Forensic Psychology Exam 1

Forensic Psychology

a field of psychology that deals with all aspects of human behavior as it relates to the law or legal system

3 categories of killers according to Browning (in Police Battalion 101 during the Holocaust)

1. Laggers

2. Accommodators

3. Evaders

What do we turn to for explanation of the behavior of Police Battalion 101 killers?

Social psychology (personality psychology looked at people as individuals and not a group)

Factors from social psychology that Browning used to explain the behavior of Police Battalion 101 killers:

1. Solomon Asch conformity experiment

2. Milgram Experiment

3. Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment

4. Cognitive Dissonance

Solomon Asch conformity experiment

In 1955, psychologist Solomon Asch devised this simple study to research conformity.

Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always obvious. The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave his or her answer last.

There were 18 trials in total, and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trails (called the critical trials). Asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view.

Milgram Experiment

An experiment devised in 1961 by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, to see how far ordinary people would go to obey a scientific authority figure. People would shock a "learner" because they were told to by an authority figure even though that person was in a lot of pain.

Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment

an experiment in which people were assigned to be guards or prisoners- studied how drastically behaviors can change under certain influences

3 groups

1. Good guards

2. Obedient guards

3. Tormenting guards

Cognitive Dissonance

Attitudes and behaviors have to align otherwise there's discomfort (ex: smoking)

Festinger experiment paid people to recruit their friends for different sums of money and asked the people how boring they thought task was which varied with amount of money being paid

In Milgram's experiment the participants were asked what they think of the learner before and after the situation and they somehow had a negative view of the learner after the situation even though they didn't really interact because they wanted to justify their actions

Men were transformed by what they did, they became antisemitic because they had to justify their actions to avoid cognitive dissonance

Criticisms of studying social psychology to explain Police Battalion 101 behaviors:

1. These findings are not deterministic and do not remove individual responsibility

2. There were individual differences at play in Milgram and Zimbardo's experiments

3. These findings allow us to make predictions regarding groups but individuals are not relieved of their individual responsibility for the decisions they make

Situationism

The situation dictates behavior

Mischel (1968) - traits aren't useful predictors, we overestimate behavioral consistency, situation is more important, personality assessment is a waste of time

Person

Situationism is based on lab studies which might make people behave differently, traits clearly exist

Argument to Mischel:

Unfair literature review, situationism is based on lab studies, .4 is not a small correlation, Allport's lexical hypothesis

Interactionism

Buss (1977) argued that people and situations interact in 3 different ways:

1. Effect of personality depends on situation

2. People find themselves in situations because of their personality, situational selection and evocation

3. People change situations by how they act and what they do in these situations (manipulation)

Situational Selection

to choose the situations in which one finds itself

Evocation

certain personality traits may evoke specific responses from the environment

Manipulation

The various means by which people influence the social situation

Situational Specificity

When a person acts in a specific way under certain circumstances

Strong situation, weak situation

Strong situation is where people behave in similar ways (funeral), weak situations are more ambiguous

Situational Risk Factors for Violence

1. Obedience to Authority (Milgram)

2. De-individuation

3. Conformity (Asch)

4. Cognitive Dissonance

De-individuation

Occurs when people lose awareness of their individuality and instead immerse themselves in the mood or activities of a crowd

Jeffrey Landrigan

Never knew bio father and separated from mother, adopted and raised with sister.

Early age - conduct disorder, antisocial tendencies

Arrested at age 11 for robbery

1989 on death row for 2 homicides

Bio father was also on death row, grandfather killed in police shooting

Constitutional Theory

Sheldon (1949) proposed that crime is largely a product of someones body build which is linked to their temperament.

