Personality Traits and Coping Styles in UK Police Officers. Do Negotiators Differ From Their Non-negotiator Colleagues?

In this piece of research, the traits and characteristics held by police hostage (crisis) negotiators in the UK are explored, with specific reference to personality, coping style and cognitive emotion regulation. One hundred and seventeen hostage negotiators from 21 UK police forces took part in the research and their data were compared with 118 non-negotiator police officers and 203 university students. Participants completed the Big Five Inventory (BFI), the Coping Skills Test-Revised (CST-R) and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) and their data were compared using multivariate analysis of variance and discriminant function analysis. Findings confirmed the existence of a ‘police personality/profile’ with significant differences obtained between both police samples and the student sample on all three constructs; however, the findings demonstrated little support for the concept of a unique ‘hostage negotiator personality/profile’. Gender differences were also explored, with significant differences observed across male and female participants for all three dependent variables. No significant interaction effects were observed, however, suggesting that the effect of gender on personality, coping style and cognitive emotion regulation was independent of group membership. The findings are discussed with relevance to hostage negotiator and police officer selection and training practices.