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It’s the walk, not the talk: Behavioral indicators of concealed and unholstered firearms carrying
Abstract
This article identifies a set of behavioral indicators associated with the carrying of concealed and unholstered handguns. Using qualitative data collected from interviews and focus groups with veteran law enforcement, we outline a variety of cues that, when used appropriately, can help authorities identify people who may be concealing handguns. This work provides a systematic means of assisting the police in identifying and safely interdicting persons who might pose a threat to police or the public. The cues described here contribute to a lexicon that may also serve law enforcement communication, training, and research.
... Research and training efforts relevant to nonverbal behavior and law enforcement have primarily focused on detecting deception in investigative interview settings (e.g., Vrij, 2008) or detecting suspicious or criminal behavior in security screening contexts (e.g., Burgoon et al., 2009). While officers are trained to recognize movement patterns associated with concealment, this training is typically grounded in anecdotal evidence (e.g., Meehan & Strange, 2021;Greenbaum, 2014). While publications exist that provide suggestions about which behavioral cues may indicate whether a person is concealing, these recommendations are not based on empirical data and must be interpreted with caution (Meehan & Strange, 2021). ...
... While officers are trained to recognize movement patterns associated with concealment, this training is typically grounded in anecdotal evidence (e.g., Meehan & Strange, 2021;Greenbaum, 2014). While publications exist that provide suggestions about which behavioral cues may indicate whether a person is concealing, these recommendations are not based on empirical data and must be interpreted with caution (Meehan & Strange, 2021). ...
... 12). Meehan, Strange, and Garinther (2021) confirmed these conclusions with an additional set of qualitative interviews from subject matter experts, identifying similar, behavioral indicators. Yet, Meehan and colleagues (2021) again state that these data are not empirical and identify a need for "validating and evaluating the utility of these indicators for law enforcement" (p. ...
This research investigates whether police officers can reliably use behavioral cues to determine whether a person is conceal- ing an object. Using a Lens Model framework, we performed a mega-analysis of three experiments. In each study, officers and laypersons judged whether people were concealing an object and reported “articulable behaviors” they used to perform this task. Although participants were able to articulate behaviors that they believed were helpful, results showed that these behaviors were not related to whether the person was actually concealing. Officers and laypersons were equally poor at judging whether someone was concealing or not. Current officer training on the use of nonverbal behaviors to determine who is concealing a dangerous object may be ineffective, and a reconsideration of training is warranted. In light of the findings, requiring officers to provide “articulable behaviors” in Fourth Amendment cases may not provide a sufficient safeguard against unreasonable searches of civilians.
... Threatperception failures can also occur when an officer perceives a suspicious movement from the suspect (i.e., tugging at the waistband, where a weapon may be concealed). The reason for this is because one indicator that a person may be carrying a weapon is them placing their hands in a semi-defensive position close to their waistband (Meehan et al., 2020). ...
... In the current study, the experienced officers likely did not have a perceptual-motor representation that facilitated their ability to anticipate the suspect's actions. Felons who carry firearms typically carry those firearms in a concealed manner, and do not use holsters (Meehan et al., 2020;Pinizzotto et al., 2006). As far as we know, police officers do not create a motor representation of drawing a concealed weapon tucked into their front waistband by practicing that motion in training. ...
The few perceptual–cognitive expertise and deception studies in the domain of law enforcement have yet to examine perceptual–cognitive expertise differences of police trainees and police officers. The current study uses methods from the perceptual–cognitive expertise and deception models. Participants watched temporally occluded videos of actors honestly drawing a weapon and deceptively drawing a non-weapon from a concealed location on their body. Participants determined if the actor was holding a weapon or a non-weapon. Using signal-detection metrics—sensitivity and response bias—we did not find evidence of perceptual–cognitive expertise; performance measures did not differ significantly between police trainees and experienced officers. However, consistent with the hypotheses, we did find that both police trainees and police officers became more sensitive in identifying the object as occlusion points progressed. Additionally, we found that across police trainees and police officers, their response bias became more liberal (i.e., more likely to identify the object as a weapon) as occlusion points progressed. This information has potential impacts for law enforcement practices and additional research.