Endomorphs, ectomorphs, mesomorphs

***mesomorphs are more likely to be involved with crime

Endomorphs

Obese and jolly

Ectomorphs

Thin and introverted

Mesomorphs

Muscular and bold

Feldmans criticisms of constitutional theory (1977)

1. Bodybuilding may attract police or influence sentencing

2. Those who match the criminal stereotype will be over selected in the criminal population

3. Bodybuilding increases testosterone

XYY/Jacob's syndrome

Jacobs (1965) proposed that chromosomal irregularity is linked to criminal behavior, extra copy of the Y chromosome

Rare, 1 in a thousand

Epps (1995) found that Jacobs is rare and slightly more common in prison population

Received little support

Arthur John Shawcross

Lombroso

He did autopsies on criminals and concluded that they are a different classification of human that can be identified by physical abnormalities

These physical abnormalities are representative of abnormal fetal development

Lombroso's view that people are born bad is not accepted

Minor physical abnormalities- low seated ears, furrowed tongue, single palmar crease, curved 5th finger, 3rd toe longer than 2nd, fine hair, abnormal head size, big gap between 1st and 2nd toe

Genome

The complete set of genes an organism possesses (human = 20k-30k genes)

Heritability

Statistic that refers to the proportion of observed variance in a group of individuals that can be accounted for by genetic variance

Genotypic

This kind of variance refers to the individual differences in the total collection of genes possessed by each person

Phenotypic

This kind of variance refers to observed differences (height, weight, personality) influenced by genotypic variance but not always reflective

Jim Twins

2 identical twins who were separated and raised differently but found each other 40 years later and discovered how similar they are

Family studies

allow us to know exact family history

Farrington (2001)- criminal parents are more likely to have criminal children

West (1982)- boys with criminal father are 2x more likely to become delinquent

Cloninger (1978)- delinquent females have more deviant relatives

Family studies do not settle nature v nurture debate because you typically share an environment with those you're genetically similar to

Twin studies

Better than family studies

There is evidence to suggest that identical twins are more similar than nonidentical

Lange (1931)- 13 MZ pairs, 17 DZ pairs in Germany, higher MZ concordance rate and incarceration rate

Christiansen (1977)- found 60% MZ and 30% for DZ twins

Identical twins are 2x as likely to be similar in terms of criminology

Equal Environments Assumption- potential problem is that when environments experienced by identical twins are assumed to be no more similar than those of fraternal twins

Adoption studies

Studying children who've been separated from birth parents to find link between genetics and criminality

More likely to be criminal if their bio parents are criminals

Hutchings and Mednick (1975) compared 143 criminals and 143 control adoptees, sons convictions were higher when bio father had a conviction compared to adoptive father

Zuckerman (1991)- shared environmental influences are much less important than genetics, non shared environment is more important that shared, but still less than genetics

Monozygotic twins

identical twins formed when one zygote splits into two separate masses of cells, each of which develops into a separate embryo (100% similar genetics)

Dizygotic twins

fraternal twins, occurring when two eggs each get fertilized by two different sperm, resulting in two zygotes in the uterus at the same time (50% similar genetics)

Concordance rate

the percentage of pairs of twins or other blood relatives who exhibit a particular trait or disorder

Genotype environment interaction

refers to the differential response of individual with different genotypes to the same environment

Genotype environment correlation

the differential exposure of individuals with different genotypes to different environments

Passive

being passed on to child without child doing anything

Reactive

Results from interaction between child and parent

Active

Certain environment is actively sought out because of a genetic predisposition

Raine (1994) and Piquero and Tibbetts (1999)

Did brain scans and found that maternal rejection and birth complications increases the percent of violence in someone

Neugebauer (1999)

Prenatal exposure to wartime famine and development increased antisocial personality disorder in early adulthood

Smoking and ASPD

Brennan (1999)

Violence at age 34 and how often their mother smoked during 3rd trimester was studied and had a positive correlation with violence

Cortical thickness and parental smoking exposure

Toro (2008)

Smoking can have a negative impact on thickness of prefrontal cortex

Mothers who smoke are less likely to care about their children and more likely to pass on antisocial tendencies

fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)

Streissguth (1996)

Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking. In severe cases, symptoms include noticeable facial misproportions

Very rare

61% rate of delinquency, 58% police contacts in adulthood

54% males (33% females) arrested/convicted after age 12

Jemillah Falls

Memphis, TN gave birth to a baby girl and she tested positive for heroin and marijuana and was convicted of assault and spent 6 months in prison

Lead

Neurotoxin

This kind of exposure is more common in high poverty areas which could contribute other factors

Causes damage to medial and temporal regions of prefrontal cortex

Frontal lobe

the part of the brain crucial for cognitive skills such as problem solving and language, as well as self-awareness and self-control

