Transcript Intelligence

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What does IQ really measure?
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Innate factors?
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Learned factors?
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Academic achievement, reading ability,
test-wiseness?
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Is IQ culturally biased?
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If there are innate differences, are they caused by genetics or the environment?
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Hypothesis: Mental deficiencies  crime
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IQ expresses numerical differences in
“mental abilities”
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmg2NEL7390
5 mis.
Early 1900’s, Simon and Binet, France
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Large number of everyday tasks, by difficulty
▪ Age levels assigned to tasks
▪ “Mental age” based on tasks that test-takers can complete
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IQ = Mental age/chronological age X 100
▪ Test taker can complete tasks for 9-year old, is 9 years old = 9/9 X 100 = 100
▪ Test taker can complete tasks for 9-year old, is 8 years old = 9/8 X 100= 112.5
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IQ test continuously revised and tweaked so that mean remains at 100
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Binet felt that persons could raise their IQ through training
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Unlike Binet, Americans felt that IQ was fixed (inborn)
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Early purpose to sort people into appropriate roles
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IQ’s above 115 appropriate for the professions
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Identify the subnormal, institutionalize them to prevent reproduction
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Goddard
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For adults, a mental age of 13 is the lower limit of normalcy, mental age of 12 is
“feeble-minded”
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In one study 70 percent of incarcerated inmates were found to be feeble-minded
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Feeble-minded persons are potential criminals, should be institutionalized &
not reproduce
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WWI
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Military set minimum mental age of 13
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Mental age of 12 & below disqualified applicants
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37% of whites and 89% of blacks were disqualified, meaning that nearly half
the population was “feeble-minded”
Goddard’s reaction
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He changed his mind
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Cannot equate IQ tests with native abilities
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Feeble-mindedness can be remedied by education
Later studies
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No difference in IQ scores for prisoners & draftees
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Cannot conclude that most criminals are feeble-minded
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1967 - William Shockley
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IQ measures a “fundamental social capacity”
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Differences between Afro-Americans and Euro-Americans due to genetic
differences
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Differences in IQ explain differences in poverty and in crime rates
1969 - Arthur Jensen
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IQ measures a factor important in Western industrialized societies
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80 percent of differences due to genetics, rather than the environment
1976, 1987 - Robert Gordon
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http://youtu.be/sAszZr3SkEs
Variations in delinquency rates best explained by IQ
1977 - Hirschi and Hindelang
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IQ as important as race & social class in predicting delinquency
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IQ has been ignored because of bias against it
10 mis.
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IQ tests have two components
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Verbal
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Performance
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For most, the scores are similar
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Delinquents have large gaps, with
poor verbal scores but mostly normal
performance scores
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http://www.enotes.com/topic/Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_Scale
Poor verbal ability  Delinquency?
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YES – but there’s an intervening variable
▪ Poor verbal ability  school problems  delinquency
▪ Poor verbal ability  poor problem-solving abilities  delinquency
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NO – it’s a spurious relationship. The actual cause is...
▪ Scholastic underachievement  delinquency
▪ Social conditions  delinquency
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2.
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Qualities related to the dominant culture (cultural bias)
Abstract reasoning/problem-solving ability, largely inherited (nature)
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May be affected by environmental factors (nurture)
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Low IQ parents may poorly rear children, holding back their IQ’s
General abilities, largely determined by environment (nurture)
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Performance may be affected in low-income areas
▪
Ineffective child-rearing
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Poor schooling
▪
Weak family supports
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Individual emotional and behavioral attributes
and qualities (other than intellectual ability)
that remain relatively constant
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Aggressiveness
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Impulsivity
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Introversion/extroversion
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Friendly/hostile
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Cooperative/uncooperative
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1950 – Sheldon & Eleanor Glueck
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Compared 500 delinquent and 500 non-delinquent boys
▪ Delinquents more extroverted, impulsive, hostile
▪ Delinquents less fearful of failure, less deferential to authority
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Predictors of delinquency
▪ Social background
▪ Character traits (Rorschach test)
▪ Personality traits (psychiatric interview)
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MMPI demonstrates similar results
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550 statements used for psychiatric diagnoses
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Scale 4 used to predict delinquency. Has been criticized because...
