Forensic Psych Exam 2

1. Who was the first prominent author on the subject of psychopathy?
2. Who developed the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL/PCL-R)? Why?
3. What are the four PCL-R facets? Which is the most controversial for assessing psychopathy?
Why?
4. What are the prevalence rates of psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder in prison
settings? What proportion of inmates with Antisocial Personality Disorder have
psychopathy, and vice versa?
5. What do experimental findings suggest about psychopaths’ emotions?
6. What are sham emotions?
7. What is passive avoidance learning? What deficits do psychopaths show with regard to
passive avoidance learning, and how does this affect their behavior?
8. What is the difference between psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder?
9. What is the single biggest risk factor for violence?
10. What is the difference between instrumental and reactive violence? Which of the two are
more distinctive of psychopathy, and why?
11. Which personality disorder may actually be an expression of psychopathy in women?
12. True or False: There are meaningful differences in psychopathy scores across Caucasians and
African-Americans
13. What was Ted Bundy appearing to do during the in-class video?
14. How do psychopaths reason about moral dilemmas, according to the expert we watched on
video in class?
CHAPTER 5: VIOLENCE RISK ASSESSMENT
1. How do we define violence? What do we exclude from our definition, and why?
2. What is the proximate (immediate) cause of violence?
3. What is the goal of risk assessment?
4. What is at stake in risk assessment?
5. What were the 5 landmark cases for violence risk assessment that we discussed? What
precedents did they set, and why are those precedents important?
6. What was the primary approach of the first generation of risk assessment tools (1970s)?
How well did these risk assessments work?
7. What are the primary differences between clinical, actuarial, and structured risk assessments?
How well do these work in predicting violence risk, compared to one another?
8. What is the most popular actuarial violence risk assessment instrument? How well does it
work?
9. What is the most popular SPJ violence risk assessment instrument?
10. Describe the implications of Kroner, Mills, and Reddon’s (2005) “coffee can” experiment.

11. What do researchers believe we should focus on now in terms of violence risk assessment
research?
12. Describe the difference between static and dynamic risk factors.
13. What are the differences between risk management and risk assessment? Why are dynamic
risk factors more important than static factors in risk management?
14. What are protective factors?
15. In which three situations are we particularly good at making violence risk predictions?
16. How would the average psychologist prefer to communicate risk to the Court? Why?
CHAPTER 6: SEXUAL OFFENDERS
1. What is the definition of sexual assault?
2. What is a paraphilia?
3. What are the differences between a child molester and pedophile?
4. What are the two purposes of sex offender evaluations?
5. How are sex offender evaluations similar to, or different from, violence risk assessments?
6. What is a penile plethysmograph?
7. Why are penile plethysmographs useful in sex offender assessments?
8. Is a sex offender more likely to recidivate for sexual or nonsexual offenses?
9. What has research concluded regarding structured professional judgement instruments and
actuarial instruments for assessing risk in sexual offenders?
10. What are the three components of potentially successful treatment programs for sex
offenders?
11. How effective is treatment for sex offenders? What is a significant limitation of this
research?
12. True or False: Sexual abuse as a child is related to future sexual offending as an adult.
13. What is the sexual reoffending (recidivism) rate after 10 years for sex offenders?
14. What is the strongest predictor of sexual reoffending?
15. Why is it difficult to assess risk in juvenile sex offenders?
16. What percentage of sex offenders are women?
17. What percentage of female sex offenders recidivate?
18. According to the John Jay report, what percentage of Catholic priests were estimated to be
child molesters?
19. How do contact and non-contact sexual offenders differ from one another?
20. Why are Registration/Notification Laws and Residency Laws not generally effective in
reducing sexual violence?