About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about the Raine et al. (1997) study, focusing in particular on: (i) the specific brain areas which have been previously linked to violence; (ii) the quasi-experimental design of this study, due to the lack of independent variable manipulation, that being whether the participant was or was not a murderer; (iii) the findings that the left hemisphere areas previously linked to violence were less active in murderers, but also that right hemisphere brain areas not previously linked to violence showed increased activity; (iv) limitations of the results, crucially that violence in individuals cannot be predicted by these results.

About the lecturer

Professor Ciarán O’Keeffe is associate professor of education and research and head of the School of Human and Social Sciences at Buckinghamshire New University. Professor O’Keeffe’s research interests include investigative psychology and parapsychology, and has made numerous television and radio appearances alongside an array of celebrities. Some of Professor O’Keeffe’s recent publications include 'Things That Go Bump In The Literature: An Environmental Appraisal of 'Haunted Houses'' (2020) and 'Restorative Justice and Recidivism: Investigating the impact of victim-preference for level of engagement' (2014).