualitative analysis of over 500 hours of naturalistic observations suggests a potential reason: the questioning styles of officers in community policing may make community members feel threatened. Observations also point to a solution: transparent communication of benevolent intent. Building on this, a pre-registered field experiment (N = 232) finds that community members feel less threatened and report greater trust when officers use a brief transparency statement (e.g., “I'm walking around trying to get to know the community”). These findings are supported by exploratory natural language processing and sympathetic nervous system measures. Six online experiments (total N = 3,210) further show that transparency statements are effective across diverse groups and isolate the conditions where they work best. This multi-method investigation underscores the importance of transparency in fostering positive community-police relations.
Preprint Link: URL
Understanding the Cycle of Bias in AI-Assisted Police Work
When making decisions in high-pressure situations, police officers experience cognitive demands and often lack access to data about the people with whom they are interacting. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools that provide such data can potentially improve officers’ ability to respond effectively to calls and thus bolster public safety. However, research in diverse social sciences has documented persistent biases in AI-assisted work. We propose a framework for understanding how bias can creep into AI-assisted police work and how to intervene. In a cycle of bias, AI tools provide biased information to officers, which in turn promotes biased responses during interactions with the public, ultimately resulting in biased incident reports that amplify the original biases in the AI systems. Our proposed interventions focus on training and nudges that increase officers’ use of deliberative processing, empathic mindsets, and perspective-getting techniques and encourage the writing of detailed, debiased incident reports. We recommend taking a cognitive view of policing and drawing on insights from behavioral science research to maximize the benefits of AI tools while minimizing the risk that they will amplify biases.
Article Proof Link: URL (Behavioral Science & Policy)
The Solutions Lab Partners with Arnold Ventures to Extend Transparency Statement Intervention and Continue Innovation
The Solutions Lab has earned a $98,840 Arnold Ventures planning grant to extend our work on transparency statements to developing and validating a training program to empower officers to effectively utilize transparency statements in their contacts with the community.
The Solutions Lab has earned an additional $98,000 from Arnold Ventures to convene social scientists, practitioners, and other professionals motivated to improve our communities’ well-being with rigorous research and interventions. This convening will take place in December 2024, across two themes:
Recruiting and Retaining Effective Police with Causal Research
Leveraging Modern Data to Advance Causal Research on Policing