Violent Women, Blame Attribution, Crime, and Personality

Abstract

Background: The attribution of blame for criminal act has an impact, both on the way the offender must come to terms with the offence and on the risk of recidivism. Blame attribution has been found to be related to the type of crime and personality. Aims: This study examined the relationship of blame attribution and feelings of guilt in violent female offenders, according to factors related to crime, background and personality. Methods: The Gudjonsson Blame Attribution Inventory (BAI) and the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ) were administered to 58 violent female offenders. The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), Structured Clinical Interview II for DSM-IV (SCID II) and clinical interviews were used for assessment. Results: Lower scores of guilt feelings were found in women than has been reported for men. The feelings of guilt were higher in homicide than in other violent crimes, but lower in the cases where women had committed prior violent crimes. No differences were found between psychiatric patients and prisoners. The duration of hospitalisation and incarceration did not result in differences in blame attribution and guilt, but when the victims survived, guilt feelings seemed to increase with the passing of the time. External attribution was related to motives of crime, but traumatic experiences did not have a crucial impact upon blame attribution. The attribution of blame and the amount of guilt feelings were found to be related to personality. Women scoring high on psychopathy reported less guilt than women with low scores. The corresponding result was not obtained in the group of women with antisocial personality disorder, who, however, showed an unexpectedly low use of external attribution. Conclusion: The results suggest that it might be difficult for women to cope with the violent offence and that the characteristics of psychopathy seems to have a crucial impact on the guilt feelings and consequently on coping with the crime in female offenders.

Exploring the Criminal Behavior of Women with Psychopathy: Results from a Multicenter Study into Psychopathy and Violent Offending in Female Forensic Psychiatric Patients

“…These findings resemble results from previous studies on the relationship between victims and psychopathic male and female offenders (H€ akk€ anen-Nyholm & Hare, 2009;Weizmann-Henelius, Sailas, Viemer€ o, & Eronen, 2002;Williamson et al, 1987), although only the Weizmann-Henelius et al (2002) study comprised a sample of violent female offenders. In general, it has been found that violence by women is more often displayed within family spheres, for example, in intimate partner violence, child abuse, or violence towards other family members (Robbins et al, 2003).…”

Receptivity, reactivity and the successful psychopath

“…Studies of blame judgments in psychopaths are difficult to come by and, like most studies involving psychopathy, composed of a small number of participants. For one study on blame attributions in female psychopaths (Weizmann-Henelius, Sailas, Viemerö, and Eronen 2002). 10.…”

Measuring criminal attributions with a normative instructional set: Is there a difference?

“…To determine if SDR would be a mechanism in the different validities of the CRAI and PCRAI, partial correlations were performed between the personal instructional sets (PCRAI) and the BAI controlling for SDR (Self‐deception enhancement 1 ). The strategy for this analysis was as follows: first, the BAI, an established and well‐published instrument, was considered to be the valid standard for criminal attributions (Dolan, 1995; Weizmann‐Henelius, Sailas, Viemerö, & Eronen, 2002). Second, discrepant pairs of CRAI and PCRAI correlations with the BAI were identified from Table 1.…”