Raine

• Raine 1997- aim

  To see if murderers has brain dysfunction in their PFC and other areas associated with violent behaviour compared to a control group of non murders
• Raine 1997- sample

  • used 41 NGRI murderers- 39 males and 2 females
  • control group- 41 people again matched for sex and age who did not take medication and were psychologically healthy
• Raine 1997- procedure

  Matched pairs design on participants in NGRI and control group. Both groups of participants are given an injection with a glucose tracer- and both control and NGRI completed a continuous performance task for 32 minutes and then had a PET scan.
• Raine 1997- findings

  The ANOVA test was used to determine whether there are any statistically significant differences between the means of three or more independent groups

  • NGRIs has lower glucose metabolism in the lateral and medial prefrontal cortex, parietal areas and corpus callosum
  • they showed an increased amygdala activity in the right hemisphere and decreased amygdala activity in the left hemisphere
• Raine 1997 -conclusions

  Multiple regions are involved in violent behaviour and brain differences do not determine violent behaviour but instead violence is due to a combination of biology, social , psychological and various factors which predispose the person to aggression.
• Raine- generalisability

  Used a large sample of 82 individuals which was the largest at the time for this sort of study, anomalies such as participants with unusual brain structure or people who disrupted the test by not focusing on the CPT should not skew the data so much- results are representative.

  But NGRIs are unusual offenders as they have killed someone but dont remember doing it which is not representative of typical murderers
• Raine- reliability

  PET scans are reliable brain scans that have been used since the 1970s and they produce objective and replicable results which can be tested to check its relaibility. The continuous performance task also ensured all participants were concentrating on the same thing which ensures they all had similar types of brain activity- standardised procedure
• Raine- application

  Raine suggests that if the damage that causes such brain deficits can be prevented people might be prevented from becoming murderers- such as involving early intervention with at risk children in school using programmes to steer young people away from drugs and monitoring people who have received a brain injury
• Raine - validity

  • Budkin and Lutterll carried out a meta-analysis where they analysed the results of 17 studies that use brain imaging when studying aggression ( Raine being one of them). They found that all the studies point to similar conclusions which adds to the construct validity of Raines study
  • the CPT used could be criticised for being artificial and unconnected to violence or provocation- this lowers the ecological validity
  • this is a quasi experiment so cannot show cause and affect for example the NGRIs may have developed their brain deficits after the killing because of the stress caused by the event and other factors
• Raine- reductionism

  The study only looks at brain activity and this is a very reductionist view of human behaviour not taking in the 'big picture' of environmental factors in the procedure
• Raine- ethics

  The NGRIs did agree to have the PET scans( informed consent) as it would help their court case, they gave their prior consent to be tested and if the schizophrenic controls or NGRIs were not competent to consent then presumptive consent was given by their lawyer or carer
• Raine 1996- low internal validity

  Differences in brain activity between the two groups could have been caused by other factors. We can only say the study shows a correlation and not a causal relationship. Alternatively, the differences may have been a result of the consequences of the crime rather than a cause of it. In fact, there was little control over extraneous and/or confounding variables and thus the study is low in internal validity. It is thus difficult to replicate this study due to the lack of control over EVs/CVs and because the IV was natural occurring - thereby also lowering the external reliability of the study.