Police Hostage (Crisis) Negotiators in the US: A National Survey
The purpose of this research was to gather information about the callout experience, personality, cognitive emotion regulation, and decision make styles of active police hostage negotiators. It also sought to learn if hostage negotiators were different than the general population and a police officer not trained as a negotiator in each of these domains. The current study examined the above variables by surveying 514 active negotiators from 119 city, county, state, and other law enforcement agencies from 38 states using the Big 5 personality inventory, the Cognitive Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) and General Decision Making Style (GDMS) questionnaire and found a distinct Big 5 police personality profile and ways of cognitive emotional regulation different from the general population. Other descriptive and correlational findings and implications for the training and selection of future police hostage negotiators are also discussed.