A03 Psychologists for Forensic Psychology Flashcards
Research support for the effectiveness of top-down approach; customer satisfcation and solving
A03: The Top-Down Approach
✩ Snook found that Canadian major crime officers agreed that criminal profiling helps solve 94% of cases and is a valuable investigative tool.
✩ Positive customer feedback through customer satisfaction surveys would suggest that detectives feel offender profiling is effective in helping with their work.
Alison provides contradictory evidence for the effectiveness of top-down approach.
A03: The Top-Down Approach
✩ Alison argues that many of the predictions in profile are ambigious.
✩ Alison gave two groups of police detectives the same profile, but each group was provided with the details of two very different offenders. In each group, 75% rated the profile as somewhat accurate and 50% as generally/very accurate.
✩ This suggests that police are adding meaning to what are ambiguous statements and is an extension of Barnum effect (whereby vague evidence of the crime could be manipulated to fit characteristics of particular type of offender).
Evidence does not support the existence of a ‘disorganised offender’
A03: The Top-Down Approach
✩ Canter et al used smallest space analysis and analysed data from 100 murderers in the USA.
✩ The details of each case were examined using 39 characteristics that were ‘typical’ of organised and disorganised offenders. The findings showed evidence of a distinct organised type, but not for disorganised.
✩ Therefore, it appears that the classification of the ‘disorganised’ offender has very little basis in reality according to his findings.
Effective in real-life applications
A03: The Top-Down Approach
No Psychologist; real individual
✩ By using the organised/disorganised typology, the police were able to successfully arrest Arthur Shawcross.
✩ He murdered 11 women in New York. The key part of his profile was the belief he would return to the dead victims later to re-experience the pleasure of killing. As a result of this, police set up surveillance and caught him.
✩ This is a strength because this practical application increases validity
Another strength of the top down approach to profiling is that it can be adapted to other kinds of crime such as burglary.
Provide research support…
A03: The Top-Down Approach
✩ Merketa reports that top-down profiling has recently been applied to burglary, leading to an 85% rise in solved cases in the US states.
✩ The detection method used for burglary retains the organised-disorganised distinction but also adds two new categories: interpersonal and personal.
✩ This suggests that top-down profiling has wider application than originally assumed.
A strength is evidence supports circle hypothesis
A03: Bottom-Up Approach
✩ Canter and Larkin showed 87% of a sample of 45 British serial sexual assaulters were marauders.
✩ This supports the circle hypothesis and the idea that choice of the place of the crime is a significant factor in offender behaviour.
Mixed results for effectiveness of bottom-up approach
A03: Bottom-Up Approach
✩ Kocsis et al found that chemistry students produced a more accurate offender profile on a solved murder case than experienced senior detectives.
✩ This is a limitation because despite its many successes as an approach there is doubt cast here over if it is a reliable approach.
Successful Application
A03: Bottom-Up Approach
No Psychologist; real individual
✩ Canter used his approach to provide an accurate offender profile for the ‘railway rapist’ (John Duffy) who sexually assaulted & murdered women near railways in London
✩ The crime locations & offender’s behaviour were consistent across the crimes - they all occurred near railways & the victims were treated similarly and was able to find a link between the rapes and murders that occurred.
✩ This confirms that the bottom-up approach to offender profiling has useful applications in fighting cri
Contradictory Research Support
A03: Historical Approach to explaining offending behaviour
✩ Goring (1913) conducted a comparison between 3000 criminals and 3000 non-criminals and concluded that there was no evidence that offenders are a distinct group with unusual facial and cranial characteristics.
✩ This challenges Lombroso’s theory that criminals have distinct physical characteristics demonstrating that Lombroso’s research lacks reliability.
A strength of Eysenck’s theory of criminal personality is that it has supporting research evidence –> predictors.
A03: Psychological Explanations of Offending Behaviour: Eysenck’s Theory of Personality
✩ Dunlop assessed a sample of students and friends and found that both extraversion, psychoticism and lie scales were good predictors of delinquency (minor offences e.g. theft).
✩ Therefore, this gives support and validity to Eysenck’s claims of a link between personality traits such as extraversion and psychoticism and criminal behaviour.
How are these findings limited however…?
A03: Psychological Explanations of Offending Behaviour: Eysenck’s Theory of Personality
No Psychologist, just a criticism of previous flashcard…
✩ However, these findings should be treated with caution as the sample was students with crimes limited to minor offences, restricting how far this research can support personality as an explanation of all criminal behaviour such as more serious offences like murder for example.
Contradictory research evidence for Eysenck’s Theory of Personality
A03: Psychological Explanations of Offending Behaviour: Eysenck’s Theory of Personality
✩ Farrington et al.’s review of studies showed offenders scored high on psychoticism but not on extraversion or neuroticism. There is also little evidence of consistent differences in EEGs between extraverts and introverts.
✩ This casts doubt on the physiological basis of Eysenck’s theory.
Cultural bias
A03: Psychological Explanations of Offending Behaviour: Eysenck’s Theory of Personality
✩ Bartol and Holanchock (1979) studied Hispanic and African American offenders in a New York maximum security prison, dividing them into six groups based on criminal history and offence.
✩ All six groups were less extravert than a non-criminal control group. Bartol and Holanchock suggested this was because the sample was a different cultural group from that investigated by Eysenck.
✩ Therefore, this research appears to lack population validity and questions the generalisability of the criminal personality.
Eysenck’s theory does not consider other dimensions of personality.
A03: Psychological Explanations of Offending Behaviour: Eysenck’s Theory of Personality
✩ More modern personality theorists like Digman suggest that Eysneck is too simplistic.
✩ Digman’s 5 factor model includes other important dimensions of personality like conscientiousness and agreeableness, those may be more important in criminality, as not all NE personality types become criminals.
Reductionist Explanation
A03: Psychological Explanations of Offending Behaviour: Eysenck’s Theory of Personality
✩ A weakness is that there is conflicting evidence by Van Dam that suggests this is a reductionist explanation.
✩ They found that only a small number of male offenders in juvenile detention centres scored highly on all 3 of Eysenck’s personality traits.
✩ This suggests that personality is not the only factor in explaining criminality and that other factors must contribute to the offending behaviour in Van Dam’s study such as amygdala activity and social influences such as poverty, unemployment need considering.
Further research support for the effectiveness of Eysenck personality quiz –> convicted inmates.
A03: Psychological Explanations of Offending Behaviour: Eysenck’s Theory of Personality
✩ McGurk and McDougall gave the Eysenck personality questionnaire to 100 convicted inmates and 100 trade based students e.g. bricklaying and those aged 17-20.
✩ The results showed a high number of people with extravert, neurotic and psychotic personality types in the delinquent group.
✩ Social class was also controlled for –> extraneous variables eliminated.
