Do theory of mind, affective resonance with others' pain, and response inhibition distinguish online-only from contact child sexual offenders?

Lead Research Organisation: University of Liverpool
Department Name: Psychology

Abstract

This project will use a solution-focussed approach to identify the psychological processes that can be targeted to ensure that potential high risk groups, such as men who view online child sexual exploitation material, but who have not committed contact sexual offences, do not abuse and harm children. The last four years have seen a steep upward trend in the number of recorded sexual offences against children under 16, and as recently as 2017 there has been a marked increase in sexual activity involving a child under 13. However, we know that some men who view online child sexual exploitation material will never progress to committing contact offences: therefore, the identification of protective factors is a key approach that may help to identify potential treatment targets and reduce child sexual abuse. To understand why, we need to know if contact sexual offenders are distinguishable from 'online-only' offenders and offender and non-offender controls in 1) theory of mind abilities, that is, the ability to understand others' thoughts, feelings, intentions and beliefs; 2) affective resonance with others' pain, that is, the ability to vicariously experience the pain of another; and 3) the ability to inhibit a prepotent response. The objectives of the proposed work are to use tests of social-affective functioning and response inhibition, and physiological measures, to create a psychological profile that can distinguish between online-only and contact sexual offenders and help to identify the psychological processes that protect against contact sexual offending. The results of this research will aid the design of psychologically informed treatment programs with the ultimate aim of reducing contact sexual offending and protecting children from harm. These results will be communicated to scientists, policy makers, treatment providers, and relevant charitable organisations to inform future prevention and intervention efforts and keep children safe.

Planned Impact

This work will provide a novel theoretical contribution to understanding the factors that can protect against committing contact child sexual abuse. It has the potential to impact the work of scientists who study sexual abuse from clinical, social cognitive, and psychophysiological perspectives, as well as policy makers, research and evaluation specialists in the UK Ministry of Justice, those responsible for the design and delivery of offender behaviour programs, as well as those working with sex offenders internationally.

The project, which is consistent with the biopsychosocial perspective adapted by the Ministry of Justice, has the potential to be far reaching in its impact. Child sexual abuse represents a public health problem that causes considerable harm to victims, and has enormous societal and financial costs. Our work will have a direct impact on understanding online-only and contact sexual offending. A robust examination of the differences in social, cognitive and affective mechanisms between these two groups, and compared with violent offenders without a history of sexual offending, will help to identify potential protective factors that help men with a sexual interest in children to avoid committing contact sexual offences. These findings will help to illuminate new pathways in sex offender treatment, focussed on problems in social, cognitive and affective functioning, and would allow for the development of evidence based interventions.

While there is some evidence that existing and previous psychological interventions for rehabilitating sexual offenders can lead to positive outcomes, a large scale evaluation commissioned by the Ministry of Justice showed that the prison based sex offender treatment program that was delivered to sexual offenders in England and Wales was ineffective. Thus, the continued development of improved interventions is a priority for reducing risk of sexual recidivism and protecting children from harm. These aims have been highlighted by Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service as priority research areas. More recent offender behaviour programs are delivered to offenders based on risk rather than offence type, and this work has the potential to inform the delivery of specialist modules targeting areas of social, cognitive and affective functioning that differentiate contact from online-only offenders. The inclusion of a control group of participants who have a history of violent non-sexual offending means that this work can also be informative about other moderate to high risk offenders who these programs are delivered to.

An important part of this grant will be the networking opportunities and links to key stakeholders that the PI will be afforded by his mentor. In addition, the PI will maintain regular dialogue with key stakeholders (e.g., Ministry of Justice Prison and Probation Analytical Services) and plan a flagship dissemination event to target both local and national policy and practitioner representatives. Presentation of the findings at national and international meetings, such as the annual conference of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA), will ensure that the findings are disseminated to both academics and practitioners. Any resultant advances in therapy which lead to reduced recidivism rates will clearly be of benefit to potential victims and society as a whole.