In 1989, an explosion aboard the USS Iowa killed 47 sailors. The navy attributed the explosion to the intentional suicidal acts of Gunners Mate Clayton Hartwig, a conclusion supported primarily by an “equivocal death analysis” conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The U.S. House of Representative Armed Services Committee (HASC) was highly critical of the FBI's report and the navy's conclusions, in part because of the peer review provided by 12 psychologists organized by the American Psychological Association (APA). This article (a) reviews the nature of equivocal death analysis and related reconstructive psychological evaluations, (b) describes the nature of APA's consultation and involvement with the HASC, (c) discusses the conclusions reached by the HASC and the influence of the APA panelists, and (d) suggests limitations on the use of equivocal death analysis and related procedures in light of scientific concerns and ethical considerations.
Although grounded theory and qualitative content analysis are similar in some respects, they differ as well; yet the differences between the two have rarely been made clear in the literature. The purpose of this article was to clarify ambiguities and reduce confusion about grounded theory and qualitative content analysis by identifying similarities and differences in the two based on a literature review and critical reflection on the authors’ own research. Six areas of difference emerged: (a) background and philosophical base, (b) unique characteristics of each method, (c) goals and rationale of each method, (d) data analysis process, (e) outcomes of the research, and (f) evaluation of trustworthiness. This article provides knowledge that can assist researchers and students in the selection of appropriate research methods for their inquiries. Copyright 2014: Ji Young Cho, Eun-Hee Lee, and Nova Southeastern University.
Since its inception, New York City's stop-and-frisk program has been controversial. The policy allows police officers to stop, question, and frisk individuals who are suspected of committing, having committed or about to commit a crime. Advocates of this policy contend that its purpose is to protect civilians and police officers, as it enables officers to detain persons that they believe are in possession of unlawfully concealed weapons. Critics maintain that the practice violates civil rights and leads to racial profiling. Limited research has moved beyond these types of descriptive examinations of the Stop and Frisk data. Our project employs data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the New York Civil Liberties Union on 2011 NYPD stops and frisks. In moving beyond the descriptive stage, this research utilizes a spatially centered analytical approach to measure and identify geographic clusters of high Stop and Frisk rates across New York City police precincts and subsequent spatial regression to link variations in those rates to community level characteristics. Results indicate both significant spatial clusters of high rates of race-specific stops and a series of statistically significant relationships of those variations to similar variations in explanatory variables.
Examined outcome and process differences in criminal personality profiling among 4 profilers (PFs), 12 detectives, 6 psychologists, and 6 undergraduates, using closed police cases (1 sex offense, 1 homicide). In the written profile task (the task that is more representative of what PFs actually do), PFs wrote more detailed and valid profiles than other Ss for both cases. An analysis of correct responses concerning the known sex offender for the sex offense case revealed that PFs scored significantly better than other Ss on a variety of measures; similar results were not revealed for the homicide case. PFs did not appear to process this material in a way qualitatively different from other Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)
This study aims to (1) elucidate whether the Hawthorne effect exists, (2) explore under what conditions, and (3) estimate the size of any such effect.
This systematic review summarizes and evaluates the strength of available evidence on the Hawthorne effect. An inclusive definition of any form of research artifact on behavior using this label, and without cointerventions, was adopted.
Nineteen purposively designed studies were included, providing quantitative data on the size of the effect in eight randomized controlled trials, five quasiexperimental studies, and six observational evaluations of reporting on one's behavior by answering questions or being directly observed and being aware of being studied. Although all but one study was undertaken within health sciences, study methods, contexts, and findings were highly heterogeneous. Most studies reported some evidence of an effect, although significant biases are judged likely because of the complexity of the evaluation object.
Consequences of research participation for behaviors being investigated do exist, although little can be securely known about the conditions under which they operate, their mechanisms of effects, or their magnitudes. New concepts are needed to guide empirical studies.
