Forensic Psychology Flashcards

Question

Who are the authors of the 2021 survey looking at the experiences of over 22,000 women in the UK?

Answer 1

Taylor and Shrive

Answer 2

Found 99.7% of the women they surveyed had experienced sexual violence multiple times

Answer 3

VictimFocus

Answer 4

Used more specific and descriptive language in their survey so that the women would be able to answer more accurately as they might not have realised something was sexual violence when being asked in the past

Answer 5

Has been argued that it can’t be applied to wider population as people who answered this survey may have just chosen to take part because they had those experiences Was not a peer reviewed and published study

Answer 6

Sex crimes as part of a wider pattern of criminal and deviant activity - often more linked to rape

Answer 7

Likely to engage only in sexual crimes - linked to sexual crimes against children

Answer 8

That there are two different categories of adults interested in children: Paedophiles - tend to offend against pre-pubescent children Herbophiles - tend to offend against post-pubescent children

Answer 9

1. Motivation to sexually abuse 2. Overcoming internal inhibitors 3. Overcoming external inhibitors 4. Overcoming the resistance of the child

Answer 10

Emotional congruence Sexual arousal to children Blockage

Answer 11

Emotional needs of the offender are met by a child For example needing to feel powerful but may not be able to do thus within an adult relationship but children expect adults to be in charge

Answer 12

This arousal my come from a number of things such as: Being exposed to sexual activities/media involving children Previous sexual experiences with children that have been reinforced due to them being positive Or possibly their own sexual abuse

Answer 13

The individual may not be blue to fulfill their sexual or emotional needs in a more socially acceptable way which may lead for them to seek to have sex with children

Answer 14

Use of substances Poor self-control Severe stress Socially entrenched attitudes Cognitive distortions

Answer 15

Absent caregiver Socially isolated family Emotional neglect Inequality/ discrimination Time alone with the child

Answer 16

Giving gifts Threats Desensitising the child to sexual activities Developing a ‘relationship’ with the child (All forms of grooming behaviour)

Answer 17

Was one of the first ‘one size does not fit all’ approaches to offender treatment Emphasises that offending is a process Justifies tailored treatments as it shows that every offender may be motivated by different things and behave in different ways It outlines simply the interactions that may lead to sexual offending This model can be used to help educate offenders and explain their treatment to them

Answer 18

If the motives can function independently then this model does not explain why some offenders chose to carry out sexual activity rather than having non-sexual interactions with children Lack of explanatory depth - because does not explain how the motives emerge and why they converge at a certain point to lead to offending Hudson et al. found that the desire to have sex with children was enough and infact a lot of offenders will not have any internal inhibitors Not a comprehensive enough explanation to be used alone in treatment There is an overlap in the definitions of emotional congruence and blockage

Answer 19

Biological factors Childhood experiences Sociocultural features

Answer 20

Marshall and Barbaree

Answer 21

Marshall and Barbaree (1990)

Answer 22

- Biological factors are important in aggression and there is no dispute that men are capable of using aggression, threats or coercion in sexual contact - but a biological ability to do something does not make it inevitable so why do some men do this? - Biological influences are significant when learning these aggressive behaviours but have minimal influence once learning has established the aggressive behaviour patterns - Having high levels of sex hormones may make it difficult for someone to acquire constraints against sexual aggression - Biological factors may make it difficult for growing males to appropriately separate sex and aggression and inhibit aggression in a sexual context

Answer 23

- Poor socialisation and a violent parenting style will facilitate the use of aggression and cut off the youth from access to appropriate sociosexual interactions - self esteem in young males is largely determined by their beliefs of their sexual ability so if they can not develop a sexual relationship they may turn to aggressive sex or sex with children to prove their masculinity - weak interpersonal skills may lead to a failure to engage in intimate relationships, this may mean they have anxiety around sexual interactions and feelings of inadequacy, they may have anger towards those they see as the problem (often women) which may then lead to sexual aggression/ offending

Answer 24

- One indicator of high rape incidence in a culture is the accepted use of violence to solve interpersonal problems - Burt (1980) found that men’s acceptance of violence against women was related to their acceptance of rape myths - Another feature associated with high rape incidence is the acceptance of male dominance and negative attitudes towards women - Burt (1980) also found that men who believed in male dominance was associated with negative views towards women, an acceptance of rape myths and even an admittance of rape or that they would if they knew they wouldn’t be punished - Violent TV shows are more popular in the US than other Western cultures and rape incidence is also higher - It has been found that rape desensitises people to violent sex which could lead to dehumanised sexual violence against women - Been found that socially restricted men are more behaviourally affected by exposure to porn - Early exposure to porn (ages 6-10) has been shown to indicate later sexual deviance