Prefrontal cortex (PFC)

covering the front part of the frontal lobe, has been highlighted as a mediator of violent behavior (aka angel on your shoulder)

structural and functional deficits in this area are common in convicted murderers

Greater evidence of PFC deficits in _____ murderers

reactive

Phineas Gage

railroad worker who survived a severe brain injury that dramatically changed his personality and behavior; case played a role in the development of the understanding of the localization of brain function

Testosterone

Ehrenkrantz (1974), higher levels of this are common in aggressive prisoners

Harris (1999), links found between increased levels of this and aggressive/violent behavior

BUT Raine (1993), found that aggressive behavior may increase this

Book (2001), found a weak positive relationship between x and aggression and a stronger positive relationship during adolescence

Wong and Gavel (2016), no link between sexual offending and this

Serotonin

Low levels of this are typically linked with anxiety and depression rather than criminal behavior

but

low levels correlate with impulsivity, irritability, low self esteem, and poor motivation

Meta-analysis by Moore (2002), said that there were lower levels in antisocial groups compared with non-antisocial groups, more irritable, and effects are stronger in men under 30

Dopamine

associated with approach behavior and is generally seen to enhance agression (Allen and DeYoung 2017)

MAO-A

A variant of the MAOA gene has been popularly referred to as the warrior gene as it has consistently been associated with antisocial behavior

Low activity MAOA gene tends to show higher levels of aggression

Raine (2018), the association between low levels of this and antisocial personality disorder is one of the most robust findings in gene studies, especially those with history of child abuse

Involved in reuptake of dopamine and serotonin

Eysenck's Personality Theory

Proposed that personality exists on 3 dimensions: extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism

Extraverts, introverts, neurotics, stable

Extraverts

cortically under-aroused, seek stimulation, condition poorly, impulsive

Introverts

cortically over-aroused, avoid stimulation, condition well, quiet and reserved

Neurotics

Autotomic nervous system react strongly to stimuli, condition poorly, display moody/anxious behavior

Stable

stable autotomic nervous system, condition well, calm and even tempered when under stress

Who conditions best in Eysenck's Personality Theory?

Stable introverts

Who conditions worst in Eysenck's Personality Theory?

Most likely to commit crimes and will therefore be over-represented in the offender population

Supported by Bartol (1999), Eysenck and Gudjonson (1989) who found support for offenders having high neuroticism however the evidence for E is more mixed

but future studies have failed to replicate these findings

Neurotic Extraverts

Underarousal Hypothesis

antisocial individuals seek excessive stimulation in order to compensate for chronically low levels of physiological arousal

could explain why people with antisocial personality disorder appear to become bored easily and often engage in risk seeking behavior (Durand and Barlow 2006, and Fischer 2008)

Low resting heart rate

Ortiz and Raine (2004) meta analysis said that this is the best replicated biological predictor of antisocial behavior in children and adolescence

Portnoy and Farrington (2015) meta analysis said that this is associated with higher levels of antisocial behavior in adults

It was also observed in animals, independent of potential confounds (age, exercise, etc.)

Fearlessness hypothesis

suggests that antisocial individuals are more likely to commit crimes because their blunted autonomic functioning does not deter them (Ling 2009)

Somatic marker hypothesis

says dulled psychophysiology negatively impacts one's ability to fear condition, congruent with fearlessness (Bechara and Damasio, 2005)

Mr. Oft

Proved a man's brain and subsequent deviant behavior to have been caused by a brain tumor

Murder of Peyton Tuthill by Donta Page

Tuthill was raped and murdered then sentenced to death row, Page had poorly functioning PFC, judge overturned death penalty and just gave him life in prison

Hill v Ozmint (2003)

Defense experts claimed that the defendants murderous behavior was due to serotonin deficiency and argued it would be treated with medication so the defendant would no longer be a danger, the argument was presented twice and rejected

2004 court ruling in Michigan barred the use of biology to diminish responsibility

social development

development of self expression and social skills

emotional development

emergence of temperament

attachment

a strong/long lasting emotional connection that is person specific and enduring across time

secure base

refers to the idea that the presence of a trusted caregiver provides an infant or toddler with a sense of security that makes it possible for the child to explore the environment

Psychoanalytic theory of attachment

Freud's theory that infants have a biological desire to become attached to those that provide pleasure

