Behaviour Profiling Short Course

Sneak Peek

Behavioural Profiling in Recruitment, Educational, Criminal Behaviour and Marketing 

Learn more about the use of psychological and behavioural profiling in a wide range of settings.  A profile helps us to find out more about a person, what they are really like, their characteristics and personality.  We often assume that behavioural profiling is used mainly in the field of criminal behaviour, but psychological profiling can also be used in a wide range of other areas, such as –

• Is this person the right candidate for the job?
• What careers would suit this person?
• Does this child or adult have a specific educational need?
• What customers will buy this product?
• How will a customer buy this product?
• Does this person have a personality disorder, such as Antisocial Personality Disorder?
• Does this person have the right aptitude and skills for this job?
• Does this person have a clinical condition?
• Does this person have the skills and personality required for a promotion? 

Psychological profiling can help us to learn more about people and find out whether they are the right candidate for the job, whether they have educational needs, whether they show criminal tendencies and how we can market our goods and services to a particular group of people.

Course Content

• What is profiling?
• Personality
• Types of profiling
• When and why do we carry out profiling?
• How profiling is done
• Lesson 1 additional reading
• Types of serial killers
• Psychopaths
• But why do murderers kill?
• Who commits murder?
• Murder statistics

Lesson 2: How To Profile Someone 

• Profiling techniques
• Putting it all together
• Psychological testing in recruitment – how good is it?
• Personality testing in recruitment

Lesson 3: Interviews and Questionnaires 

• Psychological screening
• What is an interview?
• Planning an interview: structured or unstructured
• Components of a profiling interview
• What can go wrong?
• Dealing with interview data
• Competency based interviews in recruitment
• Non-verbal behaviour
• Active listening and SOLER

Lesson 4: Behavioural Assessment

• The ABC model
• Traditional vs behavioural assessment
• Different applications of behavioural assessments
• Behavioural assessment techniques
• Problems with behavioural assessments
• Functional analysis
• More on behavioural assessments
• Methods of behavioural assessment
• The focus of assessment
• Analysis of problem behaviour

Lesson 5: Classical Assessment Tests

• The nature of traditional assessment tests
• Reliability and validity of psychological tests
• More on Wechsler intelligence scales
• Subtests
• Psychological testing in recruitment – how good is it?

Lesson 6: What Comes Next?

• Applications for profiles
• How & where to use a profile
• Computer profiling
• Ethics of profiling
• Problems with profiling
• The future of profiling
• Profiling – a summary

FINAL ASSESSMENT

CONSIDER FORENSIC PROFILING

We are talking about forensic profiling, where psychologists and behavioural scientists will use science and experience to try to develop a profile of a criminal. They will use information gained through research and study. Research has found that the following factors can influence who commits a crime.

Why Do People Murder?

Gender

In the Western world, nearly 90% of murders are committed by males.  Males are also the victims in nearly 75% of murders.  

Age

Age also affects murder rates, there is an increase in murders between the ages of 17 and 30.  People are less likely to commit murder as they age, but murders committed by children and adolescents are also rare.  However, if we look at research across different countries and cultures, the patterns do not always appear similar. For example, in Korea, according to the Asian Correspondent newspaper, 37.4% of murderers are men, which is obviously less than in America. But all of the criminals had committed their crimes in their 30s.

Relationships

We often watch movies and TV programmes where we think it is going to be the spouse who did the murder.  But the Crime Prevention Research Centre in America found that –

• 9.4% of murders were committed by a husband, wife, common-law husband or wife, father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister in law, step-father, step-mother, step-son or step-daughter.
• 1.8% were other family members.  
• 4.2% were boyfriends, girlfriends, ex-husbands or ex-wives
• 14% were acquaintances. This is a broad category can include taxi drivers to prostitutes and their customers.
• 3.1% was a friend
• 5.4% was other known
• 11% a stranger
• 39% was a unknown relationship. For example, they were involved in a gang fight but there was no apparent direct relationship between the victim and murderer.
• 1% a neighbor
  But even looking at these statistics, it is not quite so clear cut. With family murders, the murderers tended to also have a criminal record for other crimes, so it is not just a simple someone in  the family murdered the person.

Mental Illness 

There is often a misconception that people who commit murder are mentally ill in some way.  However, this is not always the case.  The Asian Correspondent reported that 81.3% of Korean murderers had no particular mental illness. 3.9% suffered depression, 0.7% had a mental illness.  Time to Change in the UK reports that the majority of murders are committed by people who do not have mental health problems.  They estimate that there are 50 – 70 murders per year that involve a person with a mental health problem at the time of the murder.  

It also depends on the type of mental illness you are discussing.  We will talk more on psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder shortly, but some mental health conditions do make a person more prone to violence. We will use some of these terms during the course, so it is useful to understand the terms used.

WHO IS THIS COURSE FOR?

For a human resources manager, supervisor or employer, it may help them to a better understanding of how to select and manage their staff. For anyone involved with law enforcement it may help to understand and predict the behaviour of criminals. Counsellors, welfare workers, teachers, marketing professionals and many others can also find applications for behavioural profiling.

  Features:

• Enrol any time of day or night.
• Start studying immediately or later (as you wish).
• Configure your study sessions at any length and frequency you wish.
• Work through at your own pace.
• Help desk- contact our help desk here with the subject title: 'Help Desk Short Course'. 
• Automated self assessment tests pop up at the end of each lesson. You can attempt these as many times as you wish; and each time, upon completion, you can see your results. You will need internet access to complete the self assessment tests.
• At the end of the whole course, you are presented with a major automated examination which can be attempted online, anywhere, anytime.
• If you achieve a 60% pass in the exam; you immediately receive a downloadable certificate of completion with your name on it.

Example Pages from the Study Guide