What skills are required for effective offender profiling? An examination of the relationship between critical thinking ability and profile accuracy

Abstract

Claims have been made that critical thinking is a necessary skill for constructing accurate offender profiles. However, in studies purporting to demonstrate this, critical thinking ability amongst participants has never been adequately assessed, making it impossible to draw any valid conclusions about the importance of this skill for profiling. In order to empirically examine the relationship between critical thinking ability and profile accuracy, participants (n=36) in the current study completed a mock profiling exercise and the Watson–Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal – Form S (WGCTA-S). Profile accuracy scores were calculated for each participant and correlated with his or her scores on the WGCTA-S. Although the majority of participants were found to be adequate critical thinkers, no significant relationship was found between critical thinking ability and profile accuracy. Potential explanations for this finding are discussed.

Keywords:

• offender profiling
• critical thinking
• serial homicide

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

1. In Kocsis’ (2004) study, it is important to note that all of the groups that were examined performed significantly better than in previous studies. This fact may be attributable to the particular case presented to participants or the fact that a different type of crime was profiled (serial arson vs single homicide). Hence, one should take this into consideration when interpreting these results.

2. As discussed by Bennell et al. (2006), given the potential problems with the multiple-choice profile questionnaire used in this and previous studies we cannot say with certainty what these accuracy scores actually reflect. For example, many of the questions included on the multiple choice questionnaire are subjective (e.g. the offender's height as short, average, tall, or very tall) or are unverifiable (e.g. the offender's primary motive for the offense). Thus, profile accuracy scores may be reflecting actual accuracies or inaccuracies, but they could also simply be reflecting differences in how questions are interpreted.

3. There is some indirect evidence to support this idea. For example, Williams, Oliver, and Stockdale (2004) examined the relationship between critical thinking ability in psychology students and performance in a human development course using both a subject-specific measure of critical thinking (The Psychological Critical Thinking Instrument) and a generic measure (WGCTA-S). They found that the subject-specific measure of critical thinking was a better predictor of exam performance than the generic measure.

4. We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for raising many of the issues discussed in this paragraph.