Issue: only explains why child becomes attached, not caregiver

Learning theory of attachment

Watson and Skinners belief that reinforcement is the mechanism responsible for social attachments and behaviors are a product of learning (attachment is a product of classical conditioning)

Cognitive theory of attachment

Proposes that the ability to form attachments depends on the infant's level of cognitive development

Ethological theory of attachment

The superior theory to other ones, proposes that humans have preadapted characteristics that predispose them to form attachments

Konrad Lorenz - Imprinting

behavior that takes place during a critical period and involves attachment to the first moving object that is observed.... this gave Bowlby ideas

John Bowlby's view

Tried to integrate with Evolutionary theory (ethology)

Babies are biologically programmed to produce behaviors that parents are programmed to love

Attachment is an evolutionary adaptation

The attachment dynamic

An emotional communication and affect regulation, triggered by threat, separation, or discomfort

Primary assumptions of the attachment dynamic

1. Responsive and accessible caregivers create secure base. Dependability means the child is able to develop with confidence and security while exploring the world

2. Early relationships serve as a mental working model (prototype) for future relationships

Multiple attachments

Schaffer and Emerson (1964)

Babies with more than attachment figure increased from 29% when separation anxiety first appeared around 7 months to 87% at 18 months

For about 2/3 of the babies, the strongest attachment was the mother

What do psychoanalysts focus on?

Case studies

What do behaviorists focus on?

Animals

Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis

children should not be deprived of contact with the mother during a critical period when the primary attachment relationship is being formed (up to 2 years)

Negative effects of maternal deprivation according to Bowlby

Intellectual and emotional development

Bowlby's 44 thieves study

44 teenage 'thieves' were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathology. Their families were interviewed in order to establish whether the 'thieves' had prologues early separation from mothers. A control group of non-criminals but emotionally disturbed young people was set up to see how often maternal separation/ deprivation occurred in children who were not thieves. Bowlby found that 14/44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths. Of this 14, 12 had experienced prolonged separation form their mothers in their critical period.

This shows failing to form an attachment can lead to affectionless psychopathology.

But affectionless psychopathy and prolonged separation are subjective so there could be research bias

Harlow's Monkeys/The Monkey Love Experiment

Half of the monkeys fed from a milk dispenser in a wire mother and half from a cloth mother, the monkeys being fed from the wire mother would return to the cloth mother when not feeding (quickly when in fear).

Thus, contact comfort, not reinforcement from nourishment, was the crucial element for attachment formation.

Suggested that there are more than physical needs to be met (contact comfort)

The Well of Despair (Harry Harlow)

baby monkeys were left alone in darkness for up to one year from birth. This produced monkeys that were severely psychologically disturbed. They were unable to interact with other monkeys. All attempts to rehabilitate the monkeys failed

Rape Rack

To see what would happen when tormented monkeys became mothers, Harlow developed this to restrain and impregnate female monkeys. They were unable to care for their offspring.

Field, Diego, and Hernandez-Reif's (2010) review of contact comfort as a primary reinforcer:

Premature infants who are massaged gain weight more rapidly and show a greater decrease in stress behaviors

Romanian Orphanages study (institutionalisation)

When reproduction was highly encouraged there was an influx of children in Romania and an overflow in orphanages which led to children not being cared for properly.

Rutter (2017) tested to what extent good care can make up for poor early experiences in institutions. 165 Romanian Orphans were adopted by British families at different ages and assessed for cognitive, physical, and social development.

After 6 months, there were signs of cognitive defects. Emotional and conduct disturbance, inattention and overactivity, and noticeably higher rates of autism and ADHD

Mary Ainsworth Strange Situation Test

A parent-infant "separation and reunion" procedure that is staged in a laboratory to test the security of a child's attachment

Secure child

Happy around caregiver, upset when not

Strange situation: Not initially anxious, doesn't remain upset

Anxious/resistant child

seeks contact with caregiver but rejects attempts to be held or soothed

Strange situation: initially anxious, unconsolable, and doesn't calm down easily

Avoidant child

Ignores and avoids caregiver

Strange situation: comfortable with both situatios

Behaviors observed in strange situation study

1. Willingness to explore

2. Separation anxiety

3. Stranger anxiety

4. Reunion behavior