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PubMed1995

[Intuitive evaluation of guilt of violent offenders in relation to offender personality].

The distinction between overcontrolled and undercontrolled offenders in criminal psychology is applied to the forensic issues related to crimes of passion under German penal law. The effects of descriptions of the offenders' personality on the attribution of responsibility were studied in a judgment experiment using fictional cases. N = 193 students of law and of psychology, respectively, gave judgments on an offender's legal responsibility and related criteria. Vignettes with four different homicide case descriptions were used as stimuli. Offender personality (overcontrolled vs undercontrolled) was varied as a second stimulus factor. Higher proportions of overcontrolled offenders were judged to be not responsible for their deeds. Law students were more lenient in their judgments than students of psychology. A factor analysis of subjects' ratings of 15 diagnostic criteria yielded four dimensions: intensity of affective excitement, incomprehensibility of the offense, strangeness to the offender's personality, and inevitability.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Violent women, blame attribution, crime, and personality.

BACKGROUND: The attribution of blame for criminal act has an impact, both on the way the offender must come to terms with the offence and on the risk of recidivism. Blame attribution has been found to be related to the type of crime and personality. AIMS: This study examined the relationship of blame attribution and feelings of guilt in violent female offenders, according to factors related to crime, background and personality. METHODS: The Gudjonsson Blame Attribution Inventory (BAI) and the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ) were administered to 58 violent female offenders. The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), Structured Clinical Interview II for DSM-IV (SCID II) and clinical interviews were used for assessment. RESULTS: Lower scores of guilt feelings were found in women than has been reported for men. The feelings of guilt were higher in homicide than in other violent crimes, but lower in the cases where women had committed prior violent crimes. No differences were found between psychiatric patients and prisoners. The duration of hospitalisation and incarceration did not result in differences in blame attribution and guilt, but when the victims survived, guilt feelings seemed to increase with the passing of the time. External attribution was related to motives of crime, but traumatic experiences did not have a crucial impact upon blame attribution. The attribution of blame and the amount of guilt feelings were found to be related to personality. Women scoring high on psychopathy reported less guilt than women with low scores. The corresponding result was not obtained in the group of women with antisocial personality disorder, who, however, showed an unexpectedly low use of external attribution. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that it might be difficult for women to cope with the violent offence and that the characteristics of psychopathy seems to have a crucial impact on the guilt feelings and consequently on coping with the crime in female offenders.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2005

Human morality and temperament.

This chapter has tried to make two points. First, the concept of morality refers to a developmental cascade of phenomena whose essential features are (a) inhibition of punished acts; (b) a representation of prohibited actions; (c) the emotions of uncertainty, empathy, shame, and guilt; (d) the semantic concepts of good and bad; (e) accepting the moral obligations of social categories; and (f) the concepts of fairness and the ideal. The inhibition of prohibited actions and the cognitive representation of prohibited behaviors, as well as the affect states that follow violations, appear by the end of the second year of life. The concepts of good and bad appear early in the third year, the experience of guilt and awareness of social categories by 4-6 years, and the notions of fairness, the ideal, and relational social categories during the school years. Second, some of the variation in the intensity and frequency of the moral emotions is attributable to the child's temperament. Eleven-year-old children who had been high-reactive infants and admitted to feelings of guilt when they violated a family standard were cortically and autonomically more aroused than the low reactives who reported equally frequent experiences of guilt. Further, high reactives who were perceived by their mothers as highly sensitive to punishment were biologically more aroused than high reactives perceived as less sensitive. Both universal developmental phenomena tied to brain maturation and temperamental variation associated with neurochemistry contribute to the complex phenomena that constitute the moral domain. The role of affect in promoting the adherence to standards remains controversial. Kant believed that people acted morally because acceptance of the categorical imperative required proper behavior-reason was the guardian of social harmony. Peirce and Dewey, by contrast, argued that anticipation of the emotions of anxiety, shame, and guilt motivated loyalty to the community's ethical standards. The fact that adults pay to watch a film that they know will generate a deep feeling of sadness--an emotion most do not seek or welcome in their daily lives--and will remark that they enjoyed the movie warrants an explanation. One possibility is that the experienced emotion affirms their moral values. The Australian film The Rabbit Proof Fence describes three aboriginal sisters who have been taken from their mother to a camp a thousand miles away to be socialized in Australian values. The three girls run away, and most of the film illustrates the hardships that they endure and their close escapes from the authorities who are pursuing them as they walk the thousand miles to reach their home. The audience's empathic sadness for the children affirms their moral belief that children should love their parents and miss their home. I suspect that those in the audience who felt the most intense sadness would praise the film with greater enthusiasm than those who had muted feelings. Because sadness is an emotion that few enjoy or try to attain, there must be another reason for deciding that the film was gratifying. The affirmation of one's moral beliefs could be that source of gratification. The tension between the importance of a rational and the importance of an affective basis for morality is seen in modern industrialized societies where the balance between the feeling of virtue that follows enhancing another and the pleasure that follows the enhancing of self has shifted toward favoring the latter state. Increasing numbers of Americans do not regard their gender, ethnicity, vocation, place of residence, or friendships or the religion of their parents as distinctive sources of virtue. As a result, they are freed from the moral obligations that were attached to these categories in the past and rely primarily on the anticipation of sensory delight and self-enhancement as guides for action and sources of reassurance that they are managing their lives correctly. Although it is likely that future scientists will synthesize a drug that blocks feelings of guilt without affecting the knowledge that an act is wrong, it is less certain that broad use of this drug would eliminate loyalty to the mutual obligations that make a society habitable. Nonetheless, a posture of vigilance is appropriate, for humans, unlike gorillas, can hold representations of envy, hostility, and anger, even toward those whom they have never met, for a very long time. Therefore, empathy and the anticipation of guilt or shame may restrain rudeness, dishonesty, and aggression when reason fails.

Child↗
PubMed1986

Sex fantasies revisited: an expansion and further clarification of variables affecting sex fantasy production.

Findings of prior research which indicated both external factors (experimental response cues) and internal factors (sex guilt) influencing subjects' writing of their sexual fantasies were expanded. University males (N = 88) and females (N = 122) were studied. They read sex fantasy examples varying in conventionality of the sexual activity and the relationship context before reporting their own fantasies. Sex guilt level of all subjects was measured as well as their subjective responses to writing the fantasies. The data were analyzed to determine whether varying response cues along certain dimensions could influence subjects to write parallel fantasies. Sex guilt levels and sex of the subject were the best predictors of the length, explicitness, and variety of content of subjects' reported fantasies. Males wrote longer, more explicit and varied fantasies but were affected similarly by sex guilt levels as females. High sex guilt subjects in general produced more restricted content and shorter fantasies. They also experienced more embarrassment and less arousal. Females were more likely to have high levels of guilt about sex than males. The varying dimensions of the fantasy examples had little effect on the types of fantasy material revealed and therefore the erotic/explicit aspect of the examples found in the prior research seems to be the factor that produces effects on fantasy production. Comparing the two studies, females may respond with longer, more explicit fantasies when given erotic but more traditional sexual examples.

Adolescent↗