Making an Arsonist: A Psychological Approach to Understanding Expressive Arson

The offence of arson comes under the category of property crime, although the serious consequences of the offence often have a huge impact on both people and public costs, with serious injury and death potential outcomes. As with many crimes, there are various motivations that may behind a person committing arson. These can be understood under whether the offence was instrumental and therefore carrying out the crime for personal gain, or expressive, carrying out the offence due to difficulty in expressing their emotions. Instrumental arsonists may be easier to detect due to an often obvious financial or personal motivation, and these offenders are generally more common within the population of arsonists. However, perhaps more important to explore in relation to where psychology can best aid understanding and inform practice, is in cases where there is little or no instrumental value. These expressive arsonists are significantly more likely to reoffend than their instrumental counterparts, adding further to the need to gain a greater understanding of the factors that play a role in such individuals’ trajectories. The present paper reviews the current literature surrounding expressive arson to present a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that contribute to this deviant behaviour. In doing so, the present paper draws on explanations from developmental, psychopathological and personality psychology to critically form such an understanding and present this in an understandable way that possesses heuristic value for the psychological community with an interest in this area

The Missing Link in Training to Detect Deception and its Implications for Justice

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of response bias and target gender on detecting deception. Design/methodology/approach: Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: a stereotype condition (bogus training group), a tell-signs condition (empirically tested cues), and a control condition. Participants were required to decide whether eight targets were lying or telling the truth, based upon the information they had been given. Accuracy was measured via a correct or incorrect response to the stimuli. The data were then analyzed using a 2×2×3 mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine whether any main or interactional effects were present. Findings: Results revealed training condition had no significant effect on accuracy, nor was there a within-subject effect of gender. However, there was a significant main effect of accuracy in detecting truth or lies, and a significant interaction between target gender and detecting truth or lies. Research limitations/implications: Future research should seek a larger sample of participants with a more extensive training aspect developed into the study, as the brief training offered here may not be fully reflective of the extent and intensity of training which could be offered to professionals. Originality/value: Within the criminal justice system, the need for increased accuracy in detecting deception is of critical importance; not only to detect whether a guilty individual is being deceitful, but also whether someone is making a false confession, both to improve community safety by detaining the correct perpetrator for the crime but also to maintain public trust in the justice system. The present research provides a fresh insight into the importance of training effects in detecting deception

An Investigation of Resilience Constructs Alongside the Role of the Community, Religiosity and Attitudes of Intolerance: Implications for Countering Extremism

The understanding of extremism in the United Kingdom is as important now as it has ever been, and in doing so there is a need to inform empirically underpinned policy and intervention with the development of an evidence base. Especially from a risk management point of view, early intervention prior to radicalisation is a preferable direction to take and the government’s Prevent strategy reflects such. Yet currently, there are key concepts within counter-extremism and counter-terrorism policy which continue to be poorly defined and lack operationalisation, leading to negative implications on the ground and problematic implementation. Such issues can have a pertinent impact on perceived legitimacy of implementing agencies. Resilience, which is one such key concept alongside community cohesion, has been widely applied across disciplines and framed in a variety of ways. Whilst the psychological literature has begun to explore resilience as a multifaceted phenomenon, under a levels of resilience approach, there is a gap in the literature whereby resilience is reframed in the context of countering extremism. Resilience was subsequently framed in a vulnerability reduction context where the threat is the adoption of extremist attitudes and radicalisation and the successful adaptation is the rejection of such. The overarching aim of this thesis was therefore to investigate resilience constructs alongside the role of the community and, political and religious factors. To link the exploration more closely to attitude change, one of the goals of counter-extremism interventions, the research also sought to determine the relationship of the above variables to attitudes of intolerance considered against the social norm. The research conducted a pilot study to provide an initial exploration of individual, community, and national resilience on a sample of 134 students. Data was then collected from 355 members of the general population to firstly explore resilience and the role of the community in study one, secondly attitudes of intolerance in study two, and finally resilience and community in the context of attitudes of intolerance in study three. All respondents completed a comprehensive questionnaire including demographics, measures of individual resilience, community resilience, national resilience, religiosity,religious fundamentalism,and attitudes of intolerance. Findings demonstrated resilience at the level of the individual, community and nation are distinct constructs which are dynamic in nature, especially across context. There were also significant relationships between resilience constructs and community cohesion which support a reintegration of these two concepts within counter extremism policy. Furthermore, both community resilience and national resilience were found to be directly related to attitudes of intolerance. These findings are discussed in detail, specifically in relation to reframing, reimagining, and reapplying resilience in the context of countering extremism in Britain. As part of this discussion recommendations are made to policy makers based on the current findings which ultimately seek to integrate an evidence base into counter extremism policy and subsequently have a positive impact on implementation at a grass-roots level.Concluding, when policy is understood as a diagnosis and interpretation of society, community resilience and community cohesion together can be applied as responses to the need to reduce vulnerability to the threat of extremism and radicalisation. The current findings indicate building resilience at the level of the individual is less likely to be as directly beneficial in relation to reducing intolerance and national resilience may increase intolerance. By applying empirical analysis to explore resilience and the role of the community, grounded in the psychological literature on attitudes and attitude change, a unique perspective on the future of resilience building strategies and the community cohesion agenda is offered. Drawing on the evidence base which has shown the utility of community based interventions in other areas of crime and social issues, and how early intervention in countering extremism may be particularly valuable from both a top-down and bottom-up perspective to meet the needs of the general public and governing agencies

