The impact of personality traits and professional experience on police officers’ shooting performance under pressure

Abstract

We explored the impact of professional experience and personality on police officers’ shooting performance under pressure. We recruited: (1) regular officers, (2) officers wanting to join a specialised arrest unit (AU) (expected to possess more stress-resistant traits; pre-AU) and (3) officers from this unit (expected to also possess more professional experience; AU) (all male). In Phase 1, we determined personality traits and experience. In Phase 2, state anxiety, shot accuracy, decision-making (shoot/don’t shoot), movement speed and gaze behaviour were measured while officers performed a shooting test under low and high pressure. Results indicate minimal differences in personality among groups and superior performance of AU officers. Regression analyses showed that state anxiety and shooting performance under high pressure were first predicted by AU experience and second by certain personality traits. Results suggest that although personality traits attenuate the impact of high pressure, it is relevant experience that secures effective performance under pressure.

Practitioner Summary: To obtain information for police selection and training purposes, we let officers who differed in personality and experience execute a shooting test under low and high pressure. Outcomes indicate that experience affected anxiety and performance most strongly, while personality traits of thrill- and adventure-seeking and self-control also had an effect.

Keywords:

• Anxiety
• experience
• perceptual-motor performance
• personality
• stress

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In calculating the time spent on aiming, two trials in which an officers did not seem to fixate on the gun were excluded from the analysis.

2. Results were excluded from analyses when an insufficient number of trials (at least two valid trials per side per condition) could be obtained due to equipment limitations. Extreme values, determined with a Tukey boxplot (i.e. 3.0 times the interquartile range from the interquartile range in one condition, or 1.5 times in one condition), were also excluded per group.