Cynicism Amongst Military Police Personnel in Western Europe

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Abstract
Military Policemen, Special Investigators and Warrant/Commissioned Officers were asked to respond to a questionnaire based on the original scale developed by Niederhoffer for research on cynicism among police, but adjusted to a military setting. A group of trainees acted as a control group for purposes of comparison. The Warrant/Commissioned Officers reflected a degree of cynicism similar to the control group. The NCO-MPs came out significantly higher in their cynicism scores, while the Special Agents deviated equally in the opposite direction. A finding of an unusually high degree of cynicism among MPs during their first two years of service was incongruent with prior research (but this may be attributed to the unique setting of these NCOs in Western Europe). After the third year of service, cynicism was shown to increase in proportion to years of service. Both military rank and duty assignments were found to be influential variables which lessened cynicism after the initial adjustment period. As expected, military law enforcement personnel with college backgrounds were consistently more cynical than those with only high school diplomas. However, a mixed response was found when awards were included as a variable. MPs who had received awards tended to be more cynical, while Special Agents were less so, and Commissioned Officers showed no difference at all, indicating a strong interaction effect. A stepwise regression analysis confirmed these observations, albeit with weak effects.