THE PERSONALITY PARADOX IN OFFENDER PROFILING A Theoretical Review of the Processes Involved in Deriving Background Characteristics From Crime Scene Actions

Most approaches to offender profiling depend on a naive trait perspective, in which the task of predicting personality characteristics from crime scene actions relies on a model that is nomothetic, deterministic, and nonsituationist. These approaches rest on two basic premises: behavioral consistency across offenses and stable relationships between configurations of offense behaviors and background characteristics. Research supports the former premise but not the latter. Contemporary trait psychology reveals that this is probably due to the fact that Person Situation interactions have an effect on offense behavior. When profiling reports rely on a naive trait approach, such reports should be used with caution in criminal investigations and not at all as evidence in court until research demonstrates its predictive validity.

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