Police Personality

PERSONALITY THEORIES IN GENERAL

Prior research has found major deficiencies in the efforts to identify a police personality.

The first deficiency deals with the tendency to treat each negative aspect of the police personality as a separate entity, rather than as a multidimensional phenomenon. The second deficiency is that very little prior research has focused on the making or the formation of the police personality, or to distinguish the phases of development. The third deficiency is that past research has failed to link measurable personality traits to discernible behavior as measured by performance evaluation. Underscoring each of these deficiencies is the premise that personality is developed on a continuum, indeed it is a dynamic process. Thus, the development of a police personality model depends as much on the theoretical framework of the personality theory as on the recognition of the extraordinary job experiences unique to policing.
POLICE PERSONALITY DEFINED: MYTH AND POPULAR CULTURAL DEFINITIONS

 The characteristics usually associated with police personalities in present times are machismo, bravery, authoritarianism, cynicism and aggression. Additional characteristics have been associated with police personalities as well: suspicious, , conservative, alienated and thoroughly bigoted. Indeed, the current notion of police personality is a far cry from the notion of three or four decades ago, that of the happy Irish cop, the friendly officer walking the beat, stopping to untangle a child’s kite from a tree or to lecture a teen about staying out too late. These days, most people think of police officers as idealized super cops like the Mel Gibson character in the “Lethal Weapon” films or as the brutal, sadistic cops like the Denzel Washington character in the film “Training Day.” Popular culture as well as the media shape our perceptions of what police officers are like and how they behave.

CULTURAL SHIELD

There is also the question of whether... [continues]

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