The Sensation Seeking Scale was administered to 69 patrol officers of a suburban police department to investigate the relationship between sensation seeking and officers' tendencies to engage in high-speed vehicular pursuit. Pursuit tendencies were measured by official departmental records, self-reports of previous pursuits, and responses to two hypothetical situations. The official records and self-report measures of pursuit were found to correlate significantly with sensation seeking. It was concluded that attention to personality differences may help supervisors implement a more predictable pursuit policy.
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