The use of criminal profiling (CP) in criminal investigations has continued to increase despite scant empirical evidence that it is effective. To take stock of the CP field, a narrative review and a 2-part meta-analysis of the published CP literature were conducted. Narrative review results suggest that the CP literature rests largely on commonsense justifications. Results from the 1st meta-analysis indicate that self-labeled profiler/experienced-investigator groups did not outperform comparison groups in predicting offenders' cognitive processes, physical attributes, offense behaviors, or social habits and history, although they were marginally better at predicting overall offender characteristics. Results of the 2nd meta-analysis indicate that self-labeled profilers were not significantly better at predicting offense behaviors, but outperformed comparison groups when predicting overall offender characteristics, cognitive processes, physical attributes, and social history and habits. Methodological shortcomings of the data and the implications of these findings for the practical utility of CP are discussed.
Recent studies by police departments and researchers confirm that police stop persons of racial and ethnic minority groups more often than whites relative to their proportions in the population. However, it has been argued that stop rates more accurately reflect rates of crimes committed by each ethnic group, or that stop rates reflect elevated rates in specific social areas, such as neighborhoods or precincts. Most of the research on stop rates and police-citizen interactions has focused on traffic stops, and analyses of pedestrian stops are rare. In this article we analyze data from 125,000 pedestrian stops by the New York Police Department over a 15-month period. We disaggregate stops by police precinct and compare stop rates by racial and ethnic group, controlling for previous race-specific arrest rates. We use hierarchical multilevel models to adjust for precinct-level variability, thus directly addressing the question of geographic heterogeneity that arises in the analysis of pedestrian stops. We find that persons of African and Hispanic descent were stopped more frequently than whites, even after controlling for precinct variability and race-specific estimates of crime participation.
Perceptions of temporal malleability and subjectivity are experienced by many perpetrators, victims, and witnesses of violence. Are perceptions of the slowing down, speeding up, or heightened awareness of time, which accompany violent moments, indicative of broader cultural and humanistic phenomena? In this article, I explore accounts of temporal perceptions surrounding violent encounters as a methodologically useful field of intersection between theories concerning the cultural construction of reality, the anthropology of time, simulation, and an emergent holographic physics. If, as a growing number of physicists assert, the universe can be described as a hologram where “time” is illusory and simultaneous, violent events that are perceived as temporally ambiguous offer sites of particular interest for the humanistic examination of these physical models. In other words, the temporal subjectivity often experienced by those who encounter violence can be interpreted as directly perceivable holographic encounters. The perpetrators, victims, and witnesses of such encounters can be viewed not only as interpreters of particular cultural temporal systems but also actively manipulating space–time and socially constructed reality. Interpreting violence through the experience of human agents could lead to greater insight into not only the symbolic meaning generated by acts of violence but also its hyperreal, desensitizing, and dissociative effects. Furthermore, the amplification of these effects by mass media and modern state ideologues becomes more penetrable under such an interpretive model. I draw from ethnographic research with police and “security” personnel in Thailand, Vietnam, and the United States, as well as from media and performance analysis.
Purpose . This paper is concerned with case linkage, a form of behavioural analysis used to identify crimes committed by the same offender, through their behavioural similarity. Whilst widely practised, relatively little has been published on the process of linking crimes. This review aims to draw together diverse published studies by outlining what the process involves, critically examining its underlying psychological assumptions and reviewing the empirical research conducted on its viability.
Methods . Literature searches were completed on the electronic databases, PsychInfo and Criminal Justice Abstracts, to identify theoretical and empirical papers relating to the practice of linking crimes and to behavioural consistency.
Results . The available research gives some support to the assumption of consistency in criminals' behaviour. It also suggests that in comparison with intra‐individual variation in behaviour, inter‐individual variation is sufficient for the offences of one offender to be distinguished from those of other offenders. Thus, the two fundamental assumptions underlying the practice of linking crimes, behavioural consistency and inter‐individual variation, are supported. However, not all behaviours show the same degree of consistency, with behaviours that are less situation‐dependent, and hence more offender‐initiated, showing greater consistency.
Conclusions . The limited research regarding linking offenders' crimes appears promising at both a theoretical and an empirical level. There is a clear need, however, for replication studies and for research with various types of crime.
