Psychological Skills and Criminal Profile Accuracy

Abstract

The influence of psychological knowledge and education on profiling accuracy of sexual homicides was examined in this research. Participants included 269 university students (70.3% female, 29.7% male) whose ages ranged from 17 to 39 years (M = 19.3, SD = 2.6). The sample included 17.5% psychology majors; the other 82.5% were undeclared or had other majors. Participants completed two packets incorporating a demographic questionnaire, psychology test, murder case, and profiling offender characteristics questionnaire. A series of multivariate analyses of variance were conducted on the data; the between-subjects analyses found sex, psychology major, and psychology test to influence accuracy significantly. For females, psychological knowledge and education enhanced accuracy for profiling physical and cognitive characteristics of the offender, whereas the males’ accuracy was not enhanced.