Temporal Peculiarities of Fatigue in Law Enforcement Officers

Introduction. The objective is to reveal the connections of fatigue with time orientation, functions and attitudes to time in officers with different levels of fatigue. Materials and Methods. The respondents were 187 law enforcement officers. The surveyed included 90 students of initial training at the St. Petersburg University of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as 97 current officers with service experience from 1 to 10 years, who had advanced training at the St. Petersburg University of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. We used a set of authors’ psychodiagnostic questionnaires: «Subjective assessment of personality fatigue level», «Scale of subjective attitude to time», «Subjective assessment of time orientation» and the questionnaire «Assessment of temporal type of personality». Statistical methods included the analysis of primary descriptive statistics, regression and comparative analysis. Results and Discussion. The officers with a low level of fatigue have a plastic attitude to time in combination with a mobilising function of time and a resource time orientation with a dominant orientation to the present; the officers with a moderate level of fatigue are characterized by time dependence — a biased attitude to time that performs a limiting function and a fixed time orientation with a dominant orientation to the future; the officers with a high level of fatigue are characterized by indifferent attitude with a suppressing function of time and a fixed temporal orientation with a dominant orientation to the past. Conclusions. Attitude to time, temporal orientation and functions of time act as determinants of fatigue, the most significant among which are temporal dependence (biased attitude to time), limiting and suppressing functions of time, and fixed temporal orientation to the past and future.