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The Relationship between Introversion and Response to Casework in a Prison Setting
Author(s) -
SINCLAIR I. A. C.,
SHAW M. J.,
TROOP J.
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
british journal of social and clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0007-1293
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1974.tb00877.x
Subject(s) - prison , officer , extraversion and introversion , recidivism , psychology , neuroticism , welfare , anxiety , interpersonal communication , clinical psychology , test (biology) , psychiatry , social psychology , personality , criminology , paleontology , biology , political science , law , big five personality traits
An experiment was carried out to test the effects of extended contact with a caseworker on recidivism among prisoners. Seventy‐five men randomly selected from two prisons were offered regular contact with a prison welfare officer over a period of six months, and their attitudes to prison welfare and reconviction rates compared with those of 75 controls. Background data and psychological test information were also collected in the hope of determining which men would be most likely to respond. It was found that the experimental group had significantly more favourable attitudes to the prison welfare officer and were significantly less likely to be reconvicted. Contrary to expectation there was no evidence that the verbal, neurotic, more middle‐class prisoners were more likely to respond, nor that the psychopathic, prisonized men were less likely to do so. An unexpected result was that men assessed as introverted in the experimental group were significantly less likely to be reconvicted than similar men in the control group, whereas there was little difference in the reconviction rates of extraverts in the two groups. A variety of possible explanations are discussed for this finding. It is very tentatively suggested that the effect of the treatment was to reduce interpersonal anxiety among introverts, and that this may have made them better able to cope with society and therefore less likely to resort to crime.