Physiological Responses to Organizational Stressors Among Police Managers

Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback. 2024 Mar;49(1):85-102. doi: 10.1007/s10484-023-09613-2. Epub 2024 Jan 20.ABSTRACTPolice officers demonstrate increased risk of physical and mental health conditions due to repeated and prolonged exposure to stressful occupational conditions. Occupational stress is broken into two types: operational stress, related to the content of field duties (e.g., physical demands); and organizational stress, related to cultural and structural contexts (e.g., interpersonal relationships). Applied police research focuses on physiological activation in operational tasks as a mechanism explaining health risk and non-optimal performance outcomes. However, recent survey-based studies indicate numerous organizational stressors associated with self-reported mental health symptoms. The question of whether organizational stressors elicit significant physiological activity remains unknown. The current proof-of-concept field study tests the hypothesis that police managers will display significant physiological reactivity before, during, and after engaging in reality-based scenarios representative of stressful police management tasks developed from evidence-based pedagogical approaches. A sample of 25 training police managers (7 female, M = 16 +/- 5.3 years of experience) completed 5 reality-based scenarios, including resolving a heated conflict between colleagues, delivering negative feedback to a subordinate, and critical incident command. Significant increases in he...
Source: Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Source Type: research