Believing Is Seeing II: Beliefs and Perceptions of Criminal Psychological Profiles

Abstract

This study built upon previous research by Kocsis and Hayes (2004) by investigating whether a bias exhibited by police officers in their perception of profiles would replicate in a sample of nonpolice participants. Additionally, the relationship, if any, between the degree of belief harbored by an individual concerning the merits of profiling and their perceptions of a given profile was also investigated. The findings of this study add to the contention that the biases observed in Kocsis and Hayes's previous study with regard to author label may be related to some intrinsic feature of the previously sampled police participants. Additionally, evidence was found to support the proposition that an individual's degree of belief in profiling is related to their perceptions concerning the merits of a profile. Namely, the more an individual believes in the profiling technique, the greater the merit that will be perceived in a profile.

When is profiling possible? Offense planning and aggression as moderators in predicting offender age from victim age in stranger rape

“…This sits in stark contrast to the apparent general perception amongst some law enforcement agencies that profilers can aid investigations (Copson, 1995;Kocsis & Hayes, 2004;Kocsis & Heller, 2004). In general, researchers have approached the problem of relating differences in crime scene behaviors to differences between offenders by utilizing aggregate data samples that meet a predisposed overall criterion, for example ''stranger rapes from 2000 to 2006 in area X'' (Goodwill & Alison, 2005).…”

An Examination of Content Preference in Offender Profiles

“…Nearly a fifth of the police (17%) were sceptical of any of the profiles' validity, compared with 7% of the students. This result may possibly be explained by the findings from Kocsis and Hayes (2004;see also;Kocsis & Heller, 2004;Kocsis & Middlethorp, 2004), where it was suggested that the more an individual believed in profiling the more likely they were to judge it as accurate. Although there were nonsignificant differences between the two groups of subjects with regards to their prior knowledge of profiling, this did not explicitly equate to positive/negative beliefs.…”

“…Second, the overall belief in profiling as an intrinsically worthwhile practice was also hypothesized to influence judgements of accuracy. Kocsis and Heller (2004) later tested these assumptions and found some support for both theories and, in particular, that belief in profiling was an inherent factor that influenced the perception of accuracy.…”

“…Kocsis and his colleagues have published a plethora of research studies attempting to ascertain correlates of the profiling process and also uncover the most appropriate attributes of the "offender profiler" (Kocsis, 2004;Kocsis & Hayes, 2004;Kocsis & Heller, 2004;Kocsis & Middlethorp, 2004;Kocsis, Middlethorp, & Try, 2005). Kocsis (2003a) concluded that "logical and objective reasoning" were the two most important attributes individuals engaged in the profiling process should possess and that investigative experience was seemingly unrelated to performance during the evaluation exercises he conducted.…”

The Criminal Profiling Illusion

“…Evidence for usage of the expertise heuristic is already available in the CP domain. For example, police officers viewing a profile rate it as more accurate when the production of the profile is attributed to an expert rather than a nonexpert (Kocsis & Hayes, 2004;Kocsis & Heller, 2004).…”