The Cultural Dimension in Teaching about Forensic Psychology

1
The Cultural Dimension in Teaching about Forensic
Psychology

• Sergei Tsytsarev, Ph.D.,
• Professor, Hofstra University,
• Hempstead, New York, USA
• psyszt_at_hofstra.edu

2
Introduction

• The cultural revolution in teaching psychology
  courses seems to be a reaction to historical
  challenges the world educational system has been
  experiencing in recent years. The globalization
  has influenced the cultural context of education
  in a number of ways, and it is a particularly
  difficult problem for rather conservative
  subfields of psychology such as psychology in the
  law, and its most practice oriented branch
  forensic psychology.
• However, the teachers are very often not prepared
  to provide specific information on how the same
  phenomena are drastically differently evaluated
  by professionals in various cultures. Moreover,
  what in some cultures is a large area of research
  and social concern could be perceived as
  non-existent in some others. There are numerous
  examples of such things in the area of abnormal
  and legal psychology, because the very concepts
  of normality and law are cultural constructs. And
  this is exactly what our mostly ethnocentric
  students often refuse to acknowledge and even
  comprehend. Our goal is to add a cultural
  dimension to the analysis of extreme forms of
  behavior, and specifically the crime of
  passion.

3

• In this presentation, we will demonstrate how one
  type of behavior could be put on a cultural
  continuum and will compare the United States,
  Russia and Japan in terms of their perception,
  experience, evaluation, and teaching about
  crimes of passion.
• The three selected countries have significantly
  different history, cultures, and the legal
  systems, and I was fortunate to have done
  research and taught in each of them.

4
Western tradition

• Obviously, there are psychological diagnoses and
  corresponding legal pleas accepted by the legal
  system in one country, but could be completely
  unacceptable in another. The perfect example is a
  defense of the so-called insanity and
  diminished capacity that is commonly used in
  most Western cultures since the 17th century. If
  an expert witness (such as a psychiatrist or
  psychologist) can establish a mental disease or
  defect, then there is a high likelihood that the
  defendant will be found insane, and, in such
  instance, the defendant will be placed in a
  forensic psychiatric institution for a long-term
  treatment rather than being sent to prison.
  However, the insanity plea has been rarely
  applied to the defendants whose disorders are
  brief, abrupt, and not psychotic.
• The first problem in teaching about forensic
  psychology would be making a clear distinction
  between the psychological concept of a mental
  disorder and a legal concept of insanity.

5
In Russia

• In other cultures, another intermediate form of
  psychological disturbance is legitimately used to
  explain the reasons for the behavior when a
  person commits a crime in the heat of passion.
  For instance, in Russia, not only professionals,
  but also a general public are quite familiar with
  the concept of pathological affect and
  physiological affect of anger that can explain
  the nature of impulsive behavior of someone who
  experienced sudden accumulation of emotional
  tension in response to real or perceived threat
  for his/her life and/or dignity, and then
  explodes to the extent that serious cognitive
  problems such as amnesia might occur. If the
  affect state can be established by an expert
  witness, the same may be a major mitigating
  factor during sentencing and might lead to a
  short probation in lieu of a long prison term.
• The next problem in teaching about forensic
  psychology would be making a clear definition of
  the Pathological affect of anger, Physiological
  affect of anger and related concepts, and to find
  the analogues in the existing Western
  classifications (which is very difficult).

6
In Japan

• In Japan, the situation is quite different. The
  Japanese experts do not use such
  conceptualization as an affect and avoid the
  use of crime of passion since it is commonly
  assumed by lawyers and psychologists that
  everyone who is involved in killing or making an
  assault at another person must be overexcited by
  definition, and therefore it is not perceived as
  something to be thoroughly investigated, for
  instance as a mitigating factor.
• The next teaching problem is to describe the
  cultural context as an independent variable where
  Western psychological categories do not make
  sense.

