Personality and Use of Force

Introduction

This data, from the National Institute of Justice, contains data gathered from 64 law enforcement officers and 101 civilians. Data gathered from this study include a battery of survey responses and observations of participants’ tactics while completing an officer training simulation. See (citation) for a full account of survey responses not included here.

Data Preparation

Data Preparation:

A data frame was created and includes the following variables.

Data included:

-Participant ID Number

-Sample: officer or civilian

-MPQ-BF survey results :155 questions with three primary factors:

1.Positive Emotionality: constructed from, wellbeing, social potency, and achievement

2.Negative Emotinality: which consists of stress reaction, alienation, and aggression

3.Constraint: composed of control, harm avoidance, and traditionalism.

-SCENARIO:Firearms Training Scenario

-N_DEESCALATE_TOTAL:Total number of verbal de-escalation statements/actions a subject uses within the scenario

-N_FIREARM_TOTAL: Total number of times a subject uses a firearm within the scenario

-N_SPRAY_TOTAL: Total number of times a subject uses pepper spray within scenario

-N_TASER_TOTAL: Total number of times a subject uses a taser within scenario

-MAX_TACTIC_USED: Categorical variable for most severe use of force used by the subject during the scenario
-N_FORCE_BY_YOU: (officer only) response to question: Over the course of your career as a law enforcement officer (across all departments), how many times -if any- have you used lethal force against another person in the line of duty?

Recodes:

Recoding of Sample and Max Tactic into numeric variable.

Creation of new column combining total count of all weapons used in simulation

creation of seperate civilian and officer data frames to allow for easier descriptive analysis

Civilian Descriptives

Civilian MPQ by max weapon used

Civilians MPQ by weapon used
MAX_TACTIC_USED	Mean Positive Emotionality	Mean Negative Emotionality	Mean Contstraint
Firearm	56.48	47.02	49.20
No Tactic Used	56.46	46.15	48.72
Pepper spray	54.37	45.75	46.74
Taser	55.96	46.14	47.11
Verbal descalaiton	56.86	47.12	48.23

Civilians MPQ score by how many weapons they used

Civilians MPQ grouped by ammount of time a weapon was used
total_weapon_used	Mean Positive Emotionality	Mean Negative Emotionality	Mean Contstraint
0	56.56	46.39	48.60
1	56.12	46.95	48.34
2	56.23	43.79	45.45
3	46.89	40.51	51.52

Officer Descriptives

Officer Mean MPQ Grouped by Weapon Used in Simulation.

Officers in the simulation
MAX_TACTIC_USED	Mean Positive Emotionality	Mean Negative Emotionality	Mean Contstraint
Firearm	57.56	47.10	50.31
No Tactic Used	56.96	46.06	52.58
Pepper spray	52.70	47.18	45.05
Taser	56.27	46.74	50.61
Verbal descalaiton	57.90	45.83	52.41

Officer MPQ grouped by ammount of time a weapon was used
total_weapon_used	Mean Positive Emotionality	Mean Negative Emotionality	Mean Contstraint
0	57.59	45.90	52.47
1	56.97	46.77	50.34
2	55.43	50.43	46.49
3	63.29	42.55	56.03

Officer MPQ grouped by the amount of times officer has used deadly force on the job

Officer instances of deadly force on the job
N_FORCE_BY_YOU	Mean Positive Emotionality	Mean Negative Emotionality	Mean Constraint
0	57.14	45.45	51.35
1	58.74	50.31	48.09
2	66.71	48.65	53.95
3	48.59	52.38	55.33
6	51.67	62.89	50.48
9	59.88	36.45	56.03

Officers broken up into chategories of high, low, or not violent. With never having used deadly force labeled “not violent”, having once used deadly force labeled “low” and two or more instances of deadly force use labeled as “high”

Officers by high and low instances of deadly force
High_LOW	Mean Positive Emotionality	Mean Negative Emotionality	Mean Constraint
high	53.89	54.07	53.77
low	58.74	50.31	48.09
notviolent	57.14	45.45	51.35
NA	59.88	36.45	56.03

The above table showing average MPQ scores by instances of deadly force, shows

a high average negative emotionality among officers who have used deadly force.

Officer broken up into high and low instances of deadly force. Therefore, the sub factors of negative emotionality are examined further.

Subfactors of MPQ negative emotionality
High_LOW	Mean Aggression	Mean Stress Reaction	Mean Alienation
high	55.00	52.54	51.04
low	49.19	42.40	57.42
notviolent	45.03	41.94	51.08
NA	39.62	33.71	43.45

PLOT

To further investigate personality differences in officers more prone to violence, a new data frame is created removing “verbal deescalation” , and summarizing the average of the three factors of negative emotionality by weapon group. This decision is made to find out if higher scores within the the subfactors of Negative Emotionality related to weapon use.

Aggression and weapon used in simulation