Primer on the Contribution of Crime Scene Behavior to the Forensic Assessment of Sexual Offenders

Abstract. Over the last decades several attempts in developing incrementally valid risk indicators above and beyond standard actuarial and dynamic risk assessment instruments have been undertaken without much success. The current review will summarize current developments regarding the validity of detailed crime scene analysis for forensic assessments of sexual offenders. To this end, this overview will focus on two issues: First, we will discuss the issue of sexual offender risk assessment based on crime scene information. Second, we will outline how crime scene behavior contributes to the assessment of sexual interest in children. In each section we will introduce the reader to new appro…

Heraclitus’ River and Recent Advances in Criminal Psychology

Implicitly measured aggressiveness self-concepts in women with borderline personality disorder as assessed by an Implicit Association Test.

Abstract Background Aggressiveness resulting from inappropriately intense anger plays a major role in borderline personality disorder (BPD) and research using self-report measures has consistently found elevated levels of aggression in this condition. However, while self-report assesses explicit dimensions of the self-concept, it cannot elucidate implicit processes that are at least equally important as they guide the perceptions of the self and influence behavioral responses. The present study aimed to extend the research on aggressiveness self-concepts in BPD utilizing an indirect latency-based measure. Methods Twenty-nine female inpatients with BPD and 21 healthy women were assessed with…

Worin besteht die Expertise von forensischen Sachverständigen, und ist die Approbation gemäß Psychotherapeutengesetz dafür erforderlich?

The Impact of Forced Answering and Reactance on Answering Behavior in Online Surveys

Forced answering (FA) is a frequent answer format in online surveys that forces respondents to answer each question in order to proceed through the questionnaire. The underlying rationale is to decrease the amount of missing data. Despite its popularity, empirical research on the impact of FA on respondents’ answering behavior is scarce and has generated mixed findings. In fact, some quasi-experimental studies showed that FA has detrimental consequences such as increased survey dropout rates and faking behavior. Notably, a theoretical psychological process driving these effects has hitherto not been identified. Therefore, the aim of the present study was twofold: First, we sought to experi…

Stigmatization of Paraphilias and Psychological Conditions Linked to Sexual Offending

Except for pedophilia, little is known about public attitudes toward paraphilias and psychological conditions that are considered risk factors for sexual offending. In the present study we sought to compare the stigma attached to pedophilia with attitudes toward sexual sadism and antisocial tendencies (Study 1,

Supplemental Material, Sischka_Online_Appendix - The Impact of Forced Answering and Reactance on Answering Behavior in Online Surveys

Supplemental Material, Sischka_Online_Appendix for The Impact of Forced Answering and Reactance on Answering Behavior in Online Surveys by Philipp E. Sischka, Jean Philippe Décieux, Alexandra Mergener, Kristina M. Neufang and Alexander F. Schmidt in Social Science Computer Review

Psychological Contract Violation or Basic Need Frustration? Psychological Mechanisms Behind the Effects of Workplace Bullying

Workplace bullying is a phenomenon that can have serious detrimental effects on health, work-related attitudes, and the behavior of the target. Particularly, workplace bullying exposure has been linked to lower level of general well-being, job satisfaction, vigor, and performance and higher level of burnout, workplace deviance, and turnover intentions. However, the psychological mechanisms behind these relations are still not well-understood. Drawing on psychological contract and self-determination theory (SDT), we hypothesized that perceptions of contract violation and the frustration of basic needs mediate the relationship between workplace bullying exposure and well-being, attitudinal, a…

When Do False Accusations Lead to False Confessions? Preliminary Evidence for a Potentially Overlooked Alternative Explanation

ABSTRACTIn the present study, we have taken a novel approach in confession research to investigate and compare situational as well as individual risk factors among false confessors and true deniers...

sj-pdf-1-ssc-10.1177_0894439320907067 – Supplemental Material for The Impact of Forced Answering and Reactance on Answering Behavior in Online Surveys