7
Back in USSR!

• We will begin presenting about the crimes of
  passion from the Russian (formerly Soviet)
  perspective due to a common use of this concept
  in this country. Not only professionals, but most
  lay people are aware of the fact that there
  certain incidence of affect, pathological
  affect, and crimes committed in the state of
  the affect. In fact this is an analogue of the
  crime of passion in the Western literature, and
  in both cultures the phenomenon is in fact refers
  to a major overexcitement prior to a violent
  crime which is caused by the unlawful acts of the
  victim. Some psychology teachers are likely to
  perceive the Russian approach as an extremely
  foreign, and this would certainly help them to
  deal with their own biases.
• The teaching goal would be to introduce the
  students to the area of professional biases that
  substantially change our professional
  evaluations.

8
The concept of Affect of anger.

• Definition Affect (or physiological affect) is
  impetuous and stormy emotional process of
  explosive nature, displaying in an extremely
  intense explosion of anger (or/and other
  emotions) that might be followed by the outburst
  of uncontrollable actions (e.g., aggressive or
  auto aggressive behaviors).

9
Physiological vs. Pathological Anger

• The word "physiological" is traditionally used in
  Russian Forensic Psychology (influenced by
  Pavlov) in order to emphasize the fact that this
  emotional state does not have to be considered as
  pathological (in the framework of insanity and
  related concepts) but rather an extreme emotional
  overreaction to external stimuli, which is often
  part of a catastrophic reaction.
• In all cases, it is an extraordinary reaction for
  an individual, expected by neither himself nor
  other people.
• It is a response to extraordinary, exclusive
  circumstances such as interpersonal conflict or
  argument that severely damages the individuals
  self-esteem, insult or humiliates him or her,
  and/or is a real or perceived threat for the
  person's life or the life of his or her
  significant other. A very typical example of
  physiological affect is presented in Case 1.

10
Case 1.

• Anna, a 42 years old elementary school teacher,
  and a mother of 2 months-old Ivan was standing
  at the intersection with her baby in the
  carriage. Suddenly a truck passing the
  intersection hits the carriage and kills the
  baby. The truck stops in front of her. Anna
  opens the driver's door, jumps to the driver's
  cabin, and choked the driver to death. At that
  moment she was truly possessed with anger, and
  according to her later testimony, she didn't see
  and she didn't hear anything around her, she
  could not find (and didn't even try) to find any
  alternative way of "solving" emerged problem, her
  attention was entirely concentrated on the person
  who was killer of her little son. When the man
  stopped breathing, she continued to hold his neck
  for another 15 minutes until police arrived.
  Then, she felt extremely tired and fatigued, she
  could barley walk, she looked like a person who
  lost her way, and for a while she did not
  recognize the streets and other familiar places,
  as well as people she knew before. Only an hour
  later she exclaimed "He killed my son!", began to
  cry, and her emotional responses became adequate.
  
• The teaching goal is to introduce students to the
  phenomenology of the affect of anger.

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First stage

• The development (dynamics) of the physiological
  affect is characterized by three phases or
  stages, i.e. by sequential changes of the
  emotional states. Depending upon various factors
  the duration of stages may be different, but the
  sequence of them is always the same.
• First stage is characterized by the occurrence
  and accumulation of emotional excitement and
  tension in response to the external
  factors-stimuli perceived by a person in a
  catastrophic way. For example, a threat for his
  or her life, humiliation or insult of him or his
  significant others, and other factors
  significantly decreasing his self-esteem,
  provoking the feeling of helplessness. Whether
  or not they are objectively threatening, the
  person perceives them as so.

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Cont First Stage

• There are two types of development of the first
  stage of the affect. The first type is
  characterized by immediate response to the anger
  provoking stimuli under the circumstances that
  are extraordinary and completely unexpected
  sudden assault, insult, threat of life etc,
  whether they are imaginary or real. The second
  type is precipitated by the prolonged
  interpersonal conflict between the perpetrator
  and his potential victim. During this period of
  time the person is exposed to the excessive
  humiliation, is consistently insulted by another
  person or a group of people, that leads him to
  accumulation of the emotional tension.
• In those cases a specific trigger playing the
  role of the "last drop" (last straw) is needed
  to elicit the outburst of anger followed by
  aggressive behavior. (See Cases 2 and 3) The
  appraisal of triggers depends upon various
  individual characteristics and experiences of the
  perpetrator, so that it should never be taken for
  granted by mental health professionals and
  lawyers, but rather examined in terms of its
  subjective meaning for the individual at the time
  of affective response (See Case 3)

