1. An Implicit Test of the Associations Between Children and Sex in Pedophiles
- Author
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Nicola S. Gray, Malcolm Macculloch, Anthony S. Brown, Jennifer Smith, and Robert Jefferson Snowden
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,Psychometrics ,Sexual Behavior ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Word Association Tests ,Human Males ,Developmental psychology ,Association ,Explicit memory ,Humans ,Association (psychology) ,Pedophilia ,Biological Psychiatry ,media_common ,Sexual attraction ,Sex Offenses ,Age Factors ,Clinical Psychology ,Psychiatry and Mental health ,Feeling ,Female ,Sex offense ,Cognition Disorders ,Psychology - Abstract
Pedophiles are motivated to disguise their thoughts and feelings about their sexual beliefs and attraction toward children. New developments using implicit measures of associations have been successful in accessing socially stigmatic beliefs, even in cases in which the participant is resistant to this disclosure. Using an implicit measure, the authors show that pedophiles have an association between children and sex, whereas nonpedophilic offenders have an association between adults and sex. The task can therefore identify a core cognitive abnormality that may underpin some pedophilic deviant sexual behavior.
- Published
- 2005