Association between dark triad and aggressive traits among police officers

• In Event: POL Panel 2. How do police represent themselves, what do they think and how does this influence policing?

Abstract

Dark Triad (DT) is composed of three personality traits: psychopathy, narcissism and machiavellianism. Although different, these traits share common aversive and offensive features such as the lack of empathy, callousness, or manipulation. In organizational contexts, these traits are found at a sub-clinical level which is less challenging than among clinical populations (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). While these traits are particularly well documented in organizational contexts (counterproductive behaviors, leadership...), they are insufficiently studied within law enforcement (LeBreton et al., 2018; Thapar & Brar, 2022). Yet, police officers' missions are to protect, serve, and, if necessary, resort to using force. Using a broad survey data protocol, this paper investigates DT (DTDD) and aggressive traits (BPAQ-SF) among 183 police officers (72.7% policemen; MeanAge = 43.75; SD = 9.82; MeanLength of professional experience = 19.38; SD = 10.55) from several Belgian police departments. Main descriptive results indicate that police officers display relatively low scores on both scales, whereas their highest scores are in verbal aggression (BPAQ-SF) and psychopathy (DTDD). Compared with a community sample (n = 108), police officers overall exhibit significantly lower aggressive traits but higher physical aggression. They also report higher psychopathy and lower narcissism for DT. Further investigation of police demographics highlights that policewomen exhibit higher aggressive traits than policemen, particularly for anger and hostility, but no difference was found for DT. Furthermore, higher-ranking officers present more verbal aggression than all lower-ranking officers and lower-ranking officers display less narcissistic traits than other officers. Finally, correlational analysis highlights negative associations between age and aggressive or DT traits, particularly anger tendency, psychopathy, and narcissism (ρ = -.17 to -.26). Aggressive and DT total and subscales scores are positively correlated (ρ = .23 to .45). These results will be discussed considering their implications for leadership and organizational management (Lainidi et al., 2023).

Authors

• Emilie Telle, University of Mons

• Audrey Vicenzutto, University of Mons

• Thierry Pham, University of Mons