13
Case 2.

• Vladimir, the 19 years old soldier was serving
  his first year in the Soviet Army. He was
  systematically humiliated by the senior soldiers
  who beated him up, made him work for them, clean
  toilets, do their laundry, etc. He experienced
  enormous anxiety, fears, and he was unable to
  resist, because he was threatened by the group of
  very aggressive older soldiers.
• One day two of them invited him to go to the
  woods and he went with them. In the woods one of
  them said that it's time to "initiate" Vladimir,
  and explained that he and his friend would like
  to have sex with him. Vladimir grabs the first
  thing that was around - a heavy stone, and hit
  one of them more than 10 times. He screamed,
  cried, used obscene words, and he could not stop
  beating the man until he became totally
  exhausted. The second soldier run away. Thirty
  minutes after that Vladimir returned to the
  regiment and reported about what happened.

14
The Second Stage

• The Second Stage of AFFECT is characterized by
  the extremely powerful emotional outburst, i.e.
  the emotional reaction that occurs unexpectedly
  for the perpetrator himself. The affective
  tension that was accumulated on the previous
  stage turns into explosion of anger and rage, and
  is usually accompanied by the intense feeling of
  insult, humiliation, and despair. In some cases
  the feeling of despair, helplessness and
  hopelessness precede anger, especially if a
  person did not have a great deal of experience in
  dealing with negative emotions, stress etc.
• The observers usually testify that the person
  reveals various symptoms of extremely intense
  emotional arousal displaying in dramatic changes
  of facial expressions, gestures, postures, tone
  of voice etc. He actually reaches the peak of
  emotional arousal wherein anger and rage control
  all aspects of his behavior.

15
The Second Stage (cont.)

• As the emotional process dramatically and
  drastically develops from the first stage to the
  second, it is accompanied by the massive
  cognitive distortions described in the previous
  sections of this chapter.
• The person's consciousness typically becomes
  entirely concentrated on the traumatic object,
  the threshold of perception changes so that the
  individual can see and hear exclusively what is
  related to anger experienced by him. Not only
  the ability to consciously control his own
  behavior is severely impaired, but also the
  ability to predict possible consequences of his
  behavior is seriously altered.

16
The Second Stage (cont.)

• Cognitive distortion in many cases is so severe
  that an individual may be totally unable to
  remember the sequence of events of the crime
  afterwards, and sometimes reveals true
  "blackouts" when certain periods of time and
  particular events become totally forgotten. In
  case of Pathological affect, the amnesia is
  almost total. The perpetrator shows unusual forms
  of behavior that he has never shown before, which
  normally do not reflect his stable personality
  and behavioral characteristics. The aggressive
  behavior of the person often contradicts with his
  beliefs about what is right and what is wrong,
  i.e his moral and ethical values and motives
  the behavior becomes impulsive in a sense that
  nothing besides the feeling of anger or rage
  underlines it.

17
Aggression during the second stage

• Aggression at this stage of affect can be
  physical, verbal or a combination thereof.
  Individuals with different personality
  characteristics shows different forms of
  aggressive behavior, but for most, aggression is
  completely alien form of behavior.
• The "unjustifiable aggressive behavior and
  cruelty of the perpetrators in many cases does
  not make any sense for the witnesses and
  sometimes even for the law enforcement officers.
• In most cases physical and verbal aggression is
  directed to the person who is seen as a source of
  threat, aggression, or damage for self-confidence
  of the perpetrator. His behavior becomes
  compulsive, automatic, and gets completely out of
  his control. The person may stab the victim
  numerous times and even continue doing it when
  the victim is dead. However, sometimes not only
  single victims may be involved in that type of
  aggressive act. Although it happens very rarely,
  bystanders, or people indirectly involved in the
  conflict may become victims of the person
  possessed with the AFFECT of anger. It is clear
  that homicides committed under that kind of
  circumstances are not premeditated. The
  perpetrators therefore use any available murder
  weapons his own hands, knifes, guns, heavy
  objects etc.
•  
• The teaching objective is to show that anger and
  physical aggression are two different phenomena.
  Anger is an emotion, aggression is a motor
  behavior.

