Citation

Monahan J, Cummings L. J. Crim. Justice 1974; 2(3): 239-242.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1974, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0047-2352(74)90035-X

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Recent reviews of the ability of psychiatrists and psychologists to predict violent crime reveal an extreme degree of overprediction. This research evaluates one of the factors hypothesized to account for overprediction: differential consequences to the individual whose violence is being predicted. Subjects were presented with descriptions of personality characteristics which had previously been judged by psychiatrists to indicate dangerousness. In one condition, subjects were told that a prediction of dangerousness would lead to another's mental hospitalization and in another condition they were told that such prediction would lead to a prison sentence. The results supported the hypothesis that predictions of dangerousness are at least in part a function of the consequences of the prediction: subjects were more likely to predict another dangerous if the prediction would lead to his mental hospitalization than if it would lead to his imprisonment.