Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Police psychology'

Police officers decide to detain and search civilians under uncertainty and risk, and both false positive and false negative errors can be costly. The courts apply the reasonable suspicion standard of proof to evaluate the constitutionality of nonconsensual stops and searches, placing an ambiguous and subjective assessment of a poorly understood psychological state at the center of laws, policies, and trainings on police-civilian contact. The law and psychology of suspicion may have important effects on the frequency, accuracy, and reporting of policing decisions. Investigating those effects requires an understanding of the policy landscape of police decision-making and the basic psychology of suspicion.

In this dissertation, I explore suspicion as a legal concept and as a psychological experience. I describe the role of the reasonable suspicion standard in judicial evaluations of the constitutionality of police practices, and the implications for the guidelines and trainings that agencies provide to officers. I contend that legal and quantitative analyses of policing practices should incorporate an understanding of the psychology of individual decision-making and the incentives created by the regulatory environment. The constitutional analysis assumes that civilian behavior, situational circumstances, and prior knowledge all affect an officer’s experience of suspicion and subsequent actions. Very little is known, however, about the basic psychology of suspicion and how it might affect judgment and decision-making.

I investigate the psychological properties and covariates of interpersonal suspicion as reported by lay participants in a series of studies, establishing a baseline to which I will compare the effects of training and professional experience in future research. Using latent variable models and automated text analyses, I find that during experiences of interpersonal suspicion of a stranger, people tend to question the stranger’s intentions and experience intuition, attentiveness, and wariness. In these situations, distrust is more closely associated with emotional arousal than interpersonal suspicion. On average, female participants report slightly higher situational interpersonal suspicion relative to male participants, and participants who identify as Black or African American report lower suspicion relative to those who identify as White, Latino, or Hispanic.

Relative to participants, the people who are targets of situational suspicion are more often described as male, Black, and Latino. On average, participants report a similar degree of suspicion across perceived target gender and racial categories, but there are significant differences among the associated emotions, inferences, and behavioral responses. Participants describing male and Black targets report experiencing greater fear and believing that the target’s behavior was dangerous. Participants describing male targets are more likely to report inferring that the target’s behavior was criminal, relative to participants describing female targets.

The dispositional tendency toward interpersonal suspicion is associated with neuroticism and low agreeableness in two samples of university students, and these findings are insensitive to variations in measurement instruments. In a simulation where university students take on the role of a police officer and report their suspicion in response to either Black or White male targets, I find that aggregate measures of dispositional interpersonal suspicion are uncorrelated with ratings of situational suspicion in response to the stimuli, which do not differ significantly by race of the target. An exploratory analysis suggests that dispositional suspicion, as measured by a single item, is associated with higher ratings of situational suspicion in response to White targets only.

My findings suggest that during experiences of interpersonal suspicion of strangers, people tend to question the stranger’s intentions and experience intuition, attentiveness, and wariness, and that the type of cognitive arousal associated with suspicion may be context-specific. In the concluding discussion, I also identify findings that could be particularly relevant in the legal context, including the salience of intuition in experiences of suspicion and the variation associated with target race in the correlates of suspicion. I aim to advance the current understanding of suspicion and establish a foundation for future research on its role in legal decision-making.

Police officers are often the first contact a victim of rape has with the criminal justice system and may be the first people to whom rape victims disclose. To examine the extent to which police officers endorse rape myths, this quantitative study assessed their views about rape victims, along with the effects of demographics and experience. The Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale--Short Form was administered to 66 patrol officers in Southern California. The officers scored in the mid-range of this scale, which addresses seven different categories of common rape myths, such as "she lied" and "she asked for it." For some rape myths, females and ethnic majority officers indicated less endorsement of rape myths. These findings reveal a need for more in-depth research on police officers. Social workers who work with the victims of rape should advocate for increased education of law enforcement personnel about rape and its victims.

Studies on volunteerism have traditionally focused on the perspective of volunteers in a health sector context. This study aims to contribute to the existing volunteerism literature by exploring paid staff’s perceptions of volunteers. As organizational context is thought to affect staff perceptions, it is deemed important to study a wide range of sectors. In this qualitative study, eight police officers were interviewed. Thematic analysis of interview data showed that perceptions of volunteers and their activities are not shaped in isolation from perceptions of occupational role, implementation process, and organizational culture. To improve police officers’ perceptions of volunteers requires a cultivation of a more change ready organizational culture.

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if effective university police officers differ from less effective university officers based on their perceptions/dispositions according to perceptual psychology theory. By establishing that effective university police officers possess specific dispositions, strategies can be developed to identify these dispositions in police officer candidates during the hiring process and to continue supporting their dispositional growth afterwards. This could potentially lead to the hiring of effective university police officers who are more likely to become engaged in the university community and ultimately improve organizational effectiveness. Effective university police officers typically approach their duties with the same philosophy as effective educators, social workers, or coaches would approach their work. Four dimensions associated with officer effectiveness were studied: perceptions of self as identified, perceptions of others as able, perceptions of purpose as larger, and a frame of reference as people-oriented.

