Thesis (M.A.)--Stephen F. Austin State University, 2008
Criminal profiling is an investigative technique that uses details of a crime and characteristics of individuals to assist in the identification of offenders. This is most useful in serial offenses in order to assist investigators in narrowing their suspect pool. Although profiles have occasionally been used since the cases of Jack the Ripper, only in the past few decades has criminal profiling begun to be a professional field of research. For the most part, it does not have an empirical foundation; it makes assumptions based on anecdotal data. In recent years, some research has evaluated skills and techniques needed for greater profiling accuracy, and people's perceptions about criminal profiles, but the research is still paltry as compared to its popularity. The current study was built upon research that assessed the skills profilers purportedly need to create accurate profiles, specifically objective reasoning skills. In a non-systematic manner, past attempts utilized university students to represent an objective reasoning skill based upon their college training, which resulted in the students showing significantly greater accuracy than the police officers. This trend was also observed in at least three research studies, which lead to the inquiry about what sort of cognitive processes actually go into the task of profiling that distinguishes students and police officers. For the current experiment, 29 psychology students and 32 local police officers volunteered and were asked to create a criminal profile of an arsonist based on some sanitized information from an actual closed case versus no such information, and to complete a GRE analytical test and six intellectual assessment subtests. It was hypothesized that when participants were able to read the arson case information they would describe the offender more accurately than those who were not given such information or who were left to guess based on knowledge of a stereotypical arsonist. It was also expected that within the condition of being given case information, the students would outperform the police officers in terms of accuracy. In addition, positive correlations between case accuracy and performances on the analytical and intellectual measures were expected. Contrary to expectation, there was no support for the experimental hypothesis. That is, the students and police officers performed similarly on profile accuracy and analytical testing. As discussed, this lack of significant difference could be due to the fact that all participants had similar college backgrounds, and that the arson case information was not as comprehensive in details as was necessary. However, those who were the most accurate on the profiles also tended to do well on the intellectual subtest that measures observation, recognition, and naming skills. This result may provide some insight into the cognitive processes used in such tasks as deducing the characteristics of a criminal offender