18
Case 3

•  
• George, 35 years old, a university professor of
  history, had been involved in a long-lasting and
  dependent relationship with Julia, 26 years old,
  attractive single hair stylist. They cohabitated
  for about three years, and George wanted to marry
  her. However, he knew that Julia was not happy
  with their sexual life, he suspected that she was
  sometimes not faithful, but he loved her very
  much and somehow he could tolerate that using
  denial as a coping strategy. One night, she
  didn't sleep at home, and he received a phone
  call from his friend that Julia spent that night
  with another man. It was a catastrophe for him.
  His customary coping strategy did not work
  anymore. He could not sleep that night, was
  extremely anxious. The entire day he kept
  thinking about Julia and another man. Next
  morning he went to the university, but he was
  unable to work because he was exhausted and
  irritated.

19
Case 3 (cont)

• At 7 PM he came back home and found Julia
  standing at the window in his living room
  smoking. He said "Hello", she did not answer. He
  asked her " Why". She did not answer again.
  Then he screamed Why you keep doing this? She
  turned to him slowly and said just one word"
  Looser!" He grabs the 6-inch kitchen knife and
  stabs her 26 times. He continued doing this even
  after she stopped moving and was obviously dead.
  While doing that he was experiencing a tremendous
  rage, combined with the feeling of humiliation,
  insult, and outrage. He was unable to see or hear
  anything around him, being entirely concentrated
  on the source of his anger. About fifteen
  minutes after that he himself tried to help her,
  being possessed with enormous despair he called
  police and ambulance, and when police arrived he
  said "She is dead, but I deserve death too.
  Please kill me." He was crying hysterically, and
  two hours later he fell asleep. He had suicidal
  ideation for three days after that happened.
• The teaching objective (among other things) is to
  elucidate how extreme forms of emotional
  excitation could suppress our conscious control
  over impulsive behavior.

20
The Third Stage

• The Third Stage of affect is characterized by
  exhaustion, fatigue, apathy, and depression. The
  overall level of awareness and conscious control
  over behavior increase while emotional tension,
  anger, rage, and excitement decrease. In any
  cases, especially in acute form of affect, the
  perpetrator experiences intense repentance, may
  try to help the victim, may call the police and
  ambulance, may cry, and may show feelings of
  guilt and depression (See Case 2). Thus, on the
  last stage of the AFFECT anger transforms into
  other emotional states or can be involved in the
  complex combinations of emotions.
• The educational objective is to demonstrate a
  drastic emotional shift that may follow the
  extremely robust expression of anger/aggression.

21
The Third Stage (cont)

• The feelings experienced by the perpetrator on
  the final stage of affect may be categorized in
  two groups. In the first group, anger is followed
  by tension reduction, decrease of frustration,
  satisfaction. In other words, the person "feels
  better" than ever before, and may feel that his
  mission now is completed even though some admit
  that another way of handling their problems could
  have been chosen. This type of behavior after
  the criminal act can be called self-justifying
  behavior.
• In the second group of perpetrators the climax of
  anger and aggressive behavior is followed by the
  intense feeling of shame, repentance, guilt, and
  remorse. They might call police and ambulance,
  report on themselves, and quite often (65-75 of
  them) had suicidal ideation and intents (See Case
  2).

22
Cultural dimension

• A cultural dimension has rarely been used in
  research on crimes of passion. The biases
  involved in the evaluation of this kind have been
  either totally denied or not taken into
  consideration due to the assumption that in any
  type of psychological assessment of the past
  experiences, objectivity is unlikely to be
  reached.
• Our graduate students should know that a
  retrospective analysis of behavior is one of the
  most difficult, but surely not impossible forms
  of psychological assessment.

23
Cultural dimension (cont)

• Some of the reasons provided by skeptics of the
  evaluations include the limited cross-cultural
  validity of the assessment measures and the lack
  of inter-rater reliability of the evaluators
  interpretations of the obtained results. When the
  cultural context is an independent variable in
  our research, such limitations are almost
  inevitable. Indeed, this argumentation could be
  viewed as acceptable in some instances of
  multicultural assessment. However, it would be
  totally substandard in the assessment of mental
  state at the time of the offense as well as in
  the evaluation of criminal responsibility. The
  future and sometimes the entire life of a
  particular defendant may depend on the conclusion
  made by forensic psychologists if the court
  decision is consistent with the forensic
  psychological report.
• In teaching, the issues of professional
  competency and responsibility are likely to stem
  from discussions on retrospective evaluations.