Answer 25

Any statement wholly or partly adverse to the person who made it, whether made to a person in authority or not and whether made in words or otherwise

Answer 26

“Unethical behaviour by interrogators has undermined public confidence and left the police service with a serious skills deficit in its ability to obtain evidence through questioning”

Answer 27

Authorities in the criminal justice system look more favourably towards those who cooperate and save time and money. For example, in England and Wales, one third of the sentence is taken off. Mitigating circumstances will mean that the outcome will be much less serious than feared They may think once a confession has been made, the suffering of the interrogation might end then and there If there is a lot of evidence against the person

Answer 28

Children, adolescence, neurodivergent individuals. They may not understand the consequences of confessing and may be more susceptible to persuasion

Answer 29

1. A promise from the police of early release. 2. Prolonged detention in the cells. 3. Actual or threatened violence.

Answer 30

1. The voluntary confession. 2. The coerced–internalised confession. 3. The coerced–compliant confession.

Answer 31

- a morbid desire for notoriety - an unconscious need to expiate guilt over past transgressions via self punishment - inability to distinguish fact from fantasy - A desire to aid and protect the real criminal - The hope for a recommendation of leniency This shows the need to withhold case details, so a fake confession is more difficult

Answer 32

- Gudjonsson (2003) proposed that coerced compliant confessions occur when: - There is an eagerness to please the interrogator and preserve their self-esteem by complying through the interrogator’s positive feedback - to avoid further contact in terms of both custody and interrogation with the feared authority and to avoid threats or physical harm - to fulfil a bargain with the interrogator that offers a reward for compliance

Answer 33

- The person comes to accept the interrogators version as the true one, and they believe themselves that they are responsible - Through personal experience

Answer 34

An interrogation is always accusatory in nature and the person being interrogated (usually the suspect) is told they committed the offence, and they are presented with various ‘facts’ and/or ‘evidence’ to elicit a confession

Answer 35

It is designed to develop sufficient rapport to prompt the suspect to disclose valuable information. It is not necessarily to force a confession, but rather to search for the truth and obtain accurate and reliable information.

Answer 36

1. Have a knowledge of the psychology of interviewing and scientific experimentation. 2. Have received a thorough grounding in a wide range of theoretical and practical techniques to draw on in interviews when appropriate. 3. Have had the opportunity for substantial practice in a learning environment. 4. Are supervised and given feedback on their real life interviews.

Answer 37

Lie to the suspect to try and get them to confess

Answer 38

1. The interview is there only aspect of the investigation. 2. That a confession has to be obtained. 3. That only the guilty confess, Kassin (2005) shows this to be an unsupportable statement 4. Police officers are expert at telling the difference between the guilty and non-guilty.

Answer 39

Around 25%

Answer 40

It is described in the Criminal Interrogation and Confessions book (Inbau et al. 2013) It is a 9 step approach It is not a good method of interviewing, there is no scientific evidence that this technique works That includes confrontation, handling the suspects denials and the passive mood, for example

Answer 41

ORBIT (Observing Rapport Based Interpersonal Techniques)

Answer 42

It is aimed to be used for law enforcement , security and military It was developed from the analysis of almost 2000 hours of recorded interrogations. The data shows that rapport-based methods work but coercion, persuasion and threats do not. It was all using real life examples This shows that methods with compassion and establishing mutual respect should be used and harsh methods rejected

Answer 43

Principles on effective interviewing for investigations and information gathering Developed by Juan E. Mendez. He works in the UN and was tortured himself. Looked at how different countries gather information and want to encourage better treatment of those in custody. Provides a comprehensive guide to authorities to implement measures to help prevent torture, ill-treatment and forced confessions

Answer 44

This was designed as the framework for interviewing in any situation with any type of interviewee It was developed by and for police in England and Wales and has now been endorsed in other countries around the world There is a set framework to use

Answer 45

Pre-interview phase: - planning and preparation - may decide here if you want to withhold anything Interview phase: - engage and encourage - account, clarify and challenge - closure Post-interview phase: - evaluation - to look over the evidence gathered and their performance from the interview

Answer 46

Diverse number of pathways may lead to the same outcome

Answer 47

One factor main function differently, depending on the broader system, meaning that I may have multiple outcomes

Answer 48

All forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, or negligent treatment, or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility trust or power

Answer 49

Involves failure to provide for the child’s basic physical needs for adequate food, clothing, shelter and medical treatment. As well as inadequate attention to physical needs, forms of this sub type include lack of supervision, moral-legal neglect and educational neglect.

