Classic study bio

• The aim of raine’s study was to show that murderers pleading NGRI would show dysfunction in areas of the brain associated with violence such as the prefrontal cortex and amygdala.
• Raine had an experimental group and a control group which both consisted of 41 people (39m,2f). Mean age of experimental 31.3 and control 31.7. No participants took medication prior to brain scan and all consented to take part. Participants worked on a continuous performance task for 32 minutes while injected with radioactive tracer. After they had completed they got a PET scan of their brain.
• Raine’s study found that there was lower glucose metabolism in murderers in the prefrontal cortex, parietal areas and corpus callosum compared to the control group and lower activity in the left and higher activity in the right of the amygdala than the control group. This suggests the murderers could have problems with self control and misunderstanding social situations.
• A limitation of Raines study is that it doesn't prove causation. This is a weakness because we don't know whether the low levels of glucose metabolism caused the murders or vice versa
• Another limitation of Raines study is that he used a small sample size meaning his results may not be representative of the whole population. Also the fact that most of the participants were male means that the results cannot be applied to women.
• Strength 1 of Raines study (Classic)

  One strength of Raine‘s study is that it is standardised because none of the participants took medication prior to the brain scan and all participants did the same performance task. This is a strength as it increases reliability meaning the study can be easily replicated to check for consistencies in the brain activity of murderers and non murderers.
• Strength 2 of Raines study (Classic)

  A strength of Raines study is the high population validity as the experimental group pleading NGRI and the control group both have 39 males and 2 females so representative of wider murdering population. This is a strength as it means the findings about brain function can be generalised to the population of people not guilty for reasons of insanity.
• Raine controlled for individual differences between the experimental group (NGRI) and the control group as he controlled for age gender and diagnosis of schizophrenia. This is a strength as it increases validity by making sure brain activity is the only difference between murderers and non murderers and no other factors.
• Weakness 1 Raines study (Classic)

  A weakness is that there is an interpretation bias from the PET scans as the researchers must read the brain scans from colour coding and can interpret colours differently. This is a weakness as it means the study is low in reliability and consistency about murderers brains that plead NGRI.
• Weakness 2 Raines study (Classic)

  A weakness of this study is that although the controls could consent the murderers were not fully able to consent. This is a weakness because the murderers‘ possible inability to understand the experiment means they don’t have informed consent which raises ethical issues with the study.