Psychological Peculiarities of Students’ Commitment to Service at Educational Institutions of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs

Introduction. The article discusses the problem of the formation of law enforcement officers’ commitment to service. The commitment among other factors contributes to the effectiveness of performing professional and service tasks and increases personal reliability. The aim of the research was to assess the characteristics of the loyal behaviour and psychological peculiarities of value spheres of cadets of an educational organization of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs according to the level of loyaty. Materials and Methods. The empirical study via methods of psychodiagnostics and k-means cluster analysis resulted in specifying two groups of respondents (cadets of an educational organization): with high and with low levels of loyalty. The data was compared through the methods of mathematical statistics and Student’s t-test. The survey included 60 cadets of a law university. Results and Discussion. Psychological mechanisms of loyalty are considered within the framework of the attitude approach, which allows analyzing the role of basic personal values in loyal professional behavior of the subject of activity. The study examines affective, normative and continued loyalty, terminal basic values, value spheres and types of loyalty. The research identifies reliable differences between the values of people with high and low level of loyalty. Conclusions. Commitment to service proves to be an important factor in providing reliability of the law enforcement officers’ activity. Its level depends on psychological formation of basic personal values of a subject. The study found out that high level of commitment to service is determined by emotional commitment to the profession and professional values, orientation towards the norms of the organization and traditions of organizational culture, loyal attitude to work.