Examining the link between facial affect recognition and violent offending: A comparison between web‐recruited volunteers with histories of violent and non‐violent offending

Abstract

Background: The link between facial affect recognition and criminal justice involvement has been extensively researched, yet there are virtually no data on the capacity for facial affect recognition in post-incar+cerated individuals, and the results of many studies are limited due to a narrow focus on psychopathy rather than offence category. Aims: To test the first hypothesis that individuals reporting a history of a violent offence would show a deficit in facial affect recognition and the second hypothesis that the violent offender's deficit would be exclusive to recognition of negative expressions, not affecting positive or neutral expressions. Method: Post-incarcerated individuals (N = 298) were recruited online through Qualtrics and completed questionnaires assessing their criminal justice background and demographics. They completed measures of facial affect recognition, anxiety and depression, and components of aggression. Results: A logistic regression, including sex, ethnicity, age and years of education and depression/anxiety scores, indicated that committing a violent offence was independently associated with lower facial affect recognition scores as well as male gender and a trait-based propensity towards physical aggression, but no other co-variable. These data

Violent Offending in Males With or Without Schizophrenia: A Role for Social Cognition?

“…The identified ToM impairments in our incarcerated participants correspond with findings in sexual offenders 23 , 24 and in antisocial personality disorder, 32 although it must be noted that they were not recruited because they belonged to a specific violent offense or diagnostic category and therefore constitute a somewhat different group. The reduced emotion perception (from bodies), although very limited, is in line with the reduced (facial) emotion perception reported for prison populations 21 , 22 and for individuals with psychopathy. 29 , 30 Given the substantial impairments in ToM and quite restricted reductions in body emotion perception, our findings suggest that men with a history of violence, but without schizophrenia, have marked deficits in higher-order social cognition, that is, when making inferences about others, but to a lesser extent for low-level decoding of emotional information.…”

“…Reduced facial affect perception is documented among prison populations, 21 persisting in violent offenders, post-incarceration, 22 and reduced ToM has been reported in persons convicted of sexual offenses. 23 , 24 Prison populations have elevated rates of psychopathology, 25 including psychopathy 26 or antisocial personality disorder, 27 , 28 conditions which are characterized by social cognitive impairment.…”