The present study was designed to assess the contribution of general features of gross body movements to the attribution of emotions. Eighty-five adult subjects were shown ninety-six videotaped body movements, performed by three actors. Each movement was determined by seven general dimensions: trunk movement, arm movement, vertical direction, sagittal direction, force, velocity and directness. Using rating scales, the subjects judged the compatibility of each movement with each of twelve emotion categories. The results showed which movement features predicted particular ratings. Emotion categories differed as to the amount, type, and weights of predicting movement features. Three factors were extracted from the original ratings and interpreted as Rejection-Acceptance, Withdrawal-Approach, and Preparation-Defeatedness.
A fundamental assumption in criminal profiling is that criminals who exhibit similar crime scene actions have similar background
characteristics. We tested this so-called homology assumption by first classifying, with pre-existing typologies, a sample
of arsons (N = 87) and robberies (N = 177) into different crime types and then comparing the background characteristics of criminals who committed the various
crime types. Results showed that using pre-existing typologies to classify the crimes into mutually exclusive types was not
easily accomplished. Notwithstanding classification difficulties, the homology assumption was violated in 56% of the comparisons of background characteristics between the different arson types and in 67% of the comparisons of
background characteristics between the different robbery types. Overall, 73% of the effect sizes for the associations between
crime type and background characteristics were low to moderate (V < .3; d < .2). The implications of these findings for profiling practices are discussed.
Reviews the phenomenon of left-handedness from prehistoric man through contemporary studies of lateralization of cerebral function. The following conclusions seem warranted: Handedness is most appropriately regarded as a continuum ranging from strong right-handedness across mixed-handedness to strong left-handedness. Left-handedness, ranging from moderate through strongly left-handed, is found in approximately 10% of the population. Evidence for a genetic basis of handedness remains positive, but with no direct link established. There is remarkably little evidence for any association of left-handedness with deficit. The familial left-handed show greater recovery of functioning following unilateral cerebral insult than do nonfamilial right-handed and nonfamilial left-handed. Both behavioral and clinical lesion studies indicate systematic differences in lateralization of cerebral function between the right- and left-handed and the familial and nonfamilial left-handed. A classification of handedness and lateralization of cerebral function is suggested. The possibilities exist that bilaterality of cerebral functioning either is stable in the human race or is changing at an extremely slow rate. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Can potentially antisocial or criminal behaviour be predicted? Our study aimed to ascertain (a) whether observers can successfully predict the onset of such behaviour when viewing real recordings from CCTV; (b) where, in the sequence of events, it is possible to make this prediction; and (c) whether there may be a difference between naïve and professional observers. We used 100 sample scenes from UK urban locations. Of these, 18 led to criminal behaviour (fights or vandalism). A further 18 scenes were matched as closely as possible to the crime examples, but did not lead to any crime, and 64 were neutral scenes chosen from a wide variety of noncriminal situations. A signal-detection paradigm was used in conjunction with a 6-point rating scale. Data from fifty naïve and fifty professional observers suggest that (a) observers can distinguish crime sequences from neutral sequences and from matches; (b) there are key types of behaviour (particularly gestures and body position) that allow predictions to be made; (c) the performance of naïve observers is comparable to that of experts. However, because the experts were predominantly male, the absence of an effect of experience may have been due to gender differences, which were investigated in a subsidiary experiment. The results of experiment 2 leave open the possibility that females perform better than males at such tasks.
In a recent issue of this journal, Kocsis reviewed the criminal profiling research that he and his colleagues have conducted during the past 4 years. Their research examines the correlates of profile accuracy with respect to the skills of the individual constructing the profile, and it has led Kocsis to draw conclusions that are important to the profiling field. In this article, the authors review the contributions of the Kocsis studies and critique their methodological and conceptual foundations. The authors raise a number of concerns and argue that data from the Kocsis studies fail to support many of the conclusions presented in his recent review. The authors present evidence in support of their assertions and provide recommendations that will allow future research in the area to generate data that are more meaningful and generalizable.
This article identifies and describes a set of behavioral indicators associated with illegal drug carrying in public spaces. Through the use of focus group data, our research documents and translates the visual search techniques that veteran law enforcement and drugs experts report using in their work. Here, we catalogue these findings into 10 overarching categories, and discuss how each indicator may be incorporated into an officer’s visual search. Knowledge of these indicators, when combined with proper training and an understanding of a public space, can help law enforcement identify persons who may be carrying drugs. The ability to identify drug-carrying individuals facilitates the interdiction and apprehension of offenders, and also protects the civil rights and liberties of the law-abiding public.
