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Assessment of Implicit Sexual Associations in Non-Incarcerated Pedophiles

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Abstract

Offences committed by pedophiles are crimes that evoke serious public concern and outrage. Although recent research using implicit measures has shown promise in detecting deviant sexual associations, the discriminatory and predictive quality of implicit tasks has not yet surpassed traditional assessment methods such as questionnaires and phallometry. The current research extended previous findings by examining whether a combination of two implicit tasks, the Implicit Association Task (IAT) and the Picture Association Task (PAT), was capable of differentiating pedophiles from non-pedophiles, and whether the PAT, which allows separate analysis for male, female, boy and girl stimulus categories, was more sensitive to specific sexual associations in pedophiles than the IAT. A total of 20 male self-reported pedophiles (10 offender and 10 non-offenders) and 20 male self-reported heterosexual controls completed the two implicit measures. Results indicated that the combination of both tasks produced the strongest results to date in detecting implicit pedophilic preferences (AUC = .97). Additionally, the PAT showed promise in decomposing the sexual associations in pedophiles. Interestingly, as there was an equal distribution of offenders and non-offenders in the pedophile group, it was possible to test for implicit association differences between these groups. This comparison showed no clear link between having these implicit sexual associations and actual offending.

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Notes

  1. The name of the organization is omitted for legal reasons. First contacts were made with the organizations’ chairman. Through him, the participants were recruited.

  2. Images cannot be reproduced due to copyright laws. Further information about the stimulus set can be acquired through the corresponding author.

  3. One participant from the control group had to be dropped from the Picture Association Task analysis due to technical problems during data acquisition.

  4. Excluding pedophiles with preference only for girls did not change effect sizes for the IAT, PAT or the separate or combined ROC scores.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Cultural Psychology, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, POB 9104, 6500 HE, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Matthijs L. van Leeuwen, Rick B. van Baaren, Marijke G. M. Loonen, Maarten Lippman & Ap Dijksterhuis

  2. Department of Communication Sciences, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Matthijs L. van Leeuwen, Rick B. van Baaren & Ap Dijksterhuis

  3. Forensic Psychiatric Centre ‘de Rooyse Wissel’, Venray, The Netherlands

    Farid Chakhssi

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  1. Matthijs L. van Leeuwen
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  2. Rick B. van Baaren
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  3. Farid Chakhssi
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  4. Marijke G. M. Loonen
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Correspondence to Matthijs L. van Leeuwen.

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van Leeuwen, M.L., van Baaren, R.B., Chakhssi, F. et al. Assessment of Implicit Sexual Associations in Non-Incarcerated Pedophiles. Arch Sex Behav 42, 1501–1507 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-013-0094-0

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