Expertise in Psychological Profiling

Abstract

There has been little empirical study of the abilities contributing to proficient performance in psychological profiling. The authors sought to address this issue by comparing the accuracy of psychological profiles for a closed murder case generated by groups differing primarily in characteristics posited to underlie the profiling process. In addition to a sample of professional profilers, the study recruited groups of police officers, psychologists, university students, and self-declared psychics. Another group of participants compiled a generic profile of murderers without knowledge of the specific case given to other groups. Despite the small size of the sample of profilers, there were indications that this group had a set of profiling skills superior to the individual skills represented by the other expertise groups. In addition, the performance of psychologists was better in some respects than that of police and psychics, suggesting that an educated insight into human behavior might be relatively pertinent to psychological profiling. On the other hand, it would seem that psychics relied on nothing more than the social stereotype of a murderer in their production of the offender's profile.