Neuropsychological discriminaiton between violent and nonviolent men

Abstract

Compared 40 violent and 40 nonviolent male prisoners on a 31‐variable neuropsychological test battery and the MMPI. The two groups differed significantly in their responses to both neuropsychological tests and the MMPI. Ss could be classified correctly as violent or nonviolent with 95% accuracy by use of the neuropsychological test battery alone. The MMPI alone correctly classed 79%. The relative behavioral impairment seen on neuropsychological tests in interpreted as part of a general pattern of poor intellectual integration cortical inhibition associated with the presumed presumbed grater prevalence of brain dysfunction in samples of violeng persons. Simple and rather specific perceptual, cognitive, and psychomotor tests such as found in neuropsychological assessment batteies add significnatly to the identification of potentially violent persons and appear more powerful for this purpose than personality inventories.