A Critical Assessment of Trait versus Situationalist Positions and the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R)

Over time, the concept of personality has stimulated considerable theorising and debate amongst researchers. Thought to be characteristics within an individual that account for consistent patterns of thought, feelings and behaviours, the quest to understand individual differences between human beings has led to the increased uptake of psychological measurement tools, known as psychometric tests. Many variations of psychometric tests that have been devised to date attempt to operationalise the theoretical principles of Trait theory and the dimensions therein. Typically, these are applied within occupational, educational and clinical settings, where such personality measures are considered increasingly useful in the evaluation of individuals either being assessed, or due to begin working within an organisation. However, despite researchers implementing psychometric tests such as the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa and McCrae, 1992a) reporting high levels of construct validity for the measure (Widiger and Trull, 1997), criticism surrounding the reliability of findings obtained from applications of the tool, resulting from the general lack of agreement around the trait dimensions that underpin psychometric testing, remain important. Another highly contented issue surrounding the basis of such tests are the stability and situationalist arguments, which criticise such methods as inaccurately representing a true picture of the individual due to failing to take the full environmental influences upon people into account. Such issues are undoubtedly more complex than such a summarisation can accredit, and upon paying systematic and critical consideration to the related assessments, a greater depth of analysis may be drawn

The Basis and Structure of Attitudes: A Critical Evaluation of Experimental, Discursive, and Social Constructionist Psychological Perspectives

This piece will examine the concept of attitudes from three alternative perspectives, exploring which has greater utility for the interpretation and assessment of such governing constructs. Experimental psychologists study attitudes cognitively, arguing for the existence of such an entity. Discursive psychologists argue against the study of ‘attitudes,’ proposing instead those attitudes should be considered as social constructions which occur through language. Notably, social constructionists claim that categories and concepts that people use to understand psychological phenomena and the world around them are historically, culturally, and contextually specific. The many differing viewpoints and explanations put forward from these perspectives are considered here along with assessing how reliable theory and research conducted to date is deemed to be

Motivation: A Critical Consideration of Freud and Rogers’ Seminal Conceptualisations

Humans vary in many aspects of their psychology with differences routinely found in patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, setting individuals apart across time and place. Though many psychologists have attempted to account for these individual differences, one area that has continued to generate interest and disagreement is the concept of motivation. Today, understanding behavioural motivation remains one of the most important questions facing personality theorists. In an attempt to better account for human motivation, the present exploration reviews seminal theoretical positions put forward by Sigmund Freud from a Psychoanalytical perspective and contrastingly, that of Carl Rogers from the Humanistic approach. Critical consideration is specifically applied to how verifiable each perspective may be and the degree of empirical support either account has attained to date. Whilst understanding human motivation is not a new endeavour, the present exploration provides a contemporary critical assessment of traditional psychological explanations

Psychometric tests as a measure of Personality: A Critical Assessment of Trait versus Situationalist Positions and the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R)

Over time, the concept of personality has stimulated considerable theorising and debate amongst researchers. Thought to be characteristics within an individual that account for consistent patterns of thought, feelings and behaviours, the quest to understand individual differences between human beings has led to the increased uptake of psychological measurement tools, known as psychometric tests. Many variations of psychometric tests that have been devised to date attempt to operationalise the theoretical principles of Trait theory and the dimensions therein. Typically, these are applied within occupational, educational and clinical settings, where such personality measures are considered increasingly useful in the evaluation of individuals either being assessed, or due to begin working within an organisation. However, despite researchers implementing psychometric tests such as the NEO Personality Inventory [1] reporting high levels of construct validity for the measure [2], criticism surrounding the reliability of findings obtained from applications of the tool, resulting from the general lack of agreement around the trait dimensions that underpin psychometric testing, remain important. Another highly contested issue surrounding the basis of such tests are the stability and situationalist arguments, which criticise such methods as inaccurately representing a true picture of the individual due to failing to take the full environmental influences upon people into account. Such issues are undoubtedly more complex than such a summarisation can accredit, and upon paying systematic and critical consideration to the related assessments, a greater depth of analysis may be drawn