Psych 3314-Investigative techniques (lecture)

criminal profiling

•using crime scene information (e.g., location of body, type of wounds) to predict an unknown perpetrator's demographic (e.g., age, occupation) and personality characteristics (e.g., violent fantasies)

classic trait theory

 a psychological theory that suggests individuals behave the same across different situations because internal traits determine behaviour across all contexts

Homology

offenders who commit similar crimes share similar characteristics

beheavioural consistency

serial offenders behave the same across their crimes

beheavior differentiation

one offender's crime scene behaviours are different from those of other offenders 

interactionist perspective

(characteristics are relatively stable, but interact with the environment/situation in predicting behaviour)

clinical

–Deductive profiling

–Uses education, training, knowledge of behaviour, and experience with interviews to make predictions

–Used by FBI profilers and clinical/forensic profilers

statisical

–Inductive profiling

–Uses data on the characteristics of offenders who commit different crimes to make predictions

–Used by social scientists

organized disorganized dichotomy

profiling process that assumes that violent offenders behave in either an organized or disorganized fashion and that this will carry over into other aspects of their life

limitations of criminal profling

–It has the features of a pseudoscience!

–Profiles include limited additional information that was not already known to investigators

–Profiles contain unsubstantiated claims and overly vague statements (Barnum effect) 

–In experimental studies, investigators and profilers are unable to identify "bogus" profiles

–Being able to accurately profile a case has more to do with knowing criminological literature rather than any specific specialized ability in profiling