Two Case Studies for Police Officers Essay -- essays research papers

In life there are a dish out of issues that involve social psychology. organism a police ships ships officer is a profession that matchs a lot of social psychology issues. One issue that all police officers have to encounter is prejudice. Police officers have to not be prejudiced against the citizens that they are trying to protect and serve the criminals that they must apprehend and also against each other. Two parapraxis studies that will be discussed are prejudice against female police officers by their male counterparts and racial prejudice against potential criminals. Youre a female cop. You acquire to your precinct fifteen minutes before you scheduled time to prepare yourself for the day, and you patiently wait for your partner to arrive. Fifteen minutes after your scheduled time, your partner shows up. Although he did not call ahead of time, your captain did not reprimand him for his actions. You clear mad at this because, just last week when you did call and say you w ould be a little late, you still got yelled at by the same captain for being late and your job position was threatened.As youre reveal on patrol, you noticed a small brawl between two men starting to form in front of a corner store. You swear your partner slightly the possible fight and instruct him to pull over so you can see whats going on. As the two of you get out of the car he says, You should stay in the car there could be weapons involved and I dont know if you can compensate that. You inform him that you have been working for the police force for over six years and have had to deal with situations far worse than this. He then tells you that this is a mans job and if he needs help he will call you for back up. Instead of fighting with him, you get back in the car up to now madder because of the comments he made about you. You sit in the car thinking if you were another male cop then it would not have been a problem, but since you are a female, there is a stereotype set u pon you that you are weaker then he is and could not share the situation. While thinking about this, you notice in the rearview mirror that your partner seems to be having some problems. As you get out of the car, you call for some backup just in campaign the situation gets out of hand. As you rush to his aid, he falls to the ground after being struck by one of the assailants. After a laconic fight between the two assa... ...he officer already has beliefs about this suspect he will treat the suspect a certain way. The way that the officer asks the suspect the questions, may lead the suspect to act in a different manner than he normally would have, and if the suspect acts the way that the police officer expected him too, because of his race, then the theory of self-fulfilling prophesy is very present. Also, the illusionary correlation, which is when a person over-estimates the association between variables that are only slightly or not at all related, (Brehm, Kassin, & Fein, 2005 ), may have come into play. Since the officer already used prejudice to associate the man with the crime, the fact that he is Hispanic and was close may make him a suspect, but there is no hard evidence. As a police officer there are a lot of social psychological factors that come into play every day. You must constantly be helping people, not discriminating, unbiased in every way, and of course tutelage an open mind at all times. All of the theories presented here should be taught to police officers, while they are in training, to help them to be able to handle these situations if any arise.