Criminal Psychology

Examine how situational risk factors, conformity, and authority shaped ordinary men into killers, drawing on Browning’s Ordinary Men and Milgram, Zimbardo, and cognitive dissonance evidence.

Explore how personality theories falter and social psychology explains obedience and conformity—from Asch and Milgram to Stanford Prison Experiment and police battalion 101—emphasizing group dynamics while affirming individual responsibility.

Examine situationism, the idea that behavior changes come from the situation, not personality. Understand interactionism, situational selection, evocation, and manipulation that shape responses across strong and weak situations.

Explore how genetics influence criminal behavior through family, twin, and adoption studies, and examine genome, heritability, brain mechanisms, nonshared and shared environments, and genotype-environment interactions.

Explore neurobiological risk factors shaping aggression and antisocial behavior. Assess twin, adoption, and case evidence linking brain biology to violence and crime.

Explore attachment development and risk factors for violence, including secure and insecure attachment styles, the strange situation, maternal deprivation, and how early bonds shape later relationships.

Explore four parenting styles—authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved—and how warmth, rules, and communication shape child development. Assess outcomes like secure attachment, self-control, self-esteem, and risks of harsh punishment and abuse.

Trace the shift from behaviorism to social learning, linking conditioning, modeling, and reinforcement to criminal behavior. Explore Bandura's Bobo doll and reciprocal determinism in learning.

Explore how criminals exhibit distorted cognitions and maladaptive thinking, including rationalization, external locus of control, and self-serving justifications that reinforce a dog eat dog world and impulsive aggression.

Examine how temperament blends biology and environment, illustrated by Tarzan and Moguli, and summarize Rothbart's three dimensions: surgency/extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control, and the goodness-of-fit with parenting.

Explore how peer rejection shapes social development, sociometric status categories, and links between early aggression, hostile attributional bias, and delinquency.

Explore the patterns, motives, and typologies of firesetting, distinguish arson from fire setting and pyromania, and review DSM-5 classifications and risk factors in serial offenders.

Explore historical and modern theories of fire setting, from psychoanalytic and social learning explanations to multi-factorial models, revealing pre-existing factors, triggering events, and five arson pathways.

Examine major firesetting typologies—revenge, excitement, and vandalism—and how FBI classifications and organized versus disorganized patterns guide investigations and highlight limitations.

Examine how fire setting fits within the broader anti-social behavior framework, detailing child stages of fire interest, fire play, and fire setting, plus associated abuse, conduct disorders, and mental pathologies.

Explore recidivism in arson by examining risk factors such as younger first-fire age, multiple offenses, and psychiatric history, plus treatment options like cognitive behavioral therapy and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

Examine how U.S. homicide is classified, define serial killers, and compare organized and disorganized offenders, outlining motivations such as visionary, missionary, power/control, and lust or thrill killers.

Explore how childhood abuse and mother–son dynamics, plus exposure to sexual violence, shape serial killer development; brain factors like prefrontal cortex deficits and serotonin, and environmental influences, interact with cognition.

Examine female serial killers, their distinct motives like financial gain, the angel of death, and how accomplices form killer couples, shaping murder patterns and typologies.

Explore sexual offenders and stalkers, debunk rape myths, examine consent and rape definitions, prevalence, underreporting, sexual crimes against children, and the revised rape typology with anger and sexual pathways.

Explore pedophilia and child molestation definitions, distinguish intra- and extra-familiar offenders, and examine emotional congruence with children, Tanner stages, and models of seeking connection: blockage, sexual deviance, and psychological immaturity.

Examine the typologies of female sexual offenders, including teacher lover offenders, offenders with male accomplices, predisposed offenders, and other categories, along with associated factors like abuse history and low self-esteem.

Explore implicit theories and beliefs behind sexual offenses, such as women as objects and uncontrollable male drive, plus a four-step model of offending and developmental, cultural, and psychological factors.

Explore the psychology of stalking by examining stalker characteristics, victim dynamics, stalking technologies, and theories such as attachment and rotomania, with legal and clinical insights.

Explore defining and measuring psychopathy, its overlap with antisocial personality disorder, and the psychopathic checklist's two-factor structure. Assess violence links, biological underpinnings, and treatment implications.

Explore how psychopathy links predatory and instrumental aggression with reduced fear conditioning, contrasts with reactive aggression, and involves amygdala and prefrontal cortex dysfunction plus striatal reward sensitivity.

Examine how psychopathy, amygdala differences, and biological factors shape prediction, prevention, and intervention in criminal psychology, highlighting risk assessment, treatment efficacy, and ethical implications.