In your face: the biased judgement of fear-anger expressions in violent offenders.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Why is it that certain violent criminals repeatedly find themselves engaged in brawls? Many inmates report having felt provoked or threatened by their victims, which might be due to a tendency to ascribe malicious intentions when faced with ambiguous social signals, termed hostile attribution bias.

Methods

The present study presented morphed fear-anger faces to prison inmates with a history of violent crimes, a history of child sexual abuse, and to matched controls form the general population. Participants performed a fear-anger decision task. Analyses compared both response frequencies and measures derived from psychophysical functions fitted to the data. In addition, a test to distinguish basic facial expressions and questionnaires for aggression, psychopathy an

SUBMITTER: Wegrzyn M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5429544 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature