NCJ Number
138105
Journal
Journal of Personality Assessment, 54 Issue: 3&4 Dated: (1990) Pages: 617-627
Date Published
1990
Length
11 pages
Annotation
The ability of a combined antisociality-intelligence index to discriminate between more and less dangerous murderers was investigated in 243 male prisoners who had been convicted of murder and confined within the Georgia prison system.
Abstract
The 85 men awaiting the death penalty received significantly higher scores on the dangerousness index than the 126 men sentenced to life terms. Those murderers who had been sentenced to the death penalty, who had selected female victims, and whose murders were judged to have been particularly cruel received extraordinarily high dangerousness scores relative to all other murders. Some support was obtained for the assumption that high antisociality and low intelligence quotient (IQ) scores may lead to escalation into greater violence due to the criminal's inability to deal with complications that arise in confronting the victim. The murders committed by more dangerous men followed stronger resistance on the part of the victim than those committed by less dangerous men. 2 tables and 17 references