engleski

The relationship between intelligence and criminal recidivism: The mediation effect of empathy

Many researchers (e.g. Farrington, 2003 ; Joliffe and Farrington, 2004) state that the mechanism linking empathy and offending needs to be better explored, suggesting several ways in which this relationship can be viewed. One of them is based on the results of Joliffe and Farringtons’ (2004) systematic review of studies relating empathy to offending. According to these authors, there is a possibility that empathy actually mediates the relationship between some other risk factors and offending. More specific, their review showed that the intelligence is one of these risk factors. Therefore, in order to provide a better understanding of the relationship between intelligence, empathy and criminal recidivism, the aim of this study was to examine whether empathy mediates the relationship between intelligence and criminal recidivism. It was hypothesized that lower intelligence would affect intensity of prisoners’ criminal recidivism only indirectly, through lower empathy. The sample consisted of 1600 male prisoners in Croatian prison system who had to serve a prison sentence longer than 6 months. Average prisoners’ age was 39 years (SD=11, 791) and a duration of the prison sentence was 27 months (SD=34, 392). All prisoners came to Center for diagnostics in Zagreb during the 2013., and they all went through psychodiagnostic testing. For the purposes of this paper, data on intelligence, empathy, personality, and criminal recidivism were used. Intelligence was measured by Revised Beta test, empathy with the empathy subscale from Eysenck Impulsivity Questionnaire (IVE), and personality traits (psychoticism, extraversion, and neuroticism) were measured with the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire – Revised/Adult. Based on the data of number of prison sentences, criminal recidivism was operationalized as an ordinal variable (0- only one prison sentence ; 1- two to four prison sentences ; 3 – five and more prison sentences). In order to test hypothesized link between intelligence, empathy, and criminal recidivism, mediation analysis was conducted using PROCESS macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2014). Personality factors of psychoticism, neuroticism and extraversion were controlled in the analysis. The results have shown nonsignificant direct effect of intelligence on criminal recidivism, and significant indirect effect of lower intelligence on criminal recidivism via lower empathy. Research findings are discussed from theoretical and practical perspective.

criminal recidivism, empathy, intelligence, prisoners

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