Answer 50

Involves extreme thwarting of children’s basic emotional needs for psychological safety and security, acceptance and self-esteem, and age-appropriate autonomy.

Answer 51

Involves the non-accidental infliction of physical injury on the child

Answer 52

Involves attempted or actual sexual contact between the child and the caregiver for purposes of the caregivers of sexual satisfaction or financial benefit by forced prostitution.

Answer 53

1 in 5 adults, so approximately 8.5 million people

Answer 54

Family poverty Young motherhood Parental history of antisocial behaviour Perpetrators history of maltreatment. For example, if you’ve experienced maltreatment yourself, you’re more likely to maltreat your own children in the future.

Answer 55

Emotional dysfunction Psychosis Externalising

Answer 56

Sexual problems Eating pathology Fear Distress Mania

Answer 57

Disinhibited externalising - substance abuse and antisocial behaviour Antagonistic externalising - antisocial behaviour and personality disorders

Answer 58

Range of externalising problems in childhood, adolescence and adulthood: ADHD Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) Conduct disorder Substance misuse Antisocial personality disorder Psychopathy Criminal arrest

Answer 59

Adults with an official documented, history of child abuse, or neglect scored significantly higher on the PCL-R (psychopathy checklist) than those without an official record of maltreatment

Answer 60

Victims of maltreatment or an elevated risk for a range of personality disorders and psychotic symptoms For example, borderline personality disorder, psychotic symptoms, schizoaffective, disorder, and schizophrenia

Answer 61

Specificity Cumulative risk Dimensional approach

Answer 62

Suggests that specific maltreatments lead to specific outcomes through a specific mechanism

Answer 63

The don’t take into account that people may experience more than one maltreatment And the mechanisms that lead to the different outcomes may be similar, but this model says that they’re all distinct

Answer 64

It counts, the number of adverse experiences that a person has gone through to calculate a risk score It generally proposes that more adverse experiences leads to a greater adverse outcome

Answer 65

The ACEs study

Answer 66

Felitti et al., 1998 Looked at 13,000 adults and a range of health behaviours and medical history among them

Answer 67

Among those who had adverse childhood experiences, the most prevalent was substance abuse (within the household) with 25.6% and the least prevalent was criminal behaviour within the household with 3.4%. 52% experienced at least one the first childhood experience and 6.2% reported experiencing more than 4. Call Amor adverse childhood experiences, when compared to those with none had a 4-12 times increased risk of alcoholism, drug abuse depression, and suicide attempts

Answer 68

Completed a meta analysis looking at 37 studies with 233,000 participants

Answer 69

Across all studies 4 or more ACEs was associated with physical or psychological outcomes With substance misuse, depression and anxiety appearing frequently

Answer 70

Based on the idea that is possible to identify mediators between experiences and outcomes

Answer 71

Hypervigilance to threat Deficits in emotion recognition Poor emotional regulation Insensitivity to reward Faster life history

Answer 72

Genetic moderators Psychosocial moderators

Answer 73

Hypervigilance to threat is an attention bias that describes the tendency to devote disproportionate attention to relatively mild threats Physically abused children are attentive to anger cues, have difficulty disengaging from anger cues, and are more likely to identify ambiguous facial expressions as angry. Excessive attention to anger, explains why physically abused children may have more symptoms of anxiety than non-abused children (Shackman et al., 2007)

Answer 74

Pairs of faces are shown on either side of a monitor One face displays an angry, happy or sad expression and the other first displays a neutral expression A dot appears on either side of the screen Scores for attention bias to anger are higher when the participant takes longer to identify the data location when it appeared on the same side of the screen as the neutral face If the participant is fixated on an angry face, they will take a lot longer at responding to the dot in the area where the neutral face is

Answer 75

Study showing that individuals with histories of maltreatment exhibit biased attention to angry, but not sad or happy faces Explains increased rate of aggressive behaviour in maltreated youth as these individuals are more likely than non-maltreated children to have social information processing styles characterised by a tendency to attribute hostile intent to others whose behaviour is ambiguous which is ‘hostile attribution bias’

Answer 76

Nasby et al., 1980

Answer 77

The tendency to interpret other’s behaviour as being hostile when the behaviour is ambiguous

