Lecture 1

Question 1

What is criminal profiling?

Answer 1

• Idea we can identify who has committed a crime based on their psychological traces
• Can build a profile around a case on a person
• Public and other professionals have strong beliefs in their effectiveness: 86% of mental health professionals endorse that it is a useful tools for law enforcement

Question 2

What was an example of Criminal Profiling?

Answer 2

• Series of shooting around a month - 10 people killed and 4 wounded
• Victims appeared random
• Profilers came up with a consensus
• Actual perpetrators were complete opposite of profile
• Real question is if criminal profilers do better than untrained individuals

Question 3

What was a study on criminal profiles?

Answer 3

• Used real murder cases and participants given extensive background information about the case
• Ppts asked to evaluate many aspects of the perpetrator
• Ppts were profilers, homicide detectives, Sr Police officers, trainees and chemistry undergrads
• Found that people were better than if they had no information at all
• No difference between groups, and chem students consistently outperformed everyone else
• No relationship between experience and accuracy
• Meta-analysis shows this also = profiling is pseudoscience

Question 4

Why do people believe in Criminal Profiling?

Answer 4

• Physicians Phallacy: only ever report when it goes well = wrong predictions are not reported
• Barnum Effect: people pick out of a profile the bits that seem to fit even if they fit almost everybody, and ignore the rest e.g might have self-esteem issues
• Expertise heuristics: clever people with degrees cannot be talking rubbish
• No coherence to approach and there is little proper research

Question 5

What is Forensic Psychology?

Answer 5

• Assessment and management of offenders
• Assess facts and put them together - different from clinical as they look for psych problems and attempt treatment = but both often intertwined
• Formulations are needed to allow understanding of behaviour

Question 6

What are the types of assessments?

Answer 6

• Neuropsychological & Physiological tests
• Interviews
• Psychometric tests
• Projective tests
• Objective tests
• Questionnaires
• Malingering and deception: pretending to be ill/violent when well/not and vice versa

Question 7

What does assessment involve? (Documents)

Answer 7

• Full case review of collateral information
• Criminal records, police records
• Medical records, including mental health
• School/employment records
• Other reports from professionals

Question 8

What is a clinical interview?

Answer 8

• Conversation with a purpose
• Covering areas above e.g childhood, attachments, attitudes
• Semi-structured
• Standardised interviews for some diagnosis

Question 9

What are Similarities and Differences between a clinical interview and a forensic one?

Answer 9

• Clinical: look for mental health problems
• F: assess risks in future as well as clinical interview
• Both seek to understand current problems and behaviours of the person and may try to diagnose any mental health problems
• C: treat presenting symptoms, F: report to court on problems and potential consequences
• Client has gain from clinical, but loss in forensic
• Clinical is confidential but forensic is not

Question 10

How to be good at clinical skills?

Answer 10

• Opening statements = risk overrides confidentiality = Tarrasof liability
• Developing Rapport = trying to put client at ease and in a mental state where they are willing to share their problems with you
• Non-verbal communication = how to elicit people speaking
• Active listening skills
• Summarising

Question 11

What are psychometric tests?

Answer 11

• Standard and scientific method used to measure individuals’ mental capabilities and behavioural style
• Standardised = know what average scores are e.g IQ = know reliability
• e.g Beck’s depression, Impact of Events scale, Paulhaus Deception, Reactive and Proactive Aggression Questionnaire

Question 12

What are Projective tests?

Answer 12

• Tests where people give their thoughts/feelings about a thing
• Rorschach Test: ink
• Thematic Apperception test
• House-Tree-Person test
• Often used in children = drawings

Question 13

Evaluation of Projective tests?

Answer 13

• Not quantifiable
• Not reliable/validity
• Little evidence they do what they claim
• Conducted a large meta-analysis or projective tests and found little support and no more insight than asking the person

Question 14

What are neuropsychological assessments?

Answer 14

• Performance based
• IQ, memory, frontal lobe function

Question 15

What are physiological assessments?

Answer 15

• Can use our physiological reactions to infer psychological processes
• Skin Conductance = arousal
• Pupillometry = pupil dilates when aroused = emotion vs complexity
• Others also used like heart rate, frowning, genital response and responses from certain areas of brain

Question 16

What was a study looking at pupil dilation?

Answer 16

• Examined pupil dilation to arousing pictures in a sample of male offenders
• Most people’s pupils dilate to both positive and negative pictures
• Those with high scores on psychopathy = pupil did not dilate to the negative pictures

Question 17

What are problems of assessment?

Answer 17

• Forensic samples might fake performances on task or lie
• Offenders are motivated to fake bad - pretend to have mental illness to gain lenient sentences = malingering
• Offender may fake good e.g hide thoughts they think will hinder their progress
• Ppts have to be able to understand questions
• Ppts have to norm themselves e.g working in Japan = feel tall, working in netherlands = feel short
• Leads to reference group effect

Question 18

What is malingering?

Answer 18

• Offenders claim to be suffering from a psych illness
• May infer malingering from symptom profile via standard tests and suggestibility e.g two symptoms that normally don’t go together OR saying a behaviour should occur and then offender starts doing said behaviour
• Many questionnaires have a lie scale - also specialised questionnaires for detecting faking e.g TOMM = presents a task that appears very difficult but is really easy = some patients score less than chance = must know which one is correct and then pick the other

Question 19

What is faking good?

Answer 19

• Many questionnaires have lie scales but these are fairly easy to spot and therefore fake
• Clinical interviews = people tend to minimise and lie

Question 20

What is lie detection?

Answer 20

People are not good at spotting lies inc. psychologists/police etc. but there are some modest effects of training

Question 21

What is a polygraph?

Answer 21

• Takes physiological responses as person answers questions = person will show an abnormal reaction when lying
• Wild claims about accuracy, ranging from 100-50% = measures arousal instead
• Taking a polygraph clearly changes the amount of disclosure: study compared various measures of disclosure at 4 stages in male sexual offenders = more polygraphs = more admitted number of victims