24
Mental state as a cultural construct

• In addition, the use of the standardized tests
  could be inappropriate because of even more
  significant factor, which could be named as a
  cultural definition of mental state and the
  cultural value of various components of it
  contextual, physiological, phenomenological, etc.
  Although many cultural definitions of emotion
  would have some similarities and are to some
  extent universal, the definitions essence of
  passion (that we categorize as an affect of
  anger) in the Euro-American culture is not fully
  consistent with the perspective on it in other
  cultures and subcultures. Moreover, the
  assessment of criminal responsibility (based on
  the evaluation of mental state at the time of the
  offence) is past oriented and thus requires a
  form of functional analysis of the defendants
  behavior under very specific circumstances such
  as a crime scene. The perception and cognitive
  processing of various elements of a scene as well
  as the subsequent behaviors are heavily affected
  by cultural factors.

25
Mental state as a cultural construct

•  In fact, the evaluation of nearly every behavior
  could be viewed as a cultural construct.
  Therefore, professionals are facing an enormously
  difficult task of assessing not only the three
  stages of excitation, but also the cultural
  environment of the defendant, which includes his
  own perspective, the cultural attitudes toward
  each of those abilities common among members of
  his culture, perception of the legal situation,
  understanding of legal procedures, cultural
  beliefs regarding the agents of
  assessment/intervention, as well as the value of
  both outcomes of evaluation to be either
  admitted partially insane or totally competent
  at the time of the offense.
• It is a difficult task for a teacher to consider
  all mental states in a cultural context, and
  forensic cases could be probably very helpful
  examples.

26
Types of biases in multicultural assessment of
mental states in forensic psychology

• If the social context of the evaluation is
  multicultural, two types of problems emerge in
  the forensic evaluation conducted by a
  psychologist or another mental health
  professional.
• First, his/her own biases both professional and
  cultural crimes of passion and respective mental
  states are simply ignored in some cultures or are
  not considered as distinct categories. These
  preconceived notions may prevent a professional
  from the fairly objective assessment of the
  defendants characteristics.
• Second, cultural incompetency on the defendants
  side his or her inability to function within a
  legal procedure due to his/her failure to respond
  adequately to specific cues (stimuli), the
  meaning of which in various subcultures may vary
  dramatically. The jury, the judge, the attorneys,
  and other members of the criminal procedure all
  of them are perceived through the cultural
  lenses and the very presence of the defendant
  in such an environment as a courtroom may cause
  an intense stress, anxiety, anger and confusion
  that subsequently decreases their actual
  competency.
• Teaching about cultural and professional biases
  would be perfect examples of the lack of
  cross-cultural competency and even fears to
  testify in court in some mental health
  professionals.

27
Conclusion

• If we go back to our comparison of three
  cultures, we can delineate (at least for the
  educational purposes) several dimensions that
  differentiate the perspective on the
  phenomenology of the extremely strong yet brief
  expressions of anger in three distinct cultures.
• Historical and cultural context in each culture
• Traditional relationships between law and
  psychology.
• Culturally specific classification
  systems.
• Culture bound syndromes that may override the
  phenomenon
  being investigated
• Preconceived notions or biases both
  professional and cultural
• The presence of phenomenology, but the absence
  of its conceptualization

28
Conclusion (cont)

• The three cultures we could put on the continuum
  from totally rejecting the concept of affect of
  anger in both psychology and criminal justice
  system (Japan) to partially rejecting it but
  using the crime of passion in the criminal
  justice system (USA), and to the full accepting
  an elaborate model of the crime in the state of
  affect of anger (Russia).
• This example could be an extremely powerful way
  to demonstrate our students that a lot of
  disorders that we take for granted within one
  culture and legal system could be perceived in a
  totally different and complex way in some others.
  
• .

29
Conclusion

• In this presentation we have emphasis on just one
  phenomenon relatively central in the forensic
  and clinical psychology. However, our cultural
  biases and fears are in every subfield of
  psychology and as a field, we are at a beginning
  stage of teaching our students a multicultural
  and cross-cultural perspectives on most mental
  and behavioral expressions and experiences