Many U.S. police departments face a serious recruiting and staffing crisis, which has spurred a re-examination of recruitment methods. In a new study, researchers drew on the field of intergroup communication to analyze how police are portrayed in recruitment materials to determine whether humanizing efforts make a difference. The study found that presenting officers in human terms boosted participants' interest in policing as a career.
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), Texas State University (TXST), Arizona State University, and the University of Texas at Austin. It appears in Criminology & Public Policy, a publication of the American Society of Criminology.
"Applying principles from intergroup communication can help law enforcement agencies develop recruiting materials that humanize the police and promote a shared identity with police officers, thereby attracting a larger and more potentially diverse pool of candidates," says Shawn L. Hill, a graduate student in communications at UCSB, who led the study.
Prior studies have suggested that how an organization portrays itself influences how people see themselves fitting into the organization and their intent to apply for jobs with that organization. Therefore, it is thought that one way to reach groups that may not readily identify with police officers is to introduce a more human side of policing into recruitment efforts.
Using a randomized survey experiment and the social identity approach, in this study, researchers tested the effects of humanizing how officers are portrayed in a recruiting video against a more traditional, action-oriented portrayal.
In March and April 2024, researchers showed police recruiting videos to more than 300 undergraduate students in criminal justice and psychology classes at a large public university in the southwest United States; participants were mostly female and represented a range of races and ethnicities, The videos varied in how a female police officer described her career and her personal life. Researchers then measured the extent to which each approach influenced participants' general attitudes toward police and specific attitudes toward working in policing.
Exposure to the humanizing video had a significant positive effect on respondents' shared identity with police, but not on their institutional trust in police, the study found. Shared identity and institutional trust both had significant positive effects on respondents' interest in a policing career.
These findings suggest that when police recruiting materials humanize police officers, portraying them not only as crime fighters, but as people interested in serving their community and with rewarding and balanced personal lives, they increase the extent to which potential candidates perceive a sense of shared identity with police officers. That sense of shared identity, in turn, promotes greater interest in a policing career.
"Focusing on shared identities with community members can make police officers appear more personal and relatable, which may help counter the negative effects of conventional stereotypes," notes Laure Brimbal, assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at TXST, who coauthored the study.
Among the study's limitations, the authors note that criminal justice students may have a pre-existing interest in policing or related professions, which could affect their responses to the recruiting materials used in the study. In addition, the approach tested involved a video that featured one officer and one agency, so the authors were unable to infer how their results might differ in research involving other officers or agencies.
Portions of the study were supported by the National Institute of Justice's Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science (LEADS) Scholars Program.
