Barry S. Cooper

INFERRING SEXUALLY DEVIANT BEHAVIOR FROM CORRESPONDING FANTASIES The Role of Personality and Pornography Consumption

There is widespread concern that deviant sexual fantasies promote corresponding behaviors. The authors investigated whether that concern is valid in nonoffender samples. Self-reports of nine deviant sexual fantasies and behaviors were compared in two samples of male undergraduates. In Study 1, 95% of respondents reported experiencing at least one sexually deviant fantasy, and 74% reported engaging in at least one sexually deviant behavior. The correlations were all positive and averaged .44. However, only 38% of the high-fantasy group reported acting out fantasies. The effect of pornography use on deviant behaviors was partially mediated by increases in deviant fantasies. Study 2 investigated possible moderators, including eight personality variables. The fantasy-behavior association held only for those high in self-reported psychopathy. In addition, the association between pornography use and deviant sexual behavior held only for participants high in psychopathy. Overall, theoretically relevant individual difference variables moderated the relation between sexually deviant fantasies and behaviors and between pornography use and deviant behaviors.

Routes of Recruitment : Pimps' Techniques and Other Circumstances That Lead to Street Prostitution

ABSTRACT Much of the research on prostitution to date has focused on the risks of working on the streets. However, no research has described the recruitment process for street prostitution. This exploratory study describes some of the main techniques that pimps use to recruit children and women into the trade, including the pretense of love, threats of indebtedness, drug addiction, manipulation, and violence. In addition, social situations that leave women feeling that they have few alternatives to working on the streets are described.

Divergent Perspectives in Prostitutes' Autobiographical Memories: Trauma and Dissociation

ABSTRACT An intriguing aspect of cognition is the perspective one takes when perceiving and/or remembering an event (i.e., field vs. observer perspectives/memories). Although explored from a cognitive viewpoint in terms of remembering, no research has examined this phenomenon from a forensic viewpoint in terms of the original experienced perspective. The objective of the present study was to test the utility of the field vs. observer distinction. Thirty-six prostitutes were interviewed and asked to recall three different autobiographical memories. Peri-traumatic dissociative symptoms, trait dissociation levels, current PTSD symptomatology, the perspective taken, and the quantity of detail were coded for each memory and compared. Extreme memorial variability was found both within and across the types of memories/perspectives reported. Among other findings, the results suggest significantly higher levels of state dissociation in memories originally perceived from an observer perspective than from a field perspective. Implications for expert testimony pertaining are briefly discussed.

The ABC’s of CBCA: Verbal Credibility Assessment in Practice

Statement validity analysis (SVA) was developed during the 1960s and 1970s in the context of evaluating child witness statements of sexual abuse (e.g., Undeutsch, 1967, 1989). Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) is one component of SVA used to distinguish between event-based and intentionally fabricated statements of child and adult witnesses concerning sexual interactions and other topics (Vrij, 2005). It has become a widely accepted method of credibility assessment in many European courts (see Kohnken, 2004). The last author of the present chapter (JY) was instrumental in bringing this procedure to North America in the late 1980s (e.g., Yuille, 1988) and research conducted by him and other coauthors (DG, MT, BC) is presented in this chapter. Two of the authors (DG, DS) serve as expert witnesses who provide testimony on statement credibility in German courts. This chapter, thus, offers insights from both researchers’ and practitioners’ points of view, as well as from European and North-American perspectives.

Expert Testimony on Laboratory Witnesses

Based on the past three decades of diverse and extensive research on eyewitness memory issues, the courts are increasingly being asked to accept psychologists as experts on eyewitness performance. This article examines a sample of this body of research and questions its helpfulness to triers of fact. The majority of eyewitness research has been conducted in the laboratory rather than in the field, thereby examining laboratory witnesses, not actual eyewitnesses. Although there is some consensus among some eyewitness experts that certain factors related to laboratory witness performance are robust enough to be discussed in court or applied to the criminal justice system, we suggest that much more research needs to be conducted to assess the generalizability of laboratory witness research to most realms of the eyewitness context. As some research demonstrates that actual eyewitnesses behave differently than laboratory eyewitnesses, we suggest that psychologists who are required to consider eyewitness issues in the criminal justice system make an effort to differentiate between the findings of laboratory studies and the findings of field studies.

Assessing risk for major depression on patients selected for percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty: is it a worthwhile venture?

We hypothesized that a prior history of a major depressive disorder would not compromise the efficacy of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), a coronary revascularization procedure, in improving quality of life and health status when comparing patients with no previous history. To determine the utility of screening for risk for depression in heart patients scheduled for PTCA, 190 patients were administered a two-item depressive disorders screener prior to PTCA and the SF-36 and Seattle Angina Questionnaire prior to and 6 months post procedure. Results reveal that while those with no prior history of depression had statistically better quality of life and health status outcomes than those with a probable past depression, (P <.05), the clinically meaningful differences as determined by effect size scores showed that those susceptible to recurrent depression benefited from PTCA as well as, and on some measures better than those with no previous history. Prescreening patients at probable risk for a depression is not a valid or helpful enterprise if the purpose is to develop intervention strategies for improving outcome post PTCA. Screening out patients based on history of depression may in fact lead to an inequitable allocation of resources and have no major benefit in enhancing quality of life and improving health status.

Biopsychosocial Perspectives on Memory Variability in Eyewitnesses

Eyewitness memory has evolved into an umbrella term to account for the memory of criminal actions witnessed by victims, bystanders, and committed by perpetrators. Encompassed by the narrative memory of a crime as well as recognition memory for the perpetrator, eyewitness memory plays an important role in the criminal justice process—from the initial investigative interview by law enforcement to the assessment of credibility by the triers of fact. In an effort to assist criminal justice system professionals, researchers—mostly psychologists—have empirically investigated the variables associated with eyewitness memory for over 100 years (e.g., Stern, 1904). In fact, thousands of studies have been conducted in the area, making the study of eyewitness memory one of the largest subfields in the area of forensic psychology. The impressive quantity of literature is, however, daunting in nature when one attempts to make sense of the discrepant empirical findings. Indeed, consistent with clinical-forensic experience, the results from eyewitness research indicate that different witnesses to the same criminal event can produce widely variable memory patterns. Without a unifying evidence-informed model to explain the different memory patterns observed, criminal justice professionals are faced with a difficult task when attempting to makes sense out of the variable nature of eyewitness memory.