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-ssc-10.1177_0894439320907067 for The Impact of Forced Answering and Reactance on Answering Behavior in Online Surveys by Philipp E. Sischka, Jean Philippe Décieux, Alexandra Mergener, Kristina M. Neufang and Alexander F. Schmidt in Social Science Computer Review

Identification of acute myocardial infarction in elderly patients using optimized highly sensitive troponin I thresholds

Purpose: Established diagnostic thresholds for high-sensitivity cardiac troponins (hs-cTn) might not apply for elderly patients as they are elevated irrespective of the presence of an acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Aim of the present study was to investigate hs-cTnI in elderly patients with suspected AMI and to calculate optimized diagnostic cutoffs. Material and methods: Data from a prospective multi-centre study and from a second independent prospective single-centre cohort study were analysed. A number of 2903 patients were eligible for further analysis. Patients > 70 years were classified as elderly. hs-cTnI was measured upon admission. Results: Around 34.7% of 2903 patients were…

sj-pdf-1-ssc-10.1177_0894439320907067 – Supplemental Material for The Impact of Forced Answering and Reactance on Answering Behavior in Online Surveys

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-ssc-10.1177_0894439320907067 for The Impact of Forced Answering and Reactance on Answering Behavior in Online Surveys by Philipp E. Sischka, Jean Philippe Décieux, Alexandra Mergener, Kristina M. Neufang and Alexander F. Schmidt in Social Science Computer Review

Interrogator intonation and memory encoding performance.

Based on recent findings that interrogator intonation can enhance interrogative suggestibility during recall phases, the present study tested influences of interrogator intonation on memory performance even as early as at the encoding stage. We experimentally manipulated interrogator intonation during encoding of a story to be recalled in immediate and delayed subsequent memory tests (Experiment 1, N = 50). As expected, a symmetrically structuring vs. an isolating-emphasizing speaking style generally increased the amount of freely recalled details. In a more fine-grained experiment (N = 50), we additionally manipulated emphasized story details and tested recall rates for peripheral, neutral…

The WHO-5 Well-Being Index – Validation based on item response theory and the analysis of measurement invariance across 35 countries.

Abstract Background The five-item World Health Organization Well-Being Index (WHO-5) is a frequently used brief standard measure in large-scale cross-cultural clinical studies. Despite its frequent use, some psychometric questions remain that concern the choice of an adequate item response theory (IRT) model, the evaluation of reliability at important cutoff points, and most importantly the assessment of measurement invariance across countries. Methods Data from the 6th European Working Condition survey (2015) were used that collected nationally representative samples of employed and self-employed individuals (N = 43,469) via computer-aided personal interviews across 35 European countries. …

Validity of content‐based techniques for credibility assessment—How telling is an extended meta‐analysis taking research bias into account?

Test–Retest Reliability and Temporal Agreement of Direct and Indirect Sexual Interest Measures

The Explicit and Implicit Sexual Interest Profile (EISIP) is a multimethod measure of sexual interest in children and adults. It combines indirect latency-based measures such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT), Viewing Time (VT), and explicit self-report measures. This study examined test–retest reliability and absolute temporal agreement of the EISIP over a 2-week interval in persons who were convicted of sexual offenses against children ( n = 33) and nonoffending controls ( n = 48). Test–retest reliability of the aggregated EISIP measures was high across the whole sample ( rtt = .90, intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = .90) with the IAT yielding the lowest retest correlations …

Further Evidence for Criterion Validity and Measurement Invariance of the Luxembourg Workplace Mobbing Scale

Abstract. Workplace mobbing has various negative consequences for targeted individuals and are costly to organizations. At present it is debated whether gender, age, or occupation are potential risk factors. However, empirical data remain inconclusive as measures of workplace mobbing so far lack of measurement invariance (MI) testing – a prerequisite for meaningful manifest between-group comparisons. To close this research gap, the present study sought to further elucidate MI of the recently developed brief Luxembourg Workplace Mobbing Scale (LWMS; Steffgen, Sischka, Schmidt, Kohl, & Happ, 2016 ) across gender, age, and occupational groups and to test whether these factors represent im…