Social intelligence of police officers in the context of their communicative competence

Professional work of police officers focuses on a variety of tasks, including patrolling the city and expediting on-call challenges, reaction to traffic violations, prevention of offenses, their detection and response to them, etc. Permanent interaction with the population in the course of performing professional duties requires the police to develop a certain level of communication skills. Interaction with representatives of different layers of society can often be accompanied by conflicts and manipulations in communication. Police officers point to insufficient formation of their communicative competencies, as well as to their professional vulnerability in performing tasks in certain situations of interpersonal interaction. The objective of the paper is to empirically study the features of social intelligence for future police officers with different levels of communicative tolerance. The authors used the questionnaire "General communicative tolerance" (V. Boiko) and the "Social intelligence" test (G. Gilford in the adaptation of O. Mikhailova) as a psycho-diagnostic tool. The sample consisted of 132 trainees from the institute of postgraduate education of Kharkiv National University of Internal Affairs. It is theoretically justified that communication in the professional activity of a police officer plays an important role, communicative tolerance is a necessary internal regulator of communication and behaviour within the police activity, and social intelligence in the professional activity of a police officer is a kind of psychological resource for professional development and self-development in the context of his communicative competence. It is noted that the professional activity of a police officer should be regulated not only exclusively by professional standards, standards of conduct contained in laws, orders and instructions, but also by ethical norms, customs and traditions, public opinion and social expectations in society, in turn, it requires a special professionally oriented social intelligence of the future police officers. The authors have empirically established differences in the manifestations of social intelligence among trainees with different levels of communicative tolerance, which is to determine the deficiency of ability to predict the consequences of the behaviour of other people, to understand the logic of development of interaction situations and the ability to highlight key features in a variety of human non-verbal responses in subjects with low levels. The obtained results actualize the need to develop and implement practical recommendations on the formation of communicative competence among future police officers at the stage of their professional training.