Psychology Commons^™

"Is This Really A Police Station? Police Department Exteriors And Judgments Of Authority, Professionalism, And Approachability.", Ashley Clinton, Ann Sloan Devlin

Psychology Faculty Publications

This study examined the relationship between exteriors of police department facilities and participants’ ratings of the buildings’ authority, professionalism, and approachability. After a pilot study, research was conducted with 122 participants who were undergraduate students from a small, liberal arts college in the Northeast. On each of three characteristics (authority, professionalism, and approachability), participants rated 16 color images of police departments located in the United States. The façade ratings for each characteristic were then categorized into factors through factor analyses. There were three factors for authority (Ineffectual, Strong, and Outdated); three for professionalism (Unskilled, Non-traditional, and Governmental); and four for …