The issue of sexual offending is also a cause of considerable public concern. These concerns have been magnified following the unveiling of high profile cases that have attracted increased public and media attention. Engaging with the public via press releases and presentations at public science events (e.g., Pint of Science) will lead to a more enlightened public understanding of sexual offenders and their crimes.

Publications

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Daly N (2022) Coping Using Sex, Health-Related Behaviors, and Mental Health During COVID-19 Lockdown in the UK. in Frontiers in psychiatry

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Gillespie SM (2023) Psychopathy and dangerousness: An umbrella review and meta-analysis. in Clinical psychology review

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Gillespie SM (2022) Psychopathy and response inhibition: A meta-analysis of go/no-go and stop signal task performance. in Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews

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Gillespie SM (2023) Latent profiles identified from psychological test data for people convicted of sexual offences in the UK. in The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science

 
Description Our project aimed to examine differences between people with convictions for sexual offences who had committed contact sexual offences, who had offended online only, and people who had committed no offences who were living in the community. We aimed to examine differences across three separate domains of psychological functioning: empathy for others' pain; the ability to understand others' thoughts, intentions, feelings, and beliefs; and response inhibition (i.e., a construct that shares some conceptual overlap with impulsivity).

Early findings from our work shows that people who have committed child sexual offences show (1) reduced empathic responses to others' pain, which was examined by measuring changes in the size of the pupil (the small black hole in the eye) when people were shown images of others in pain, and (2) difficulty inhibiting a behavioural response, examined using a computer based reaction time task. Our findings are important because they suggest that people who have sexually offended against children show blunted emotional responses when another person is in pain. This could act as a risk factor for child sexual abuse, as the perpetrator of the offence may not understand and/or experience their victims' pain and suffering as distressing. Difficulties in response inhibition are also likely to represent a risk actor for child sexual abuse. Interestingly, our findings suggest that people who have sexually offended against children showed problems inhibiting a response when shown images of both adults and children, suggesting that problems in response inhibition are not specific to motivationally salient contexts (i.e., contexts that are consistent with the direction of one's sexual attraction). The findings are currently being written up for publication.

Using data that were shared with us by the Ministry of Justice, relating to over 2000 men in England and Wales who had sexually offended, we have also shown that people who have committed sexual offences can broadly be categorised in to one of five different groups or subpopulations, with people in each group sharing similar treatment needs, individual characteristics, and levels of risk for committing future sexual offences. This work is important as it has implications for the treatment of offenders both in prison and in the community. Our work suggests that one size does not fit all in the treatment given to people who have sexually offended, and that different people are likely to benefit from different interventions that are tailored to their own treatment needs.

We also wanted to understand the extent to which performance on tasks like those that we used in our work may be associated with personality traits associated with low empathy, a deceptive interpersonal style, and reckless and antisocial behaviour. This constellation of personality traits is referred to as psychopathy, or psychopathic traits. To complement the findings of our research, we completed two literature reviews. Both of these reviews were systematic, whereby we used a preregistered strategy to search the available literature for relevant papers, we quality assessed the methods used in these papers, and we conducted a meta-analysis, which aims to statistically describe how big the effects are reported in the literature, and how much the size of these effects varied.

The first of these reviews analysed findings from existing reviews (meta-analyses) and included results from approximately 77,000 participants across all included reviews. Our findings showed that psychopathic traits, in offender and community samples, were statistically associated with an increased risk to behave in ways that are dangerous to others, including prison violence, committing new sexual or violent offences, and self-reported tendencies to be aggressive to others. Our findings highlight the importance of considering psychopathic traits when assessing risk for future violence, including violence of a sexual nature.

