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INTRODUCTION
- What is Forensic Psychology?
- Basic Issues in Research
- Crime Statistics
- Types of Aggression
- Anti-social Personality Disorder
- Theories
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What is Forensic Psychology?
* Scope: It covers psychological characteristics and experiences of various parties
such as criminals, victims, law enforcement officers, etc…as well as divorce cases.
[https://ontariotechu.ca/programs/social-science-and-humanities/forensic-
psychology.php].
[https://communityservices.humber.ca/programs/forensic-practice.html]
* Activities
** Practice: Child and youth services, law enforcement, HR
** Research: emotion, behaviour and/or cognition
Basic Issues in Research
Process: Developing a question/hypothesis data collection data analysis
explanation of the results and noting limitations (e.g., Clevinger et al. (2018) studied a
largely female sample’s perception of the police.)
Research findings in social sciences such as psychology are temporary. A lot of research
studies are artificial. There can be multiple explanations for the same research finding.
For example, in a study examining the content of pornographic videos, Vannier et al.
(2014) found that stories with the mother as the main character (e.g., a mother having sex
with the son’s best friend) involved very little and – in some cases, no – physical violent
scenes. How would you explain this finding?
Crime Statistics
Statistics Canada (2021)
Based on police reports, the Crime Severity Index has gone up a little from 2020 to 2021.
The index captures the number and severity of crimes.
[Police-reported crime in Canada, 2021 (statcan.gc.ca)]
Are police reports accurate? What about self-reports?
Police reports are not accurate- most cases go unreported; the stats in the cases are therefore not accurate
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Types of Aggression
Here is a classification scheme mentioned in many books (e.g., Jhangiani & Tarry, 2014).
- Emotional aggression: This happens in reaction to emotions and tends to be
impulsive. [Kyron Lesner] [Keisha Lynette Christmas]
- Money, property
Instrumental aggression: ____________________________ [Daniel Wozniak]
A few notes should be made here:
1. Researchers like to classify things into categories using theories and statistical
analysis because of similarities of the items.
One benefit of classification: It helps information processing.
2. There can be different classification schemes for the same thing. For example,
aggression can be classified by the intention, the target, the method…
3. Ideally, an item can belong to only one category in a classification scheme, but
life is more complicated than this.
Antisocial Personality Disorder
Prevalence: 30-50% among prison inmates (1-3% in the general population)
Characteristics: See the link here
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/antisocial-personality-disorder/
symptoms-causes/syc-20353928
[https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/psychopath-sociopath-differences]
Nature vs. nurture
Nature
Nurture
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Theories
*Learning: Criminal behaviour is learnt and maintained.
- Operant conditioning
Process: __________________________________________
- Classical conditioning: Pavlov and the dog
e.g., Anger toward specific religions [Nathaniel Veltman]
Before conditioning
Danger the desire to be aggressive
Religion X (a neutral stimulus) no reaction
During conditioning
Religion X + danger the desire to be aggressive
After conditioning
Religion X the desire to be aggressive
Process: _________________________________________
- Social learning – Who are our models? What do we copy?
Process: __________________________________________
*Personality
Personality traits: ‘Enduring patterns of perceiving, relating to and thinking about
the environment and oneself’ (Law, 2017); nature or nurture
o People high or low on certain traits commit crimes to get the stimulation.
*Developmental
Identity (Erik Erikson): Identity search is a lifelong process but is more prominent in
adolescence. (Why?)
Hormonal changes , exposure to world, trying to find their place in life
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Police Reports vs. Self-Reports
Sprott & Doob (2008)
The researchers compared police reports of youths (aged 12-17) having committed at
least one violent offence—sex assaults, weapon possession, arson…—in the 10 provinces
in the last year with a national survey of youths for the same offences.
Results
Self-report
26.4% of youths in Manitoba committed violent offences, the highest among all
provinces.
17.5% in Quebec committed violent offences, the lowest among the provinces.
Police report (per 10,000 youths)
150.43 in Saskatchewan committed violent offences, the highest among all
provinces
48.68 in Quebec did that, the lowest among the provinces
BUT both provinces had similar self-reported offence rates.
In this study, police reports _____________ the prevalence of serious youth crimes.
Of course, self-reports are not 100% accurate. It is better to look at the trends of crime
statistics than the numbers at one time point.
31%
Statistics Canada (2020): Only _________ of crimes are reported to the police.
49/10000
