Date of Award

1997

Degree Name

Psychology

College

Graduate College

Type of Degree

M.A.

Document Type

Thesis

First Advisor

Marc A. Lindley

Abstract

100 criminals from a maximum security prison were given the Attachment and Personality Dynamics Questionnaire (APDQ) in order to profile them in terms of relationship functioning. Included in the APDQ were items that were specific to the subjects' crimes or potential crimes, as well as questions pertaining to alcoholism. The results showed that the APDQ did successfully differentiate between those of the criminal population and controls. Furthermore, two dimensions were revealed from the discriminant functional analyses. These were codependent partner, secure mother, ambivalent mother, and shame on the first dimension, and codependent partner, anger, secure mother, and shame on the second dimension. The first dimension clearly differentiated between those arrested for drugs and fraud versus the police population. The second dimension showed that those arrested for assault were higher on measures of anger and lower on measures of ambivalent mother than those arrested for drugs and fraud.

Subject(s)

Attachment behavior.

Personality questionnaires.

Prison psychology.

Criminal psychology.

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