Criminal Profiling: Principles and Practice provides a compendium of original scientific research on constructing a criminal profile for crimes that are not readily resolvable by conventional police investigative methods. Leading profiling expert Richard N. Kocsis, PhD, utilizes a distinct approach referred to as Crime Action Profiling (CAP), a technique that has its foundations in the disciplinary knowledge of forensic psychology. The initial four chapters examine the skills, accuracy, components, and processes surrounding the construction of a criminal profile. The next two chapters focus on CAP research, the methods developed for the profiling of violent crimes and describing a systematic method for the interpretation and use of the CAP models. The subsequent three chapters canvass the respective CAP studies undertaken for crimes of serial rape, serial/sexual murder, and serial arson. An explanation for how each of the models is developed is also given. The final chapters of the book are devoted to the geographical analysis of crime patterns and to a discussion of the format conventions and procedural guidelines for developing a criminal profile. Offering a scientifically grounded method for the construction of a criminal profile, Criminal Profiling: Principles and Practice provides law enforcement personnel, forensic psychologists and psychiatrists, criminologists, and forensic investigators with a step-by-step, practical guide for understanding and applying CAP techniques for the construction of a criminal profile in a systematic and replicable manner.
This chapter focuses on the history of criminal profiling. Inferring the traits of individuals responsible for committing criminal acts has commonly been referred to as “criminal profiling.” Criminal profiling has a legal history that can be traced back to the blood-labeling of Jews in Rome. Over the past 200 years, professionals engaged in the practice of criminal profiling have included a broad spectrum of investigators, behavioral scientists, social scientists, and forensic scientists. The practice has never been the province of a single discipline or agency. Modern criminal profiling, owing to a diverse history, is grounded in the study of crime and criminal behavior, the study of mental health and illness, and the examination of physical evidence. In its many forms, it has always involved the inference of criminal characteristics for investigative and judicial purposes. The reasoning behind those inferences, however, has not always been consistent. It includes a basis in statistical argumentation, the examination of specific criminal behaviors, and subjective, intuitive opinions based on personal belief and experience.
Criminal profiling is used in complex investigations, and, in a number of jurisdictions, as expert evidence in criminal trials. This article seeks to move beyond the many anecdotal accounts of success by profilers and examine the evidence available as to the discipline's validity. As it stands, profiling is based on theories that are uncertain at best, and little research has been undertaken to assess the actual accuracy of generated profiles. This absence of validation is in part due to genuine difficulties associated with designing appropriate testing models. It is exacerbated by the reluctance of profilers to engage in such a process, relying instead on the well-rehearsed, yet somewhat circular argument that the continuing demand for profiling advice is in itself reassuring evidence of the method's validity. It is the lack of objective evidence of validity in this area that will be critically considered in this article.
Eighty-three incarcerated offenders indicated, on a forced choice questionnaire, the emotions they had experienced whilst committing a specific crime they remembered well. Smallest Space Analysis of these emotions showed they reflected the circumplex structure of emotions postulated by Russell (1997) for non-criminal experiences. However, they showed a stronger distinction between pleasure and displeasure than for the normal range of non-criminal experiences, with Russell's 'arousal' dimension being less clearly differentiated. Further analysis showed that different subsets of crimes were more like to be associated with different emotions. In broad terms, property crimes were found to be more pleasurable than crimes against the person. The results are taken as support for Katz's (1988) proposal that the emotional significance of crimes needs to be considered more fully in order to understand the psychological processes that sustain and encourage crimes. The utility of Russell's model indicates that the emotions experienced by criminals whilst committing crimes can be conceptualised in ways similar to other emotional experiences.
Despite developments in both the research and investigative use of criminal profiling over the past four decades, empirical evaluation of the accuracy of the technique, and hence its validity, remains limited. This practice update briefly examines the original empirical experiments conducted in the area thus far as well as recent omnibus analyses aimed at assessing accuracy in criminal profiles. Issues that undermine recently promulgated challenges to profiler accuracy are also identified and discussed. Findings evidencing accuracy in criminal profiling from both the original and omnibus studies are also reviewed along with the theoretical implications for differing schools of thought concerning the criminal profiling technique.
