Showing papers by "John Monahan published in 2012"

The individual risk assessment of terrorism

Abstract: I attempt to identify the central conceptual and methodological challenges that must be overcome if the risk assessment of terrorism is to make the same progress that in recent years has distinguished the risk assessment of other forms of violence. Four principal conclusions are offered. First, clarity from the outset on what is being assessed—the risk of terrorism in the aggregate, or of specific types of terrorism, or of specific phases in the process of becoming a terrorist, or of specific roles in terrorist activity—is a prerequisite to progress in research. Second, one current approach to the risk assessment of more common violence (e.g., assault)—the approach known as structured professional judgment— usefully may be applied to the risk assessment of terrorism. However, given that many known risk factors for common violence are in fact not risk factors for violent terrorism, the substantive content of any instrument to assess the risk of terrorism will be very different from the substantive content of current instruments that address common violence. Third, since there is little existing evidence supporting the nontrivial validity of any individual risk factors for terrorism, the highest priority for research should be the identification of robust individual risk factors. Promising candidates include ideologies, affiliations, grievances, and “moral” emotions. Finally, it is highly unlikely that an instrument to assess the risk of terrorism can be validated prospectively. An infrastructure for facilitating access to known groups of terrorists and nonterrorists from the same populations may be crucial for conducting a program of scientifically rigorous and operationally relevant research on the individual risk assessment of terrorism.

Violence Risk Assessment

Abstract: This chapter first considers why and in what ways law is concerned with anticipating violence and how evidence in the form of violence risk assessment is legally evaluated; it then contrasts clinical and actuarial methods of risk assessment and addresses key issues and controversies pertinent to each, and surveys ways in which clinical or actuarial estimates of violence risk are best communicated to legal decision makers. Keywords: risk; violence; dangerousness; assessment; actuarial

Innumeracy and Unpacking: Bridging the Nomothetic/Idiographic Divide in Violence Risk Assessment

Abstract: Structured methods to assess violence risk have proliferated in recent years, but such methods are not uncontroversial. A “core controversy” concerns the extent to which an actuarial risk estimate derived at the group-level should — morally, logically, or mathematically — apply to any particular individual within the group. This study examines the related psychological question: when do people apply group-level risk estimates to the individual case? We manipulated whether an actuarial risk estimate is “unpacked;” that is, whether the risk factors on which the estimate is based are articulated. Our findings indicate that the degree of unpacking (e.g., listing 6 versus 3 risk factors) affected the likelihood that jury-eligible citizens will apply an actuarial risk estimate in their decision to civilly commit a particular respondent. Unpacking also increased the perceived relevance of the group-level risk estimate to the individual case. We then split the sample based on self-reported numeracy, defined as “ability with or knowledge of numbers.” Numeracy moderates the unpacking effect in that unpacking only made a difference for the innumerate participants. The psychological approach we take to the question of group-to-individual inference is not limited to violence risk assessment, and may apply to many other areas of law in which group-to-individual inferences are frequently if controversially made.

Innumeracy and unpacking: Bridging the nomothetic/idiographic divide in violence risk assessment.

Abstract: Structured methods to assess violence risk have proliferated in recent years, but such methods are not uncontroversial. A "core controversy" concerns the extent to which an actuarial risk estimate derived at the group level should-morally, logically, or mathematically-apply to any particular individual within the group. This study examines the related psychological question: When do people apply group-level risk estimates to the individual case? We manipulated whether an actuarial risk estimate is "unpacked;" that is, whether the risk factors on which the estimate is based are articulated. Our findings indicate that the degree of unpacking (e.g., listing six vs. three risk factors) increased the likelihood that jury-eligible citizens will apply an actuarial risk estimate in their decision to civilly commit a particular respondent. Unpacking also increased the perceived relevance of the group-level risk estimate to the individual case. We then split the sample based on self-reported numeracy, defined as "ability with or knowledge of numbers." Numeracy moderates the unpacking effect in that unpacking only made a difference for the innumerate participants. The psychological approach we take to the question of group-to-individual inference is not limited to violence-risk assessment, and may apply to many other areas of law in which group-to-individual inferences are frequently, if controversially, made. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved). Language: en