title: Personality of South African police trainees.
abstract: There have been efforts to identify a "police personality" based on dispositional and socialization models. Personality traits of successful police applicants at the Police College in Pretoria, South Africa (N = 1,145 police trainees), with regard to sex, ethnic group, and English language reading skills, were described in terms of scores on the Temperament and Character Inventory. South African police trainees generally evaluated themselves as substantially lower in Novelty Seeking and Harm Avoidance combined with lower Cooperativeness, but they scored much higher on Self-Directedness, Persistence, and Self-Transcendence compared to South African university students from the same area. These are characteristics expected from future police officers, which supports the dispositional model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Pretoria.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Du Preez
authors.forename: Nafisa
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Cassimjee
authors.forename: Mehdi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ghazinour
authors.forename: Lars Erik
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Lauritz
authors.forename: Jörg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Richter
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016495:Police / Q000193:education*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012737:Sex Factors; D012945:Social Values; D013019:South Africa; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*