Open Access Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington
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Exploring the instrumental and reactive violence dichotomy in the offences of violent psychopaths

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thesis
posted on 2021-11-14, 03:27 authored by Flynn, Jane

In the literature acts of violence are often divided into two dichotomous subtypes: instrumental and reactive violence. The two types of violence are considered to be underpinned by different theoretical paradigms, social learning theory and frustration aggression. This division, although widely criticised and lacking conceptual clarity, appears to be generally accepted in scientific literature. This exploratory study used multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis to see how violence characteristics co-occur in the offences of seriously violent psychopathic offenders; and whether the co-occurrence of offence variables could be explained by the instrumental and reactive dichotomy. The study also explored whether instrumental and reactive violence characteristics differentiate primary and secondary variants of psychopathy, with the hypotheses that primary psychopaths would show more instrumental features in their violence and secondary psychopaths show more reactive features. Findings show that violence characteristics do no co-occur as a mutually exclusive dichotomy and that rather, many violent acts have mix of reactive and instrumental characteristics, reflecting a dimensional rather than a dichotomous structure. This in turn suggests that act specific theories may not be necessary to describe different types of violence. Contrary to prediction, psychopathic subtypes did not differ on violence characteristics.

History

Copyright Date

2013-01-01

Date of Award

2013-01-01

Publisher

Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington

Rights License

Author Retains Copyright

Degree Discipline

Psychology

Degree Grantor

Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington

Degree Level

Masters

Degree Name

Master of Science

ANZSRC Type Of Activity code

970117 Expanding Knowledge in Psychology and the Cognitive sciences

Victoria University of Wellington Item Type

Awarded Research Masters Thesis

Language

en_NZ

Victoria University of Wellington School

School of Psychology

Advisors

Polaschek, Devon; Wilson, Marc