TITLE:
Emotional Empathy, Social Distance and Attitude of Police Officers towards People with Mental Illness
AUTHORS:
Olusola I. Akinbobola, Sheba Y. Zugwai
KEYWORDS:
Emotional Empathy, Social Distance, Attitude towards the Mentally Ill, Stigmatisation, Police Officers
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.10 No.6,
May
15,
2019
ABSTRACT: People with mental illness are generally stigmatized. This study therefore specifically investigated the relationship between emotional empathy, social distance and attitude towards mental illness by police officers who interface with people with mental illness in the course of duty. A total of 300 police officers comprising of 148 (49.3%) males and 152 (50.7%) females were selected from the Police Training College Ikeja, Lagos State. This study adopted a cross sectional survey using purposive sampling technique. The instruments for data collection were structured psychological scales which are the multi-dimensional emotional empathy scale, social distance scale and community attitude toward mental illness scale. Data collected were analysed using multiple regression and independent t test. The result indicated that emotional empathy and its dimensions (suffering, positive sharing, responsive crying, emotional attention, feel for others, emotional contagion) and social distance had significant joint influence on attitude towards people with mental illness [F (7,292) = 2.85, P P P P