▪ Some items are delinquency (“when I was young I stole things”)
▪ Other items are non-delinquency (“I like school”)
▪ Ignores environment
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DSM-IV (unchanged in DSM-5)
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“Pervasive pattern of disregard and violation
of the rights of others that begins in childhood
and continues to adulthood”.
At least three:
▪ repeated lawbreaking
▪ repeated lying and deceit
▪ impulsivity
▪ repeated physical fights
▪ repeated failure to work
▪ lack of remorse
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Characteristics must be inflexible, maladaptive, persistent, cause significant
functional impairment or personal distress
Adult antisocial behavior (criminal behavior in absence of APD)
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APA doesn’t recognize terms, lumps both under APD
Psychopathy – Dr. Robert Hare
http://youtu.be/VkRUyGkmEj0 4 mis.
 Take the Quiz
 “Remorseless predators who use charm, intimidation and impulsive and coldblooded violence to attain their ends.”
 Impulsive, aggressive risk-takers who reject social norms
 Heredity plays dominant role, environmental also important
 Dr. Hare’s PCL-R scale widely used to evaluate candidates for parole
BUT – study by Mc Cord: Recidivism rates of delinquents diagnosed as
psychopaths only slightly worse than for non-psychopaths
Sociopathy
 Similar but caused by social factors – parental neglect, peers, poverty
 Some gang researchers see “core” gang members as sociopaths who use the mob
to act out their own aggression
Police Issues
 “A New Crystal Ball”
 NPR audio (13 mis.)
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DSM-IV (essentially same in DSM-5)
Delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and
behavior.
Believed to be caused by genetic predisposition and
environmental stresses during adolescence & early
adulthood
May affect one-third of the 600,000 homeless in the
U.S.
Most schizophrenics are withdrawn, not violent.
More risk of violence if delusions are paranoid, with
substance abuse, or with failure to take medication
 Evidence that premature births can pose risk for
mental illness
 Study of young adults born at less than eight
months’ gestation: risk of hospitalization for
schizophrenia 2X-plus; major depression 3X, for
bipolar disorder more than 7X
http://video.nytimes.com/video/
3 mis.
2011/08/06/science/
100000000978793/living-with-voices.html
http://www.cnn.com/video/ /video/crime/2011/08/04/nr.kelly.
thomas.dad.speaks.cnn? 4 mis.
Police Issues: “Homeless, Mentally
Ill, Dead”
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DSM-IV (essentially same in DSM-5)
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Sexual activity with a prepubescent child
(generally age 13 years or younger) by a
person at least 16 years old and 5 years
older than the child
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/
watch/?id=694698n 3 mis.
Origins
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Having been abused as a child
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Feelings of inadequacy with same age peers
Common justifications given by pedophiles
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Having educational value for the child
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Child experiences sexual pleasure
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Child was sexually provocative
Police Issues: “The Church, Absolved”
Pedophile\The Pedophile 5 mis.MPG
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On 2/25/05 Wichita Police arrested Dennis Rader, 59, a
Park City code enforcement officer, for ten killings
between 1974 and 1991. Rader left semen at each scene.
He taunted police notes signed “BTK” (bind, torture, kill).
http://youtu.be/xYIWGqcPV0k
15 mis.
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Despite collecting DNA from 5,000 persons there was no progress until, after 25
years, the killer resumed sending letters and leaving victim’s things in public places.
Surveillance tapes showed a Park City animal control van. A computer disk he left
was traced to a computer in his church. Crime DNA was matched against his
daughter.
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“We always said he was invisible because he was most likely so ordinary,” said a
retired detective. “As it turned out, he was exactly ordinary.”
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On June 27, 2005 Rader pled guilty to the ten slayings. Rader said the “projects”
were done for sexual gratification. He received ten consecutive life sentences.
