Denial of hostility and psychopathology in the evaluation of child molestation

We administered the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory (Buss & Durkee, 1957) and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (Hathaway & McKinley, 1967) to 82 alleged child molesters. Denial of hostility was significantly associated both with minimization of psychopathology and with denial of charges of sex offense. No subjects who denied charges acknowledged psychopathology, whereas one third of admitters acknowledged psychopathology. Our results suggest that alleged sex offenders may show complex patterns of impression management and that self-report hostility inventories are highly vulnerable to response bias.