The second of these reviews aimed to examine the extent to which psychopathic traits, in offender and community samples, were associated with problems in inhibiting a behavioural response, also termed response inhibition. We included in our review any studies that examined the relationship of psychopathy with performance on two specific response inhibition tasks, namely the go/no-go task, and the stop signal task. Our findings showed that higher psychopathy scores were statistically associated with worse response inhibition task performance. Our results are important as they highlight the need to consider personality traits when assessing response inhibition task performance in offender or non-offender samples.
Exploitation Route The results of our work identifying subtypes or subpopulations of people who have sexually offended has the potential to inform the design of offending behaviour programmes, and the ways in which people who have sexually offended are allocated to attend these programmes in prison and in the community. Our findings suggest that people who have sexually offended can be divided in to different groups, with each group characterised by different treatment needs, victim preferences, and levels of risk. Our findings suggest that offending behaviour programmes should be delivered in more targeted ways to people who require a specific type of intervention. One of the problems is that we do not know if it is harmful or not for different people to receive interventions that they do not need. For example, we do not know if there are potential harms in delivering interventions focussed on deviant sexual fantasies and sexually obsessive thinking to people who do not show problems in these areas. Our findings provide a framework for understanding the precise treatment needs that characterise different groups of people who have sexually offended and can inform the type of intervention that should be delivered to these groups.

The results of our review of the association of psychopathy and dangerousness suggested that psychopathy is one of the best predictors of behaving in ways that are dangerous to others, including being violent or sexually violent. Our findings should inform strategies for assessing risk for future dangerousness, and are of use to policy makers and clinicians, who should consider these personality traits as part of any comprehensive assessment of risk of future violence.
Sectors Government

Democracy and Justice
 
Description Our findings have had academic and non-academic impacts, including in the areas of offending and criminal justice. One of the most important outputs of this project was our work conducted with the Ministry of Justice, using data that were made available to us under licence, to better understand subpopulations of people who have sexually offended. Our work suggests that not all people who have sexually offended are the same, with our findings identifying five broad groups of people with convictions for sexual offences, with each group showing different individual characteristics, levels of risk of reoffending, and preferences for different types of victims. Importantly, these groups are each likely to benefit from different types of interventions. Our findings have been shared in a written report with the Ministry of Justice in England and Wales, and have been discussed with the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, to understand how our findings can be used to improve treatment given to people who have sexually offended with the aim of reducing child sexual abuse. These findings have also been communicated internationally at conferences to academic, practitioner, and policy making audiences.
First Year Of Impact 2023
Sector Government, Democracy and Justice
Impact Types Policy & public services
 
Description Latent profiles of people with convictions for sexual offences 
Organisation Ministry of Justice
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution This part of the project aimed to identify subtypes of people with convictions for sexual offences that go beyond distinctions based on victim type. Analyses are based on existing data used under licence from the Ministry of Justice. The PI (SG) formulated the research question, and jointly submitted an application to conduct research to the Ministry of Justice National Research Committee, designed the project and wrote the article. The final report has been shared with the Ministry of Justice together with feedback for practice. Other analyses have documented pathways between different risk factors using network analyses. The findings of this work are currently being written up for publication and will be shared with the Ministry of Justice upon completion.
Collaborator Contribution The Partner was responsible for data analysis and contributed to drafting the final published article. Analyses were carried out to identify indicators of different domains of risk for sexual offending from psychological test data for participants who were assessed for eligibility for the prison based Core Sexual Offender Treatment Programme. Based on these analyses, indicators of different risk domains were used in latent profile analyses to identify psychological profiles of people with convictions for sexual offences. Further analyses examined differences between these profiles based on individual characteristics (age, IQ), offence histories, victim preference, and level of risk.
Impact One output has been published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, a high impact peer reviewed scientific journal. A report has also been shared with the Ministry of Justice, and our finings have been shared with the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse. One further output is anticipated for publication based on these data.
Start Year 2021
 
Description Article for NOTA News 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact An invited article, written by the Principal Investigator, was included in the NOTA News publication, published by the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abuse. Membership of NOTA is open to any professional whose work concerns intervention with sexually aggressive individuals. Members of NOTA have access to NOTA's newsletter, which includes articles, interviews, reviews and up-to-date information about the field.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description Presented to Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The PI presented recent findings at a meeting of professional practitioners and researchers working at the CSA Centre. The CSA Centre is funded by the Home Office and hosted by Barnardo's. They collate and analyse existing research, policy, practice, and the experiences of survivors, to fill the gaps with new research, insights and analysis. The presentation led to a discussion about how best to understand the treatment needs fo people who have sexually offended, and the implications of understanding level of risk of different types of offenders.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023