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Criminality, cognition and personality
Lecture 1 Introduction 3
Personality disorders and violence 3
Punishment or treatment 3
Identifying treatment targets 3
Lecture 2 Predictors and explanations 5
PD-violence link 5
Are causal models limited 5
Political and clinical considerations 6
Personality traits and violence 6
Lecture 3 Personality 7
The five dimensions of personality and FFM 7
Personality traits and antisocial behavior: eysenck’s pen model 7
Associations FFM and antisocial behaviors 7
Dimensional model of personality disorders 8
Lecture 4 Narcissism 9
What is narcissism 9
Narcissism and violence 10
Risk assessment and management 10
Treatment 10
Conclusions 11
Lecture 5 Antisocial 12
Diagnosis and prevalence of antisocial 12
Implications of antisocial for crime and violence 12
Antisocial and violence: a new hypothesis 13
Treatment 13
Lecture 6 Psychopathy subtypes 14
What is psychopathy 14
Assessing psychopathy personality traits 14
Subtypes of psychopathy 15
More recent: anxiety and personality 15
Implications for assessment and treatment 16
Lecture 7 Affect and emotion regulation 17
Emotions, anger, and emotion regulation 17
Anger and theories of aggression 17
Anger in personality is a facet of neuroticism 18
Quadripartive violence typology 18
Lecture 8 Emotion and cognition in psychopathy 20
Emotional empathy 20
Psychopathy 21
Psychopathic violence: a cognitive attention perspective 21
The response modulation theory of psychopathy 21
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Conclusion 23
Lecture 9 Criminal thinking 24
Social problem solving 24
Links to personality traits 24
Criminal cognitions 24
Implicit theories (TI) 25
Moral disengagement 25
Different types of cognitive distortions 25
Lecture 10 Attachment and empathy 27
Attachment 27
Hypothesis of the attachment theory 27
Neurobiological model 27
Empathy 28
Empathy deficits 28
Lecture 11 Summary and reflection 29
All lectures 29
Violence 30
Assessment and treatment of violence related to personality and PDs 31
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Lecture 1 Introduction
Violent crimes injure victims and spread fear through communities. People with mental
disorders are more prone to commit violent crimes. Violence: a range of behaviours
intended to harm a living being who is motivated to avoid harm. Aggression: less physically
harmful but more severely psychologically damaging. Violence is a public health issue:
deaths, costs and causes harm to individuals, families and communities.
People differ in their proneness to violence
- Individual differences: personality traits
- Personality processes: cognitive emotional etc.
- Personality disorders: problems with thoughts etc.
Recap: pd in dsm: enduring pattern, pervasive, inflexible, in relation with others, distress.
- A: odd-eccentric: paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal
- B: dramatic: antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic
- C: anxious: avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive
Personality disorders and violence
Cluster B: elevation criminal risk
Antisocial PD most strongly related to violence because of aggressive behavior
Four fundamental personality dimensions: clinical risk factors violence
1. Impulse control
2. Affect regulation
3. Narcissism
4. Paranoid cognitive personality style
Elimination of stigmatizing generalisation that all PDs lead to violence.
Basic personality traits cause a decreased or increased risk of violence, like inhibition vs
impulsiveness in children, but why? Personality traits are not sufficient to explain violence,
as it is an interaction of biological, psychological and social variables.
Punishment or treatment
Psychological evaluation of a violent person
1. Psychopathology: degree of choice in the use of violence (no moral conflict)
2. Formal model of reference and evaluation: personality problems and individual
traits, history, thoughts and feelings.
Aim for punishment: signal for society what is acceptable and not, and reduce crime.
But punishment does not reduce crime: 55% reconvicted. Treatment works better.
To mitigate responsibility for violence, diagnosis should identify deficiencies that impair the
person’s agency (rational decisions, control behavior, awareness of harm). Learning
disabilities, dementia unlikely to be punished.
But not for personality problems: antisocial knows consequences but cant/doesnt control
behavior. If responsible: proportionate punishment. Punishment needs to be immediate and
inevitable. Offenders should be managed by both punishment and treatment.
Identifying treatment targets
Borderline/intermittent explosive disorder: violence driven by strong emotions (anger),
inability to control behaviour. Treatment is an option.
Psychopathy: violence driven by possible gains, so doesn’t want to change: treatment
rejected. But what if they have emotional deficits leading to violence (absence of fear)?
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Treatments for offenders with PDs
Ideally: nature and degree of dysfunctioning: punishment, treatment or both.
Reality: treatments and services available, not that much for PDs.
- CBT and psychodynamic therapy: good effects but limited quality research.
- Antisocial treatment: only a few studies
- Psychopathy treatability? 24 studies but methodogically poor.
