Introduction
An emotional dissonance is an internal form of stress caused by existing real-life threats and possible dangers involved like police or correctional officers jobs. Their professions demand unique strategies and skills in handling precarious situations such as confronting armed persons. They have to deal with cases of interpersonal hostility and physical confrontations from the emotionally charged persons such as victims of crime or accidents.
Severe suffering and deaths are also common encounters in their career. Stress associated with the job or what one has to deal with in the daily tasks has a huge impact on mental status and may end up affecting social or personal lifestyles. The critical situation that occurs in our lives is rigid to eliminate from the mind since the occurrences keep resonating in the mind since we fail to let go of such trauma associated with the disturbing event. Sharing and therapy sessions are the best professional procedures for such occurrences.
According to Zapf (p.7), “Emotional dissonance refers to the structural discrepancy between emotions on one hand and the emotional-display requirement that is appropriate in the working context on the other.” Long-term interaction with such severe cares is the main cause of emotional burnout of these professionals. Job-related stressors correlate strongly with emotions, compared to physical challenges.
Contrary, it is arguable that job-related tasks such as dealing with aggressive delinquents are not the main cause of mental dissonance. The situation comes in due to organization-related constrains such as the inadequate form of supervision, stiff rules or policies, workload, inadequate management systems, and insufficient payment (Gaines and Miller, p.154). This is the main reason why this topic requires deeper study and analysis.
Police force work situations
Mostly, police force personnel have to respond to surveillance calls, suspect arrests, and alert calls from the public. These trained police and correctional officers ought to remain solid, neutral, and in control of personal emotions at all times. They must suppress personal emotions during the performance of duty, for instance when dealing with conflict circumstances.
How can you manipulate aggressive situations and still express understanding and compassion to crime victims? One of the requirements is the ability to switch from disciplinary reactions to human expressive nature during duty, similar to the positive expressions put on by physicians or nurses as they attend to patients.
According to Porta et al (p.29), managing to uphold a professional attitude during such challenging tasks is one of the main sources of emotional dissonance among these officers. In line with Zapf (p.13), “several scholars have argued that regulation of emotions as part of the work role may also be stressful and detrimental to health.” Emotional dissonance can, therefore, have a close connection to both the negative and positive career requirements due to different stress-related effects.
The police force personnel face discrepancies are pertaining requirements to display the right form of emotions during service and authentic emotions due to career-related demands. Requirements to suppress true emotions or feelings are a detriment on the emotional well-being of an individual and affect their structural divergence, depending on the situation.
This is a critical demand for personal other than professional ability to manage individual control. In line with Gaines and Miller (p.154), “the suppression of work-related emotions, which demand neutrality in emotional expression among police and correctional officers, has been a major source of stress.”
Inhibiting emotions and lack of ability to express depressing sentiments are associable to mentally related conditions such as emotional dissonances as well as physical complications like cancer or high blood pressure (Zapf, p.7). Emotional dissonance occurs among employees who experience interactive related situations. Also, the police jobs demand a dissimilar form of emotional reactions over different situations.
The need to regulate emotions elevates the levels of mental dissonance depending on job requirements especially amid the felt sentiments, which must contradict professional emotions demanded by a situation. In line with Gaines and Miller (p.154), emotional dissonance is the root cause of job-related exhaustion and cynicism. Emotions are very important qualities in business for the reason that they determine organizational outcomes.
For instance, marketing demands excellence in public relation skills such as good responses and an appealing facial expression regardless of the situation. Sales clerks are the main sales-determining factors as opposed to the product or service. Customer satisfaction depends on the display of positive emotions. It is however rare to find a products personnel dealing with physically aggressive clients.
Conclusion
The psychological effects associable to emotional fatigue causes various negative outcomes within the police force profession. Demand for controlled personality causes organization related burnout thus leading to performance failures, elevated absenteeism and negative reactions towards affirmative situations. Most of the sick-related absences have a link to stress cases. Job specifications or requirements rarely indicate the exclusive inclusion of requirements while dealing with emotional tasks.
These are extra roles that the police force personnel acquire, mainly during training to maintain good performance levels. Arguably, they react unprofessionally due to emotional exhaustion caused by pressure from work, or failure to conceal true feeling to victims. Psychological related conditions are not easy to detect and take care of especially when the victim is accustomed to concealing true feelings.
Works Cited
Gaines, Larry, and Miller Roger. Criminal Justice in Action. Kentucky, KY: Cengage Learning, 2008. Print.
Porta, Donatella, Peterson, Abby, and Reiter, Herbert. The policing of transnational protest. Vermont, VT: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006. Print.
Zapf, Dieter. Emotion work and psychological strain: A review of the literature and some conceptual considerations. Human Resource Management Review, 12 (2002): 237–268. Print.