Answer 78

The ability to accurately recognise and understand emotions as a key developmental task that facilitates social interactions Research has shown that individual differences in children’s recognition and understanding of emotions party derives from parents efforts to model and explain emotions known as emotion socialisation Physically abusive mothers have been shown to produce less prototypical, facial expression of anger and less prototypical vocal expressions of anger, fear and happiness than nonabusive mothers

Answer 79

Maltreated individuals are less accurate at recognising emotions than non-maltreated individuals

Answer 80

Emotion regulation is critical for both initiating, motivating and organising adaptive behaviour and improvement in stressful levels of negative emotions and maladaptive behaviour Physically abuse, children exhibited greater negative affect and more aggressive behaviour compared to non-maltreated children, and this relationship was mediated by children’s allocation of attention to angry faces.

Answer 81

Findings suggest that physical abuse leads to the dysregulation of both aggression and negative affect and that this increases the likelihood that physically abuse children will develop externalising behaviour disorders

Answer 82

Maltreated children and adults who were maltreated as children are less sensitive to cues for reward than non-maltreated controls Mesolimbic dopaminergic circuitry that projects to the basal ganglia is involved in responsivity to reward, and particularly in anticipation of reward

Answer 83

Monetary incentive delay task: - Trails began with queues signalling potential rewards, losses or no incentive - Participant press the button in response to a briefly presented target, and they are instructed that rapid reaction times increased the chances of receiving gains and avoiding penalties - Feedback indicated where the money was gained or lost - The maltreated individuals reacted significantly less to the reward

Answer 84

Experiences in early life can program an individual’s developmental trajectory and pace of ageing to respond most effectively to the current environment and environmental demands they are likely to encounter in the future In a harsh or unpredictable environment, a faster pace of development in which children, reach adult-like capabilities at an earlier age may be favoured in order to maximise reproduction prior to potential mortality

Answer 85

Moderators of maltreatment can be conceptualised as factors that exacerbate (make worse) effects of maltreatment on risk for psychopathology, or as factors that promote competence in mental health, academic or interpersonal domains, despite exposure to maltreatment

Answer 86

The MAOA genotype moderates effect of maltreatment on risk for antisocial behaviour The MAOA gene is involved in the metabolism of dopamine serotonin and norepinephrine Low activity MAOA gene significantly increases the chances of having a conduct disorder, being violent or having an antisocial behaviour disorder and this risk increases further when the individual has also been maltreated

Answer 87

Individual moderators - individuals who are resilient to maltreatment tend to be characterised by high self-esteem and self reliance, and the tendency to attribute success to their own efforts Environmental/social moderators - socially supportive relationships can buffer individuals with history of maltreatment from risk of psychopathology meaning that high levels of social support, reduce rates of psychopathology to the same low levels as children or adults without histories of maltreatment

Answer 88

Children who experience high levels of adversity (6 or more events) will be almost 5 times as likely to develop some form of mental illness, compared to children who have experienced none

Answer 89

Found that around one third of a mental illness that begins during adolescence are attributable to childhood adversity and almost 30% of those that begin in adulthood also

Answer 90

How does adversity effect the developing brain?

Answer 91

Threatening childhood environments influence neural system is involved in identifying threats in the environment and learning about how to predict future threats When children exposed to violence were looking at negative emotional images they had a lot more activation in the amygdala than the control. But there was no group difference when looking at positive images on the shoes, that children who have experienced abuse, are not just more emotional in general After treatment, children who have been exposed to violence were using the prefrontal cortex more to try and regulate their emotions, showing that if you give the children the right tools to help them regulate their emotions they will use them Changes in the brain of children who have experienced violence, put them more at risk of developing PTSD

Answer 92

These factors underly multiple forms of psychopathology and represent key targets for prevention and treatment efforts For example, childhood trauma

Answer 93

trans-diagnostic mechanisms: Have to be influenced by childhood trauma exposure Need to predict the emergence of multiple forms of psychopathology Explain the association between childhood trauma and later psychopathology

Answer 94

Accelerated biological aging - when an individuals life trajectory speeds up to respond to a harsh or unpredictable environment suggested to be to maximise potential reproduction before possible mortality and is associated with risk taking, substance misuse, depression and anxiety Difficulty with emotion processing - as children who have experienced trauma show magnified emotional responses to potential threat, and this is associated with internalising and externalising problems Social information processing - children who have experienced trauma are more likely to perceive cues as threatening, which is associated with depression, anxiety, PTSD and psychosis

Answer 95

Something that can work to protect the child against the emergence of psychopathology following childhood trauma

Answer 96

Social support Caregiver support