NCJ Number
81780
Date Published
1978
Length
11 pages
Annotation
Efforts and results are reported from the initial step to develop a scheme for predicting dangerousness from information gained in interviews with subjects.
Abstract
The intent of this first step in creating a scheme for predicting dangerousness through interviews was to isolate some descriptive terms which might be of use to psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. Essentially, the task is to create a vocabularly which is at once sufficiently general that it can be used by professionals with different backgrounds yet yield information sufficiently precise to be of value in future research. Concepts presented by Megargee (1976) in his model of behavior involve four major aspects: motivation, internal inhibitions, habit strength, and situational variables. In this study, only motivation was considered in detail. The four aspects of motivation identified were (1) angry aggression, which involves a conscious or unconscious desire to harm the victim as an end in itself; (2) instrumental aggression, which involves aggression against a person to achieve some other end, such as self-defense; (3) hostility, which is a relatively enduring posture of antagonism; and (4) anger, which is a transitory emotional state that is situation specific. In the application of the scheme, a psychiatrist was asked to rate a sample of 235 persons on the four categories according to levels of high, low, and medium. It was found that the scheme did permit the psychiatrist to make reasonably sophisticated discriminations between the subjects as regards dangerousness. Future steps in the development of the prediction scheme are briefly described. Tabular data and six references are provided.