Introduction. The article deals with the job satisfaction, subjective well-being, basic beliefs and stressful life of law enforcement officers. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to analyse the factors influencing police officers’ positive self-perception in order to improve their psychological health, subjective well-being as well as police officers service.
Methods. The participants of the study were 60 law enforcement officers, aged 30.21 ± 5.30 serving 7.2 ± 8.41 years in the Russian police. The research methods include an anonymous questionnaire, “Methodology of diagnostics of integral job satisfaction”, “Scale of subjective well-being”, “Satisfaction with life scale”, “Subjective happiness scale”, “Personal beliefs scale”, “Stressfulness of life”. Statistical processing of the results was carried out by methods of a descriptive, comparative and correlation analysis.
Results. The study found that 34% of police officers are characterised by a high and moderate level of stress, low life satisfaction, belief that people around them are unfriendly, as well as a low level of subjective happiness. 40% of police officers believe that they are not always able to control their life events, 16% have low confidence in success, 12% of respondents consider the world around them to be unfair, and 10% are convinced of their inability to cope with their life difficulties. Police officers’ satisfaction with their professional activity and career achievements decreases rapidly along with age and work experience. Their social contacts become more limited. Too much stress and unfair punishment reduce the feeling of well-being and job satisfaction. Subjective well-being is positively correlated with basic beliefs about the world’s friendliness and fairness, self-esteem, good fortune, and self-control. Satisfaction with life and the level of health are high among people whose importance of the performed duties prevails over the amount of rewards. In order to increase subjective well-being and job satisfaction of police officers, methods of positive psychology, cognitive-behavioural, rational-emotive, pathogenetic psychotherapy, body-oriented, client-centred, and gestalt therapy can be used.