Implicit measurement of violence-related cognitions.

Abstract

Objective: Violence-related cognitions may underpin many acts of violence, but explicit self-report measures of these cognitions may be inadequate to assess them fully due to their unconscious nature or due to deliberate dissimulation. We designed three versions of the implicit association test (IAT) that separately examined violence-related associations to valence (good vs bad), hedonic-value (enjoy vs dislike) and arousal (exciting vs boring) and examined if these were associated with greater levels of past criminal activity and selfreported violence. Method: The three IATs were administered to an offender sample (N = 108) with a history of serious offending and a diagnosis of Personality Disorder. Violence was assessed via the Proactive and Reactive Aggression Questionnaire and by examination of previous convictions. Results: The IATs showed good to moderate reliability. The valence-IAT did not show any significant correlations to the measures of previous violence. The hedonic value-IAT showed positive relationships with official records of convictions, especially among participants without a conviction for homicide. The arousal-IAT was positively related to self-reported aggression in those without a conviction for homicide. Conclusions: The results show some promise that indirect techniques may be able to measure violence-related cognitions.

Intimate Partner Aggression Committed by Prison Inmates with Psychopathic Profile

“…Self-reporting measures, so common in such studies, present the problem of subjects’ social desirability [ 10 ]. To avoid this phenomenon, one possibility is the use of implicit measures, and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) has been used effectively [ 39 ]. The only other alternative is the interview, as used in tests such as those created by Hare.…”

Implicit association Self-concept test in studying of violence-related cognitions

“…The study by Blumenthal and colleagues [2] argued that valence IAT (violencegood or bad) is not the only dimension violence could be assessed in. They designed three IAT procedures -valence IAT (good vs bad), hedonic-value IAT (enjoy vs dislike) and arousal IAT (exciting vs boring) with the target categories (images) of "Violent" and "Peaceful" researching attitudes towards violence of convicted violent male prisoners, groups: murderers and non-mur-Социальная психология и общество.…”

Assessing Implicit Evaluative Attitudes Toward Violence in Male Students, Male Community Members, and Men Convicted of Violent Offences

“…A recent study by Blumenthal et al (2019) assessed implicit evaluative attitudes toward violence using three different versions of the IAT, with each comparing the attitude concept of violence (or peace) against different attribute categories; one against conventional valence attribute categories (i.e., good vs. bad), one against attribute categories representing "hedonic values" (p. 237; i.e., enjoy vs. dislike), and one against attribute categories representing arousal states (i.e., exciting vs. boring; see Table 1 for further details regarding the categories used). The stimuli for the concept categories of violence and peace, used in all three IATs, consisted of 12 pictures selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang et al, 1997), with six containing violent content and six containing peaceful content.…”

“…Researchers have begun to use IAT measures to assess implicit evaluative attitudes toward violence (e.g., Bluemke & Zumbach, 2012;Blumenthal et al, 2019;Eckhardt & Crane, 2014;Eckhardt et al, 2012;Sprunger & Eckhardt, 2017;Polaschek et al, 2010;Jeon et al, 2017;Robertson & Murachver, 2007;Snowden et al, 2004;Zwets et al, 2015). Table 1 below displays a summary of information per study reviewed in this section, including the details of each IAT used to assess implicit evaluative attitudes toward violence.…”

“…Relationships between implicit evaluative attitudes toward violence and both outcomes were examined within those who had been convicted of homicide (i.e., homicide group), those who had not been convicted of homicide (i.e., non-homicides group; of note this group also contained those who had been convicted of violent offences other than homicide), and the entire sample of convicted males. Blumenthal et al (2019) hypothesized that the homicide group would not show a positive association between constructs given that IAT measures are believed to activate more immediate evaluative attitudes toward an object and thus, are expected to correlate with more spontaneous behaviours rather than behaviours that require active forethought as in most cases of homicide. The conventional IAT, consisting of valence attribute categories, did not significantly correlate with either self-reported reactive/proactive aggression (i.e., r = -.00 for entire sample, r = -.06 for homicide group, and r = .10 for non-homicide group) or prior violent convictions (i.e., r = -.14 for entire sample, r = -.15 for homicide group, and r = -.15 for non-homicide group).…”