Organizational Psychology

The problem of deviant behavior of internal affairs officers remains relevant, and its causes are explained by many authors by professional deformation related to the specifics and service life. Studies of adolescent deviant behavior and aggressive communication between employees in businesss how that malevolent creativity and low emotional intelligence can play an important role in thiscase. Purpose. The aim of the study was to study the features of malevolent creativity and emotional intelligence of police officers of different levels of education and service experience. Methodology.The sample consisted of students of the St. Petersburg University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia (N = 59; 34 of them are men; 48 with higher education; with service experience up to five years (n = 35) and over five years inclusive (n = 18) and cadets of second and third year of study (n = 26). We used the aggression questionnaires of A. Bass and M. Perry, the self-assessment questionnaires “EmIn”, “Mac-IV”, “NEO-FFI” and the questionnaire “Behavioral features of malevolent creativity” adapted from the Russian sample. Hypotheses about differences in the levels of malevolent creativityand emotional intelligence were tested: 1) between police officers with higher education and cadets; 2) between police officers with different service experience. Findings. The results obtained partially confirmed the hypotheses: there were no significant differences in the level of malevolent creativity between all subsamples; samples of police officers (both with higher education and with different service experience) significantly differed from cadets with higher values of understanding emotions. Also, the sub-sample of ATS employees with more than years of service experience significantly differedin low values of the Big Five “Cooperation” trait compared to those who served for less than five years,and ATS employees with secondary education are less hostile compared to employees with higher education. The following features of malevolent creativity were identified: hostility was the predictor for the cadets, and “Cooperation” was the predictor for the rest of the subsamples. Conclusions aredrawn that the Big Five trait “Cooperation” is important in the deviant behavior of police officers, and “professional five aggression”, detected in the framework of the diagnosis of professional personal deformity of police officers, may have a more complex nature: it may be a consequence of personaltraits and hostility (the cognitive component of aggression). The values of the results. The revealedcontribution of predictors to the behavior that characterizes professional aggression should be taken into account when professional psychological selection and monitoring of psychological characteristics of cadets of higher education institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and employees of internalaffairs bodies.