Psychological characteristics of over- and undercontrolled violent offenders

Megargee (1966, 1973) has predicted a number of concomitant social, behavioral, and psychological differences between chronically undercontrolled and chronically overcontrolled violent individuals. Attempts to validate his theory, however, have resulted in seriously inconsistent findings, possibly because of the use of a measure to classify violent subjects that is of seemingly dubious validity--the Overcontrolled Hostility (OH) Scale (Megargee, Cook, & Mendelsohn, 1967). The present study used a different strategy--the classification of subjects by expert raters on the basis of extensive case history information--to compare overcontrolled violent, undercontrolled violent, and nonviolent criminal offenders on a number of psychometric measures (16PF, Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire, Picture Situation Test, and the OH Scale). The findings were broadly consistent with predictions derived from Megargee's theory. Contrary to expectation, however, the nonviolent group did not obtain scores intermediate to the other two groups, but was statistically indistinguishable from the undercontrolled group, leaving a question as to the appropriateness of conceptualizing the typology in terms of over- and undercontrol of hostility and suggesting the necessity for some revision of the theory.