Criminal profiling is a useful investigative technique that combines art and science. This article provides a brief overview of profiling that includes discussions of definitions of profiling, the training and expertise necessary to do profiling, how profiling can be helpful in criminal investigations, the types of crimes that lend themselves to profiling, and the profiling process. The current scientific status of profiling is reviewed, and suggestions are made for future research establishing the reliability and validity of the technique, and updating and expanding the database from which the behavioral analyses in profiling are deduced.
This article presents an overview of quasi-experimental research that has investigated the performance of individuals engaged in the forensic psychological technique commonly known as criminal profiling. Recent conflict in the literature is examined with the result that, consistent with earlier findings, empirical evidence is found to support the capabilities of expert profilers in decisively surpassing nonprofilers in accurately predicting the characteristics of an unknown offender. Observations are offered in conclusion on the broader ramifications of these findings for competing theoretical approaches to criminal profiling.
This article considers the empirical evidence currently available, which examines the validity of criminal profiling. The manuscript also serves to highlight a third key flaw in Snook et al. (2007) which, in the writer's view, further renders its conclusions problematic. The phenomena referred to as the nomenclature illusion is discussed to explain its role in hindering the cogent development of scientific knowledge in the area of criminal profiling. The ramifications of these findings for competing theoretical approaches to criminal profiling are also explored. Final comments consider the optimal approach for the development of operationally relevant techniques for profiling violent crimes in the future.
give an overview of the origins, purposes, uses, and contributions of grounded theory methodology / grounded theory is a general methodology for developing theory that is grounded in data systematically gathered and analyzed (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The first half of this book criticizes the motivational assumptions of classical economics, emphasizes the parallel disregard in practical life of social skills as compared with technical skills, and points up the disastrous social consequences of these errors. The second half reviews several studies by the Department of Industrial Research (Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration) and shows what light they throw on how these errors may be corrected. An appendix lists and describes briefly all the major studies conducted by the Department of Industrial Research (1926-1945) and includes a bibliography of publications by its members. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Purpose. Conventional approaches to offender profiling assume a homology of the characteristics of offenders with their crime scene actions: the more similar two offenders are with respect to background characteristics, the higher the resemblance in their crime scene behaviour. This implicit working hypothesis is tested empirically.
Methods. The study is based on a sample of 100 British male stranger rapists. These individuals were indexed with respect to the similarity in their crime scene actions as derived from witness statements. They were then compared with respect to their socio‐demographic features and criminal histories as derived from police records. In a correlational analysis, we tested whether increased similarity in one domain (offence behaviour) coincided with higher resemblance in the other domains (socio‐demographic features and previous convictions).
Results. There is no positive linear relationship for any of the comparisons, i.e. rapists who offend in a similar fashion are not more similar with respect to age, socio‐demographic features (such as employment situation and ethnicity) or their criminal records.
Conclusions. These findings indicate no evidence for the assumption of a homology between crime scene actions and background characteristics for the rapists in the sample. We argue that this result suggests that the homology assumption is too simplistic to provide a basis for offender profiling. Implications for future research include the search for a suitable framework for offender profiling that is grounded in personality psychology. Further, methodological considerations are discussed, such as the potential application of probabilistic scales.
Eighty-two younger and older adults participated in a two-part study of the decoding of emotion through body movements and gestures. In the first part, younger and older adults identified emotions depicted in brief videotaped displays of young adult actors portraying emotional situations. In each display, the actors were silent and their faces were electronically blurred in order to isolate the body cues to emotion. Although both groups made accurate emotion identifications well above chance levels, older adults made more overall errors, and this was especially true for negative emotions. Moreover, their errors were more likely to reflect the misidentification of emotional displays as neutral in content. In the second part, younger and older adults rated the videotaped displays using scales reflecting several movement dimensions (e.g., form, tempo, force, and movement). The ratings of both age groups were in high agreement and provided reliable information about particular body cues to emotion. The errors made by older adults were linked to reactions to exaggerated or ambiguous body cues.
