TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2007//
TI  - It was not me: Attribution of blame for criminal acts in psychiatric offenders
JO  - Forensic science international
A1  - Cima, M.
A1  - Merckelbach, Harald
A1  - Butt, C.
A1  - Kremer, K.
A1  - Knauer, E.
A1  - Schellbach-Matties, R.
SP  - 143
EP  - 147
VL  - 168
IS  - 2-3
N2  - 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>
LA  - en
SN  - 0379-0738
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2006.07.004
ID  - ref1
ER  -