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Ten-year study by Kozol, Boucher and
Garofalo of high-risk offenders being released
from prison
 Psychiatric evaluation failed to predict
two-thirds of subsequent violent offending
 Two-thirds of those predicted to become
violent did not
Monahan – clinical prediction difficult,
requires that individual’s general situation not
change
 Compare context of past offending with
new circumstances
 Time since, severity and frequency of past
violence
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti
cle=1015&context=psychfacpub
 Yields probability for persons of like
demographic characteristics
Some psychologists use PCL scale, but most rely on their own assessments using
their own judgment as to various factors, especially those underlined in red
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Studies offender characteristics
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Doesn’t predict whether particular individuals will commit violence
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Identifies factors associated with an increased likelihood of offending
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Best predictor of future delinquency is early childhood behavior
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Disruptive classroom behavior, aggressiveness, lying, dishonesty (tautology
problem)
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May be affected by personality characteristics not measured by testing
Other predictors of future delinquency
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Poor parental supervision
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Separation from parents
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Offending by parents and siblings
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Low intelligence and educational attainment
Optimism about the possibility of intervention
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High level of activity, impatience for rewards,
seek immediate gratification, easily distracted
Wilson & Herrnstein:
Impulsivity  Internal inhibitions (“Conscience”)  Crime
 Crime is naturally rewarding
 We must be restrained by internal inhibitions (conscience), developed in
early childhood through family rearing
 Key factor: considering long-term rather than just the short-term
consequences of one’s actions
Contributing factors
 Poor child-rearing produces weak inhibitions
 Membership in deviant subcultures
 Mass media (modeling), learning one is a “victim”
 Economic system/legitimate opportunities to gain rewards
 Schools
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Walters – “lifestyle criminals”
 Irresponsibility, self-indulgence, chronic violation of
social rules
 Feelings of entitlement, being a “victim”
 Power orientation – “dog-eat-dog world”
 Superoptimism – feeling of invulnerability
 Cognitive indolence – not paying attention to life details
 Discontinuity – failing to set goals, carry out
commitments
Study based on Moffitt
Moffitt – “life-course persistent offenders”
http://www.world Early neurophysiological problems: nutrition, mother’s
science.net/othernews/120126_genescrime.htm
drug use, etc.
 Home situation: child abuse, lack of affection &
supervision
 Disrupts schooling, reduces ability to earn legitimate rewards
Caspi, Moffitt et al – “crime-proneness”
 Associated with combination of impulsivity and “negative emotionality”
(excessive anger, anxiety, and irritability)
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In April 2007 a troubled 23-year old student killed thirty-two and wounded seventeen at Virginia
Tech with two pistols he legally bought at retail.
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In April 2009 a troubled 42-year old upstate New York man used a pair of lawfully purchased
pistols to kill thirteen and wound four.
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In January 2011 a mentally disturbed 24-year old Arizona man used a pistol he legally bought to kill
six and wound thirteen at a Congressional event.
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In July 2012 a troubled 25-year old student used an AR-15 type rifle, a pistol and a shotgun that he
legally bought to gun down twelve and wound sixty-two at a Colorado movie theater.
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In December 2012 a troubled 20-year old man shot his mother dead with her AR-15 type rifle, then
invaded a Newtown, Connecticut school and murdered twenty children and six adults.
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In September 2013 a mentally troubled 34-year old man burst into a D.C. Naval office building with
a shotgun that he legally bought, shot a security guard and took his pistol, and gunned down twelve.
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How do these compare to more “conventional”
violent crime?
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Takeover bank robberies?
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Family disputes?
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Gang drive-by’s?
Could the same underlying factors be at work?
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Some theories (e.g., Moffitt) specify causes of behavior (e.g., early psychological problems, poor
parenting) & suggest interventions
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Clinical, parenting classes, special education
BUT the authors feel that psychological factors are much less powerful than sociological factors as
an explanation for crime (note: authors are sociologists)
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Agree that impulsivity seems to be best psychological candidate as a cause of crime and
delinquency (author’s favorite)
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But psychologists may be attaching personality labels simply because of differences in rates of
offending
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Differences in IQ & school achievement are more likely caused mostly by the environment
(poverty, poor parenting, etc.) So deal with those first.
Lecturer’s conclusions
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Crime is a social construct
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Anyone who for any reason gets a distorted view of their environment may commit a crime
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Behavior is the result of a process that may include biological, psychological and social factors
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“Levers” such as stiffer punishment and improving education seem easier to pull than
tampering with genes or body chemistry or getting inside peoples’ heads