6122Nottingham Trent University (UK), Nottingham, UK.
Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Nottingham, UK.
Sex Abuse. 2022 Dec;34(8):948-972. doi: 10.1177/10790632211070799. Epub 2022 Feb 28.
Attitudes towards individuals with sexual convictions is an area with growing research interest, but the effects of such attitudes on professional judgments is largely unexplored. What is known from the existing literature is that attitudes guide the interpretation of sexual crime related information, which cascade into potential biased or heuristically driven judgments. In this study we recruited samples of both students ( = 341) and forensic professionals ( = 186) to explore whether attitudes towards individuals with sexual convictions predicted risk judgments of hypothetical sexual offense scenarios, and whether this relationship is moderated by professional status or perpetrator characteristics. Forensic professionals expressed more positive attitudes overall, but the significant effect of attitudes on risk judgments was consistent between participant groups and was not moderated by perpetrator age or sex. We suggest that relying on attitudes as a basis for risk judgments opens the door to incorrect (and potentially dangerous) decision-making and discuss our data in terms of their potential clinical implications. An open-access preprint of this work is available at https://psyarxiv.com/rjt5h/.
对具有性犯罪倾向的个体的态度是一个研究兴趣日益增长的领域，但这种态度对专业判断的影响在很大程度上尚未得到探索。现有文献中已知的是，态度指导着对与性犯罪相关信息的解释，这种解释会逐渐导致潜在的有偏差或启发式驱动的判断。在这项研究中，我们招募了学生样本（n=341）和法医专业人员样本（n=186），以探讨对具有性犯罪倾向的个体的态度是否可以预测假设的性犯罪场景的风险判断，以及这种关系是否受到专业地位或犯罪者特征的调节。法医专业人员总体上表现出更积极的态度，但态度对风险判断的显著影响在参与者群体之间是一致的，并且不受犯罪者年龄或性别的调节。我们认为，将态度作为风险判断的基础可能会导致错误（且潜在危险）的决策，并根据其潜在的临床意义讨论我们的数据。这项工作的预印本可在 https://psyarxiv.com/rjt5h/ 上获取。
