Police officers' trust beliefs in the police and their psychological adjustment

Abstract

The public's trust in the police has been the focus of extensive investigation. By contrast, there is a scarcity of research examining police officers' trust in the police. The purpose of the current study was to fill that gap in our knowledge. This study examined police officers' own trust in the police (i.e., personal trust beliefs) and how much they perceived that the public trust the police (i.e., public-ascribed trust beliefs). This study examined whether these two types of trust beliefs differed and whether each statistically accounted for police officers' psychological adjustment. Trust beliefs comprise expectations that police officers kept promises (reliability basis), told the truth (honesty basis) and kept information confidential and supportive of it (emotional basis). One hundred and eighty-three (142 male) police officers completed measures of personal trust beliefs in the police, public-ascribed trust beliefs in the police, psychological well-being and workplace stress. It was found that the police officers held higher personal honesty-based and emotional-based trust beliefs in the police than they ascribed to the public. Police officers' reliability-based personal trust beliefs in the police were positively associated with their psychological well-being and negatively associated with their stress in the workplace. Police officers' emotional-based public-ascribed trust beliefs in the police were positively associated with their psychological well-being and tended to be negatively associated with their stress in the workplace. The findings confirmed that police officers' personal and public-ascribed trust beliefs in the police differed and each statistically accounted for psychological adjustment.