Woodworth, M. & Porter, S. (2002). In cold Blood: Characteristics of Criminal homicides As a Function of Psychopathy. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 111, 436-445.
Brief Summary
• The sample consisted of prisoners who were convicted for murder.
• The researchers sought to examine if there were differences in homicide pattern (specifically, type of violence) between prisoners who were diagnosed as psychopathic and prisoners not diagnosed as psychopathic.
• They focused on two types of violence: instrumental and reactive.
• Instrumental violence occurs when the injury of an individual is secondary to the acquisition of some external goal (or is the goal in itself).
• Reactive violence encompasses impulsive, immediate, and emotion-driven acts in response to a perceived threat, danger or insult.
• Based on intake data from prison documentation, prisoners were categorized as psychopathic or non-psychopathic using the Psychopathic Checklist - Revised (Hare, 1991).
• Murders were categorized as instrumental or reactive using coding criteria derived from the literature on violence.
• The gender of the murder victim was also recorded.
Assignment
You are asked to write a report of the study based on the data you are given.
Your research questions are:
1) Is there a significant relationship between psychopathy and murder type?
2) Is there a significant relationship between psychopathy and murder victim gender?