The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that the changes in natural killer (NK) cell activity in response to physical exercise were mediated by increased epinephrine concentrations. Eight healthy volunteers 1) exercised on a bicycle ergometer (60 min, 75% of maximal O2 uptake) and 2) on a later day were given epinephrine as an intravenous infusion to obtain plasma epinephrine concentrations comparable with those seen during exercise. Blood samples were collected in the basal state, during the last minutes of exercise or epinephrine infusion, and 2 h later. The NK cell activity (lysis/fixed number of mononuclear cells) increased during exercise and epinephrine infusion and dropped below basal levels 2 h afterward. The increased NK cell activity during exercise and the epinephrine infusion resulted from an increased concentration of NK (CD16+) cells in the peripheral blood. On the other hand, the decreased NK cell activity demonstrated 2 h after exercise and epinephrine infusion did not simply reflect preferential removal of NK cells from the blood, because the proportion of CD16+ cells was normalized. On the basis of the finding that indomethacin abolished the suppressed NK cell activity in vitro and the demonstration of a twofold increase in the proportion of monocytes (CD14+ cells) 2 h after exercise and epinephrine infusion, we suggest that, after stress, prostaglandins released by monocytes are responsible for downregulation of NK cell function. Our findings support the hypothesis that increased plasma epinephrine during physical stress causes a redistribution of mononuclear subpopulations that results in altered function of NK cells.
Qualitative research methods could help us to improve our understanding of medicine. Rather than thinking of qualitative and quantitative strategies as incompatible, they should be seen as complementary. Although procedures for textual interpretation differ from those of statistical analysis, because of the different type of data used and questions to be answered, the underlying principles are much the same. In this article I propose relevance, validity, and reflexivity as overall standards for qualitative inquiry. I will discuss the specific challenges in relation to reflexivity, transferability, and shared assumptions of interpretation, which are met by medical researchers who do this type of research, and I will propose guidelines for qualitative inquiry.
Establishing behavioral consistency in serial homicide offending behavior is essential when linking homicides together and to a common offender. An examination of 35 serial homicide behaviors utilized by 90 offenders in 450 serial homicide cases was carried out to identify whether these offenders consistently performed the same behaviors across their series of homicides and whether it is more effective to examine individual behaviors or groupings of behaviors in order to identify behavioral consistency. This study provides the first empirically based evidence testing the use of using single behaviors as linking factors in linking homicide cases in a series, and shows that this method has inherent difficulties in accomplishing this, thus providing the first wave of empirical testing that questions current theories in the literature on serial homicide, which has suggested that signatures or specific key behaviors are important in understanding the consistency in an offender's behavior across the crimes. Recommendations for future studies on linking using signatures are suggested, including a more in-depth qualitative empirical evaluation of individual series.
The Forensic Psychologist’s Casebook: Psychological Profiling and Criminal Investigation
- L J Alison
The drug courier profile: ‘All Seems Infected That Th’ Infected Spy, as all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye’
- C L Becton
The role of emotion recognition from non-verbal behaviour in detection of concealed firearm carrying
- A Blechko
- Darker
- It
- A G Gale
The Effectiveness of Profiling from a National Security Prospective
- J Bourque
- S Leblanc
- A Uzschneider
Search and seizure by the numbers: the drug courier profile and judicial review of investigative formulas
- M Cloud
Applied Criminal Psychology: An Introduction to Forensic Behavioral Sciences
- R N Kocsis
Threat assessment training for peacekeepers: a proven business approach
- N Meehan
Behavioral Indicators during a Police Interdiction
- N Meehan
- C Strange
- M Mcclary
Identifying drug couriers in airports
- M Oolman
- M Parker
- N Meehan
The role of stereotyping in the development and implementation of the D.E.A. Drug Courier Profiles
- G L Young
Estimating Global Civilian-held Firearms Numbers
- A Karp
Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation’s Law Enforcement Officers
- A J Pinizzotto
- Davis
- Ef
- Miller
- Ce
Characteristics of the Armed Individual
- K Porter
Armed and Considered Dangerous
- P H Rossi
Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis
- B Turvey
Warrior Mindset: Mental Toughness Skills for a Nation’s Peacekeepers
- M J Asken
- D Grossman
- Christensen