Psychosomatic Exhaustion Of The Shanghai Police And Its Influencing Factors

By investigating the burnout of policemen in Shanghai, this research aims to explore the psychological pressure of this special career, analyze how the correlates such as demoraphical factors, coping style, and locus of control influence burnout of this group, and try to construct the theoretical model of burnout of police. On the theoretical basis, the research tries to find the possibility of decreasing the psychological pressure of police officers and give some suggestions to the government. At the same time, the research attempts to testify Leiter & Maslach's theory of burnout by exploring the relation of the three elements of burnout under Chinese culture.Through case study and assessment of burnout, coping style, and locus of control, the results show that (1) the problem of emotional exhaustion in Shanghai police is quite serious, that of cynicism is slight, while they keep quite high professional efficacy; (2) the degree of burnout in different types of police is quite consistent, the differences among them are slight; (3) emotional exhaustion has much relation with cynicism, which results from emotional exhaustion, while both emotional exhaustion and cynicism have little effect on professional efficacy, which supports Leiter' model of burnout; (4) coping style and locus of control have effects on burnout. Problem-focused coping styles do good to relieve the degree of burnout, and emotion-focused coping styles seem to aggravate emotional exhaustion and cynicism. But it seems not to influence professional efficacy. The police who take external locus of control express more emotional exhaustion and cynicism, but that of internal locus of control seems to have little effect on burnout.According to the results, the study gives the following advice: (1) help the police know more about burnout and learn to adjust himself to work; (2) advance the applications of psychology in police governments; (3) try best to utilize personnel reasonably in allocation and regulation; (4) establish good relations within colleagues and strengthen the connection with the crowd; (5) construct scientific behavior system in advance.