Violent Men

Abstract

Fifty federally incarcerated males completed a self-report measure of impulsivity called the I Questionnaire. Offender self-schemas for a hostile world were measured with responses to questions about hypothetical social situations and with perceptions of weapons during a binocular rivalry task. Multiple regression analysis indicated that 31% of the variance in violent criminal history and 48% of the variance in psychopathy, as measured with the Psychopathy Checklist–Revised, could be accounted for by combinations of impulsivity and self-schemas for a hostile world. It was concluded that persistently violent males and males with traits of psychopathy impulsively react to attributions that others are threatening them.

Analyze This! Thematic Analysis: Hostility, Attribution of Intent, and Interpersonal Perception Bias

“…Initially, HAB was explored and defined as a phenomenon of the perception of children (e.g., Dodge & Coie, 1987). Later, similar results were found in adult samples as well as in the field of forensic science (e.g., Dodge et al, 1990; Seager, 2005; Serin, 1991; Vitale, Newman, Serin, & Bolt, 2005). For example, Dodge et al (1990) found hostility-prone attributions correlated positively with aggressive behavior and number of violent crimes committed in a sample of juvenile offenders.…”

“…Even in forensic samples, vignettes are the most commonly used instrument for assessing HAB and are usually preferred over other experimental methods such as self-assessment instruments or a real-time social experiment. To date, vignettes have been shown to have a relationship to many other violence-related constructs such as impulsivity ( r = .48, p < .01), psychopathy ( r = .66, p < .01), violence ( r = .48, p < .01), number of committed crimes ( r = .44, p < .01), self-reported participation in fights and assaults ( r = .46, p < .01), and exposure to visual violence-related stimuli (weapons; r = .37, p < .01; Seager, 2005). Furthermore, the vignettes have been shown to distinguish well between violent and nonviolent offenders, as well as between offenders with and without psychopathy-features (Serin, 1991).…”

“…In addition, the subjects perceived the provocateur as highly disrespectful and were more likely to perceive and interpret the behavior of others as deliberately harmful, especially in situations in which they were placed in the victim role (Serin, 1991; Vitale et al, 2005). Moreover, the effect of hostility-prone attributions seemed to be moderately associated with persistent violence and general crime experience (Seager, 2005).…”

Social cognition in aggressive offenders: Impaired empathy, but intact theory of mind

“…Future studies in aggression should, nevertheless, include more of such objective measures, in particular to elucidate the influence of differences in alexithymia on subjective and objective affective social understanding. Despite the exclusion of DSM-IV Axis I and II disorders, psychopathy 67 and other inter-individual difference characteristics such as cognitive schemata and scripts 75, 76 were not assessed. Future research should include such measures to test the specific relations to aggressive behaviour.…”

Patterns of temporal diffusion of crime in mexico

“…Lawton et al [5] use time series models to measure the effectiveness of a programme called 'Safe Streets' during its fi rst 18 weeks of operation in Philadelphia, USA. Seager [6] uses multiple regressions analysis to analyse violent men's impulsivity and self-schemas for a hostile world. On the other hand, Kivivuori [7] studies the rate of murdering in Finland between 1950 and 1999.…”