Police personality : and the relationship between personality and preferences for conflict resolution tactics

Abstract

There has been an ongoing debate as to whether or not police officers possess a distinct police personality. The research is equivocal on this issue. Further complicating the matter, important personality differences have been detected between individual police officers, predicting differ-ences in officersʼ success at work.

This report describes further research on the police personality. Officersʼ job performance is also examined, measured in terms of preferences for different tactics in conflict situations. Finally, the relationship between personality and preferences for conflict resolution tactics is investigated. In the report it is described how police officers diverge from the public when it comes to personality characteristics, supporting the notion of a police personality. The research also reveals that officers differ from each other in terms of which strategies they believe to be effective in conflict situations. Personality is not strongly related to such differences in preferences for conflict resolution tactics.