serial murder

Question 1

What is serial murder?

Answer 1

3+ victims in separate locations with a cooling-off period (Douglas et al., 1992)

Question 2

What is a cooling-off period?

Answer 2

A break between murders where the offender returns to normal life

Question 3

What is the power/control motive?

Answer 3

Desire to dominate and control victims

Question 4

What is the sexual gratification motive?

Answer 4

Violence produces sexual arousal or satisfaction

Question 5

What is the thrill motive?

Answer 5

Killing provides excitement or an addictive high

Question 6

What is a mission-oriented killer?

Answer 6

Believes they are eliminating certain groups from society

Question 7

What role does fantasy play?

Answer 7

Long-term violent fantasies drive behaviour and escalate over time

Question 8

What do psychodynamic theories argue?

Answer 8

Childhood trauma and attachment issues lead to disturbed development

Question 9

What is an internal working model?

Answer 9

A mental framework of relationships based on early attachment experiences

Question 10

How can attachment issues influence serial killers?

Answer 10

They create distorted views of others and relationships

Question 11

How does the Kemper case support psychodynamic theory?

Answer 11

Abusive maternal relationship influenced victim selection

Question 12

What is the Dark Triad?

Answer 12

Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism

Question 13

What is the Dark Tetrad?

Answer 13

Dark Triad plus sadism

Question 14

What is psychopathy?

Answer 14

Lack of empathy, remorse, and manipulative behaviour

Question 15

Give examples of psychopathic traits

Answer 15

Superficial charm, lying, impulsivity, lack of guilt

Question 16

How does Ted Bundy illustrate personality theory?

Answer 16

Charming, manipulative, highly psychopathic

Question 17

How does Harold Shipman illustrate personality theory?

Answer 17

Control, arrogance, lack of empathy

Question 18

What do learning theories suggest?

Answer 18

Violence is learned through observation and imitation

Question 19

What is the cycle of violence?

Answer 19

Victims of childhood abuse are more likely to become offenders

Question 20

What role does media play?

Answer 20

May normalise or reinforce violent behaviour

Question 21

What do biological theories focus on?

Answer 21

Brain structure, genetics, neurochemistry

Question 22

What brain area is implicated?

Answer 22

Prefrontal cortex

Question 23

Are biological factors deterministic?

Answer 23

No, they are contributing factors only

Question 24

What do integrated theories argue?

Answer 24

Multiple interacting factors explain serial murder

Question 25

What are predisposing factors?

Answer 25

Long-term risks such as trauma or genetics

Question 26

What are precipitating factors?

Answer 26

Immediate triggers such as stress or events

Question 27

What are perpetuating factors?

Answer 27

Factors maintaining behaviour such as fantasy

Question 28

What is offender profiling?

Answer 28

Inferring offender characteristics from crime scenes

Question 29

Who developed early profiling?

Answer 29

FBI in the 1970s

Question 30

Why is profiling criticised?

Answer 30

Seen as intuition or educated guesswork

Question 31

What is data assimilation?

Answer 31

Collecting all crime-related information

Question 32

What is a signature?

Answer 32

Behaviour reflecting psychological needs

Question 33

Examples of signatures?

Answer 33

Rituals, souvenirs, body positioning

Question 34

Why is a signature important?

Answer 34

Links crimes and reveals psychology

Question 35

What is crime scene classification?

Answer 35

Organised vs disorganised offenders

Question 36

Characteristics of organised offenders?

Answer 36

Planned, intelligent, socially competent

Question 37

Characteristics of disorganised offenders?

Answer 37

Impulsive, isolated, leave evidence

Question 38

What is crime scene reconstruction?

Answer 38

Rebuilding sequence of events

Question 39

What is profile generation?

Answer 39

Creating hypotheses about offender

Question 40

What is statistical profiling?

Answer 40

Using patterns to predict behaviour

Question 41

What is geographical profiling?

Answer 41

Mapping crimes to predict location

Question 42

How did profiling help catch Duffy?

Answer 42

Narrowed suspects and predicted location

Question 43

Why is serial murder difficult to study?

Answer 43

Rare and limited access to offenders

Question 44

Key limitation of profiling?

Answer 44

Not always accurate

Question 45

Main conclusion of research?

Answer 45

Explained by multiple interacting factors