Burnout among police officers has been recognized as a problem by organizational psychologists, other social scientists and practitioners. In one analysis, policing represented 2% of the occupations that were researched to establish a relationship with burnout. New lines of research are being developed to examine the contribution of management and supervisory behaviors to stress and burnout. This study investigates the relationship between transformational leadership styles of police sergeants and burnout in their subordinate officers. Burnout was measured across three dimensions: Emotional exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Diminished Personal Accomplishment using the Maslach Burnout Inventory - Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS, 1991). Transformational leadership was measured using the Transformational Leadership Questionnaire, Public Sector Research Version (TLQ-PSRV, 2001). This instrument assesses leadership using 6 scales: Showing Genuine Concern, Networking and Achieving, Enabling, Being Honest and Consistent, Being Accessible, and Being Decisive. Leadership scores were correlated with the dimensions of burnout and Networking and Achieving as well as Being Honest and Consistent were found to be significantly related to Diminished Feelings of Accomplishment at the p = .05 level.

The prevalence of sexual assault and its consequences for individuals and society has been the subject of much research and advocacy even though most cases remain unreported and when reported, rarely move through the criminal justice and legal systems. This study uses a mixed methods approach in order to understand police officer perceptions of sexual assault reports and the factors that might influence their perceptions and decision making processes. Findings indicate wide variability in police officer perceptions of reported sexual assaults as “legitimate” and perceptions of victims as credible. Officers consider reported sexual assaults involving strangers, the use or threat of a weapon, and evidence of injury, as more clearly legitimate. The majority of sexual assaults reported to the police are considered ambiguous, often because of prior relationship between the victim and suspect, substance use or intoxication, a lack of clear non-consent, and a lack of evidence in general. There is less variation in officer’s reported behavioral intentions, indicating that one’s procedural response is routine, and all reports are responded to thoroughly. Officers also show wide variability in acceptance of rape myths and attributions of blame towards the suspect. Some officers point out the propensity for false reporting in sexual assault, however, many others counter this assumption, and argue that police officers should never make judgments about the veracity of a reported sexual assault. This research has implications for the way in which first responders—often police officers, health care workers, social service providers, mental health professionals and victim advocates—take action in a dignifying manner with those who have experienced sexual assault and have reported the incident with the hopes of achieving justice.

Secondary employment activities for police officers may have negative outcomes both for officers and their employers. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of secondary employment (also known as moonlighting, specials, side-jobs, off-duty employment, and multiple job holders) on operational stress, organizational stress, and burnout among police officers. The study was based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and on strain theory. The sample was 199 full-time sworn law enforcement officers from seven law enforcement agencies in the north-central and southeastern United States. Participants were ages 18-65 with a rank from officer to lieutenant. They completed the Operational and Organizational Police Stress Test developed by McCreary, D., & Thompson, M. (2006) and the Maslach Burnout Inventory, developed by Maslach, C., Leiter, M., & Jackson, S. (1995) as well as a demographic questionnaire. Three subscales where used to examine the effect of age, gender, and years of experience on organizational and operational stress, as well as the effect of stress on burnout. Multiple linear regression analyses showed no significant relationship between operational and organizational stress and the three variables of age, gender, and experience. Data analysis did reveal a significant relationship between burnout and both organizational and operational stress. Results of this study will help police departments improve their policies and procedures governing secondary employment, thus improving officer morale and effectiveness and also public safety.

The Matrix Predictive Uniform Law Enforcement Inventory (M-PULSE ™) is a self-report, actuarial instrument used to predict job performance and liability risk, as well as assist law enforcement agencies in selecting qualified candidates. This study examined whether there is a statistically significant difference between two clusters of candidates' Empirical Scales scores as they relate to applicants' mean scale score differences on the M-Pulse™ liability scales. This study was conducted in an effort to confirm predictive and ecological validity and used archived data from a proprietary database retained by MHS, Inc. This data consisted of 1,000 randomly selected individuals from a normalized database of 5,000 individuals who had previously completed the M-PULSE ™ and were subsequently hired by a law enforcement agency. A series of independent-samples t-tests were conducted to compare each of the M-Pulse ™ liability scales scores of law enforcement applicants in each cluster. Post hoc Bonferroni correction resulted in &agr; ≤ .003. Statistically significant differences were found in Potential for Resignation when comparing scores for Cluster 1 (M = 49.49, SD = 9.85) and Cluster 2 (M = 51.85, SD = 10.97); t(998) = -3.545, p < .003; d = .226 and in Potential for Termination: Cluster 1 (M = 49.05, SD = 9.48) and Cluster 2 ( M = 52.14, SD = 10.57); t(998) = -4.833, p < .003; d = .308. This study suggests the M-PULSE ™ can tease out candidates who show a propensity to prematurely resign or be terminated. Predicting foreseeable liability risks helps law enforcement agencies manage ecological issues that affect officers.

L’acquisition d’une technique de préparation à la tâche recourant à l’hypnose et à l’autohypnose, permettrait donc une meilleure gestion du stress et réussite de cette tâche, pouvant ainsi réduire l’amplitude des réactions psychologiques et physiologiques secondaires au stress psychologique associé à la situation présentée sur vidéo-tir.

Doctorat en Sciences Psychologiques et de l'éducation
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished