Modeling Physical Symptoms Based on Stressful Organizational Variables with the Mediation of Personality Traits in Police Officers

Due to their stressful work conditions, police forces are always exposed to serious dangers that affect their physical and mental health. The aim of this study was to determine the fit of the structural model of the relationship between physical symptoms and stressful organizational variables mediated by personality traits in a group of police officers.

The statistical population of this study included all the male police officers in Tehran with at least three years of service in 2019, from among whom 300 people were selected using the cluster sampling method. The data collection instruments were a screening questionnaire for physical symptoms, the short form of the Iranian Police Stress Scale, the short form of the NEO Personality Questionnaire and a structured clinical interview to assess DSM-5 (SCID-5) disorders, which had acceptable validity and reliability indices. The obtained data were analyzed using structural equation method with the help of SPSS and PLS (version 2) software.

The results of the structural equation modeling confirmed the mediating role of personality traits in the relationship between stressful organizational variables and physical symptoms, and the personality traits of extraversion, dutifulness and agreeability are effective in the relationship between personality and physical symptoms. Also, the relationship between the personality traits of neuroticism, agreeability, dutifulness and openness to experience with stressful organizational variables and also the relationship between the personality traits of neuroticism and openness to experience with physical symptoms were not significant. Non-mission organizational variables had the greatest impact on physical symptoms.

Given the nature of the police job and the tensions that people face in this job, if police officers have high rates of extroversion, dutifulness and agreeability, and low neuroticism, they will adapt their responses to life events according to the stressful situations. Accordingly, they will regulate the emotions resulting from stressful organizational variables in order to provide appropriate responses to environmental demands and control tensions and stresses, and create psychological adaptation to the needs, stresses and requirements of life and can better prevent the effects of organizational stress on physical symptoms. Therefore, it can be concluded that if a person has organizational tensions, they are less likely to develop physical symptoms and have lower perception of stress if they have certain personality traits.