Date of Award

2003

Degree Name

Psychology

College

College of Liberal Arts

Type of Degree

M.A.

Document Type

Thesis

First Advisor

Roger Mooney

Second Advisor

Stephen O’Keefe

Third Advisor

Del Lawhon

Fourth Advisor

Tony Goudy

Fifth Advisor

Robert Rubenstein

Abstract

Sudden explosive episodes of rage and human aggression by individuals occur daily in our society. While impulsive aggressive behavior is included in several established psychological disorders, the etiology of such behavior has been widely debated.

This study tested the hypotheses that prison inmates who have committed violent crimes were no more likely to exhibit impulsive behavior, than like numbers of prison inmates who had committed non-violent crimes, or college students who have no criminal record. Groups of 20 each of the respective populations were randomly administered the Kipnis Impulsiveness Scale in accordance with instructions from the manual.

With an alpha level of .05, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that prison inmates who had committed violent crimes and inmates who had committed non-violent crimes achieved a statistically significant difference in impulsiveness scale scores, as did inmates who had committed non-violent crimes and college students. A post hoc evaluation using the Tukey’s HSD, and an item-by-item analysis, indicated that this difference was the result of lower test scores by the inmates who had committed non-violent crimes. The hypothesis that prison inmates who committed violent crimes were more likely to exhibit impulsive behavior than inmates who committed non-violent crimes was accepted. The inmates who committed violent crimes and the college students did not differ significantly in their scores.

Subject(s)

Aggressiveness - Research.

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