And if the uniform is brown and the person is wearing shorts, you are likely speaking to a UPS carrier. Looking for an attorney who can look past the color of your shirt?
Contact us today if you have questions or believe your constitutional or criminal rights have been violated. We stand ready to provide our clients with trusted representation and accurate information regarding the law and its application to their individualized case. Why are Law Enforcement Uniforms so….
August 22, August Criminal Defense. Add to Compare. Filters Category. Price Range. Compare Products. Remove This Item Compare. Personnel administrators who were asked to rate the competency of similar female job applicants consistently rated the women in conservative, slightly-masculine attire as the most competent.
In another study, both high school students and teachers were asked to rate, pictures of female athletes, some of whom were in uniform and the others in casual street clothes, All of the athletes were perceived as being more professional, possessing higher ability, and having more team spirit when viewed in uniform.
Both students and teachers have also rated photos of students in private school-type uniforms as having higher scholastic ability. The police uniform serves to identify a person as one vested with the powers of the state to arrest and use force. The uniform also serves to establish order and conformity within the ranks of those who wear it by suppressing individuality. The psychological and physical impact of the police uniform should not be underestimated.
Depending on the background of the citizen, the police uniform can elicit emotions ranging from pride and respect, to fear and anger. In one study people who were asked to rank order 25 different occupational uniforms by several categories of feelings.
The test subjects consistently ranked the police uniform as the one most likely to induce feelings of safety. In another experiment, models were consistently rated as more competent, reliable, intelligent and helpful when pictured in a police uniform than they were in casual street clothes.
Drivers were also found to commit far fewer turn violations at an intersection if a person wearing a police-style uniform was standing on the sidewalk near the corner. This occurred even though the uniform was not that of a real police department in the area and had no badge or weapons. One interesting experiment to test the power of the police uniform was conducted by psychologist Dr. Leonard Bickman. Pedestrians on a city street were approached at random and ordered by a research assistant to either pick up a paper bag, give a dime to another person, or step back from a bus stop.
The research assistant was alternately dressed in casual street clothes, a milkman uniform, or a grey, police-style uniform bearing a badge but lacking weapons. Obedience to the police-style uniform usually continued even after the research assistant quickly walked away and did not watch to ensure compliance.
Photographs of uniformed male and female police officers were evaluated wearing nine different styles of head gear, including no hat at all. Even though psychological tests showed that the officers were perceived to have authority under all of the circumstances, the type of hat varied the level of authority attributed to the officer.
The traditional "bus driver" garrison cap and the "smoky bear" campaign hat were found to convey more authority than the baseball cap or no hat at all. Many studies have looked at the influence of eliminating the paramilitary style of the police uniform. In one experiment students viewed black and white drawings of three styles of police uniforms. Two of the uniforms were of a traditional paramilitary-style, but were lacking a duly belt or weapons.
The third, nontraditional uniform involved a sport coat blazer over slacks, and a shirt with a tie. Although all three uniforms were rated similarly for objectivity and trustworthiness, the blazer style uniform rated slightly higher for professionalism. However a similar experiment using color photos found the traditional, paramilitary style uniforms rated as more honest, good, helpful, and competent than the blazer uniform. In , the police in Menlo Park, California, dispensed with their traditional navy blue, paramilitary-style uniforms and adopted a nontraditional uniform in hopes of improving police community relations.
The new, nontraditional uniform consisted of a forest green sport coat blazer worn over black slacks, a white shirt, and a black tie. After wearing the new uniforms for 18 months, the Menlo Park police officers displayed fewer authoritarian characteristics on psychological tests when compared to officers in the surrounding jurisdictions. These changes were originally thought to have been a result of the uniform changes but there were other factors at work at die same time.
The number of college-educated officers in the department increased dramatically and the traditional autocratic management style of the department was abolished during this same time period. In , after wearing the blazer style uniform for eight years, the Menlo Park Police Department realized that the sport coat uniform did not command respect and returned to a traditional, paramilitary-style uniform.
A final evaluation showed that although assaults on officers had dropped during the first 18 month of wearing the new uniforms, the number of assaults steadily began to rise again until the rate was double that of the year before the uniform change occurred. During the four years after the Menlo Park police returned to a traditional uniform, the number of assaults against their officers dropped steadily.
The experiments with the hats and the style of the police uniform suggest that changes in the style of a police uniform can have an effect on the perceived authority, power, and ability to control. What about the color of the police uniform? Does the color of the uniform psychologically influence the people who view it? Does the color have an influence on the officer who is wearing the uniform?
The majority of police uniforms in the United States today are produced in darker colors such as black, blue, brown, green, and grey.
Psychological tests have found that people associate colors with specific moods. For example, red is generally associated with excitement and stimulation, thus explaining why it is often a color in flashing emergency vehicle lights.
These tests have also found that the color blue is associated with feelings of security and comfort, and black is most often associated with power and strength. Studies of both high school and college students in the United States have found that students perceived light colors such as white and yellow as weak, but also good and active. The same students perceived dark colors such as black and brown as strong and passive, but also as bad.
These results were not based on cultural influences because they did not vary with the race of the students. Across all cultures that have been studied, light colors are consistently associated with goodness and weakness, while dark colors are consistently perceived as strong but evil. On psychological inventories, test subjects rate lighter colors as more pleasant and less dominant.
Dark colors on the other hand elicit emotions of anger, hostility, dominance, and aggression. Color has a considerable impact on clothing and perceptions of the wearer. Clothing color was found as the most common determinant when people rated pictures of models for attractiveness.
Job applicants wearing dark business suits were perceived as more powerful and competent than those who wore lighter suits. Another interesting study found that referees who viewed several videotaped plays of a football game were more likely to assess stiffer penalties against a football team wearing a black uniform than a team wearing a brightly colored uniform.
The referees consistently perceived the team in black as more aggressive. This experiment was supported by an analysis of all professional football and hockey teams in the U. Again these results suggest that teams in darker uniforms were perceived negatively by the referees.
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