professional detachment

or even

clinical empathy?

Dear Julian,

I suggest self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is the extent or strength of one's belief in one's own ability to complete tasks

"Professional detachment means mastering some psychological techniques that detach the person from his emotions during carrying out a project. It is about getting a new attitude towards what happens regardless of its intensity.  This may be called insensitivity but in fact insensitivity is different from being professionally detached.  Professional detachment is about looking at the events from a reasonable distance without being involved directly into action or taking what happens outside as a personal matter.  Setting yourself away from the events and observing them as an observer while they happen prevent uncontrolled emotions in your appearance."

http://www.articlesbase.com/leadership-articles/professional-detachment-in-leadership-and-communication-669393.html

Otherwise, how about "brave"?

Thanks for all the great suggestions. As a result I have been able to do a bit more searching and re-discover the term that I was looking for, "Emotional Labour". Many thanks again!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labour

Hi Renzo, thanks for the comments. I am currently undertaking a systematic review of the literature exploring trauma and emergency telecommunicators (911/ 112 call-takers and dispatchers).One of the themes arrising is emotional labour. But, I think you are right - the term emotional regulation would be more appropriate. If I really want to I can raise the concept of emotional labour in the discussion....

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_regulation for starters.

Thank you for the question., Julian

Yes you refer to emotional labour. Here is a paper about the issue from health carers' perspective:

Sandi Mann, (2005) "A health‐care model of emotional labour: An evaluation of the literature and development of a model", Journal of Health Organization and Management, Vol. 19 Iss: 4/5, pp.304 - 317

The model distinguishes between types of emotional conflict to which emotional labour‐inducing events in health‐care settings lead. The negative and positive consequences to health‐care settings, of emotional labour are outlined.

A functioning police officer is probably not restraining emotions, merely employing different ones to get the job done. If we rely only on conceptual and theoretical models of behaviour in police (or any high-risk) work the only professional detachment is the one we create to protect us from our own intellectual and emotional inadequacies.

As a young psychologist it took time before you learned your emotional labor, it was an active process while being confronted with very unpleasant issues.

In such situations you could also be seeing emotional suppression (of the expression) or modulation of the emotion response taking place, these are different kinds of stress and/or emotion regulation strategies. They're quite adaptive and sound a little bit like your example. Good luck!

Emotional Numbing or Compartimentalization are frequently used in this context

Determinants of using emotional labor

"Societal,occupational, and organizational norms. For example, empirical evidence indicates that in typically "busy" stores there is more legitimacy to express negative emotions, than there is in typically "slow" stores, in which employees are expected to behave accordingly to the display rules and so, that the emotional culture to which one belongs influences the employee's commitment to those rules. Dispositional traits and inner feeling on the job; such as employee's emotional expressiveness, which refers to the capability to use facial expressions, voice, gestures, and body movements to transmit emotions; or the employee's level of career identity (the importance of the career role to one's self-identity), which allows him or her to express the organizationally-desired emotions more easily, (because there is less discrepancy between his or her expressed behavior and emotional experience when engage their work). Supervisory regulation of display rules; That is, Supervisors are likely to be important definers of display rules at the job level, given their direct influence on worker's beliefs about high-performance expectations. Moreover, supervisors' impressions of the need to suppress negative emotions on the job influence the employees' impressions of that display rules"

Rafaeli, A. & Sutton, R. I. 1989. The expression of emotion in organizational life. Research in Organizational Behavior, 11, 1-43.

Grandey, A. A.; Fisk, G.M.; Steiner, D.D. (2005). "Must "service with a smile" be stressful? The moderate role of personal control for American and French employees". 90 (5), 893-904. Personal.psu.edu. 

Friedman, H. S., Prince, L. M., Riggio, R. E., & DiMatteo, R. (1980). Understanding and assessing nonverbal expressiveness: The affective communication test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 333-351.

Wilk, S.L.; Moynihan, L.M. (2005). "Display rule "regulators": The relationship between supervisors and workers emotional exhausion". Academy of Management Journal 44 (5), 1018-1027. 

Diefendorff, J. M., & Richard, E. M. (2003). Antecedents and consequences of emotional display rule perceptions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 284-294.

Based on these references Wikipedia has defined the determinants for using the term emotional labour.

Often, there is a misinterpretation regarding battlefield (or deadly force encounter) psychology that is rooted in the application of the fight or flight model to the stresses of the battlefield. This model holds that in the face of danger, a series of physiological and psychological processes prepare and support the threatened creature for either fighting or fleeing.  The fight or flight dichotomy is the appropriate set of choices for any creature faced with danger from other than its own species.  However, when confronted with aggression from their own species, the set of options expands to include posturing and submission.  The first decision usually involves deciding between fleeing and posturing. When the posture act fails to dissuade an interspecies opponent, the options become fight, flight, or submission.

There may not be a specific term that will help. The best I come up with at this moment is "Acquired Violence Immunity ."  Let me explain, when people become angry, or frightened, they stopped thinking with her forebrain and start thinking with her midbrain (which is indistinguishable from the mind of an animal).  They are literally "scared out of their wits."  The only thing that has any hope of influencing the midbrain is also the only thing that influences the dog: Classical and operant conditioning.

When training warriors, police, firefighters and airline pilots to react to emergencies situations, trainers will use: Precise replication of the stimulus that they will face and then extensive shaping of the desired response to that stimulus. Warrior training is nothing more than stimulus–response, stimulus–response, stimulus-response.  The warrior is trained until the desired response is effortless.  In a deadly force encounter, what is trained to effortlessness becomes automatic. That is how police/warriors interact with chaos (i.e., reacting properly and save lives) vs. react to chaos. Hope this helps.

Often, there is a misinterpretation regarding battlefield (or deadly force encounter) psychology that is rooted in the application of the fight or flight model to the stresses of the battlefield. This model holds that in the face of danger, a series of physiological and psychological processes prepare and support the threatened creature for either fighting or fleeing.  The fight or flight dichotomy is the appropriate set of choices for any creature faced with danger from other than its own species.  However, when confronted with aggression from their own species, the set of options expands to include posturing and submission.  The first decision usually involves deciding between fleeing and posturing. When the posture act fails to dissuade an interspecies opponent, the options become fight, flight, or submission.

There may not be a specific term that will help. The best I come up with at this moment is "Acquired Violence Immunity ."  Let me explain, when people become angry, or frightened, they stopped thinking with her forebrain and start thinking with her midbrain (which is indistinguishable from the mind of an animal).  They are literally "scared out of their wits."  The only thing that has any hope of influencing the midbrain is also the only thing that influences the dog: Classical and operant conditioning.

When training warriors, police, firefighters and airline pilots to react to emergencies situations, trainers will use: Precise replication of the stimulus that they will face and then extensive shaping of the desired response to that stimulus. Warrior training is nothing more than stimulus–response, stimulus–response, stimulus-response.  The warrior is trained until the desired response is effortless.  In a deadly force encounter, what is trained to effortlessness becomes automatic. That is how police/warriors interact with chaos (i.e., reacting properly and save lives) vs. react to chaos. Hope this helps.