The Emotionally Intelligent Officer? Exploring Decision-Making
Style and Emotional Intelligence in Hostage and Crisis
Negotiators and Non-Negotiator-Trained Police Officers
Amy Rose Grubb
1,2
&
Sarah J. Brown
3
&
Peter Hall
1
Published online: 20 July 2017
#
Society for Police and Criminal Psychology 2017
Abstract The research described in this article explores
decision-making styles and levels of emotional intelli-
gence displayed by police hostage and crisis negotiators
in the UK. One hundred and seventeen negotiators from
21 police forces took part in the research, and their data
were compared with 118 non-negotiator-trained police of-
ficers and 203 university students. Participants completed
the General Decision-Making Style Questionnaire (Scott
and Bruce Educ Psychol Meas 55(5):818-831, 1995)and
the Emotional Intelligence Inventory (Gignac 2008), with
data analysed using multivariate analysis of covariance
(MANCOVA) and t tests. When controlling for the effects
of age and social desirability, significant differences were
found between both police samples and the student sam-
ple. All police officers displayed significantly lower levels
of avoidant decision-making and significantly higher
levels of overall emotional intelligence than students and
these findings were also reflected within certain facets of
emotional intelligence, specifically. These findings pro-
vide support for the existence of a unique ‘police officer
profile’, but fail to support the premise of a distinct ‘hos-
tage and crisis negotiator profile’ within the UK police
population. The findings are discussed with relevance to
the practice of hostage and crisis negotiation and future
research directions.
Keywords Hostage and crisis negotiator
.
Hostage and crisis
negotiation
.
Decision-making style
.
Emotional intelligence
.
Police officer selection
Introduction
Police hostage and crisis negotiators (HCNs) may encounter
an infinite number of varying situations during the perfor-
mance of their role, which may range from dealing with an
individual who is in crisis to negotiating with someone who
has taken a person, or persons hostage. There is accumulating
evidence to suggest that negotiation is an effective police tool
(McMains and Mullins 2001;Regini2002) and that the use of
negotiation can result in an increased likelihood of successful
peaceful resolution of both hostage and crisis incidents (Flood
2003). However, there is limited empirical research that iden-
tifies the characteristics and competencies of HCNs or the
skills that are specifically linked to performance within this
often complex role (see Grubb and Brown 2012; Grubb et al.
2015;Grubb2016). Police HCNs need to be able to respond
effectively and efficiently within a variety of stressful and
often highly emotive environments, and it is likely that several
constructs/characteristics aid performance by either facilitat-
ing operational tasks associated with the role or helping to
mitigate the stress experienced by HCNs whilst ‘in theatre’.
Currently, it is unclear whether these characteristics are likely
to be relevant to all serving police officers, or whether the
competencies of effective HCNs differ to the rest of the
non-negotiator-trained police community. The current re-
search attempts to address this question by exploring
whether officers that are trained as HCNs differ in relation
* Amy Rose Grubb
a.grubb@worc.ac.uk
1
School of Psychological, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Coventry
University, Coventry, UK
2
Present address: Psychology Unit, Institute of Health and Society,
University of Worcester, Henwick Grove, Worcester WR2 6AJ, UK
3
Centre for Research in Psychology, Behaviour and Achievement,
Coventry University, Coventry, UK
J Police Crim Psych (2018) 33:123–136
DOI 10.1007/s11896-017-9240-2
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