Law And Crime Essential Reads

People high in the trait of psychopathy, in which they show callous disregard for others, may seem to have no interest in benefiting the lives of others. However, a recent study of college-age psychopaths-in-the-making shows that they can be primed to identify with a cause larger than themselves. A caring psychopath doesn’t necessarily have to be an oxymoron. Read More

What deeper psychological motives lie behind kidnapping? Read More

The concept of psychopathy runs on parallel tracks: superficial media reports and serious research. A look back at the evolution of the term over the past half century keeps today's faddish headlines in perspective. Read More

It's hard for most of us to believe that someone can murder a relative, claim s/he was abducted, and then go on TV and plead for his or her safe return. Fortunately, research shows that, no matter how good an actor, linguistic cues don't lie. Read More

Research on self-complexity shows that people can act in very inconsistent ways in different contexts. When we are unaware of this context-dependence of human actions, we end up with lots of questions (e.g., how could a quiet student be caught up in a terrorist plot) that reflect relatively simplistic assumptions about human nature. Read More

A study out this past month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that forecasting future criminal behavior could become reality in the near future. The study offers the first evidence that brain scans might be used to predict who will commit a crime. Read More

We generally look to the FBI to define certain crime categories like serial murder. Yet most media outlets have ignored its change in the definition of a serial killer. This is consistent with the haphazard nature of how the term has been used. How can we get consensus? Read More

The Iliad, which recounts a couple of weeks during the penultimate year of the Trojan War, has long been our main cultural reference point when it comes to violence in battle. The poem exists in a kind of reputational haze as the preeminent “classic.” But when actually read, especially for the first time, the story is shockingly graphic and strange. Read More

Eyewitnesses testimony can be unreliable in a surprising way. Witnesses are good at describing the perpetrator of a crime, but describing involves recall, whereas identifying someone in a lineup requires recognition. Even eyewitnesses who are good at recall can fail at recognition. Read More