Appearance of the Law Enforcement Officer as a Component of the Professional Self-Conception

Abstract

The article is devoted to one of the most current psychology issues in general and of the legal psychology in particular – the issue of influence of psychological characteristics of appearance into the personality of the law enforcement officer. Formation of a positive professional self-conception has a special importance for the law enforcement officer as a positive self-attitude, self-respect, inherent value and self-relevance make the basis for the personal professionalism, promote its successful self-realization in the occupation and form a positive reputation of the law enforcement officer in the opinion of the population. The purpose of the article is to investigate the state of studying the problem of interrelation between the psychological characteristics of appearance of the law enforcement officer and the other self-conception components. Methodology. The main method of investigation is a theoretical analysis of the leading scientists’ works on the specified theme. The methodological basis is the work of L. Bozhovich, G. Kostyuk, A. Leontiev, S. Maksimenko, K. Platonov, V. Rybalka, S. Rubinstein and other prominent researchers. The article provides with the analyzed works of the leading authors devoted to studying personal peculiarities of the law enforcement officer, key characteristics of the law enforcement officer’s personality have been defined that are by all means important at any of its professionalization stage. The notions of the self-conception, the image of a physical self as a core component of the personality’s self-conception, a place of the person’s appearance in the structure of the body image and its meaning for the formation of a positive professional self-conception in general and the person’s professional self have been determined. The structure of the person’s appearance as the leading body image component has been specified. Based on the works of the leading scientists, the main psychological deviations that may occur at the disorder of the personality’s perception of its own appearance have been analyzed. The meaning of the body image for a harmonic formation of the personality at different stages of its ontogenesis (developmental age, early teens and mature age) has been defined.The focus has been given to investigation of peculiarities of the law enforcement officers’ personality in terms of the gender aspect. The peculiarities of formation the characteristics of the law enforcement officer’s appearance as imagined by the population have been presented. The attention has been drawn to the importance of pertinent perception of the law enforcement officer’s appearance related to the professional activity and interpersonal relations. The scientific novelty of the investigation is defined by the fact that the appearance of the law enforcement officer as well as its influence into the formation of a harmonic professional self-conception at the stage of current investigations was studied only indirectly or by description. Conclusions. In particular, it was found that in the structure of the personality of a law enforcement officer, special attention of researchers was devoted to the problem of the professional self-concept, professional self and professional development, while the issues of psychological characteristics of the appearance of law enforcement officers were not subject to targeted study, which creates the prospect of further research.

Keywords: the professional self-conception; the personality’s appearance; the law enforcement officer; the image of the physical self; the body image; the personality.