@article{ref1,
title="It was not me: Attribution of blame for criminal acts in psychiatric offenders",
journal="Forensic science international",
year="2007",
author="Cima, M. and Merckelbach, Harald and Butt, C. and Kremer, K. and Knauer, E. and Schellbach-Matties, R.",
volume="168",
number="2-3",
pages="143-147",
abstract="The current article addresses the psychometric qualities of the German Version of Gudjonsson's Blame Attribution Inventory (GBAI), a self-report scale for measuring attribution of blame for crime. The GBAI was administered to a criminal sample of forensic and criminal inmates (n=107). Findings indicate that the German version of the Gudjonsson Blame Attribution Inventory possesses acceptable test-retest stability and good internal consistency. Factor analysis reproduced the three basic dimensions of the GBAI: external attribution, mental-element attribution, and guilt-feeling attribution. Forensic patients had higher mental-element attribution and guilt-feeling attribution scores than the prison inmates. Interestingly, sexual offenders who were prisoners, showed the lowest guilt-feeling attribution, while sexual offenders who were forensic patients had the highest guilt-feeling attribution scores. Since earlier research reported a tendency of faking good in sexual offenders, we suggest that the forensic sexual offenders may demonstrate a social desirable response tendency in an attempt to gain sympathy and/or earlier parole. All in all, our data show that the German version of the GBAI is a valuable tool for measuring attributional styles of offenders.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0379-0738",
doi="10.1016/j.forsciint.2006.07.004",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2006.07.004"
}