Proactive and Reactive Composite Scales for the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS)

The purpose of this study was to construct composite scales for the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) from the PICTS thinking style, factor, and content scales designed to provide general estimates of criminal thinking. The Entitlement thinking style scale, Self-Assertion/Deception factor scale, and Historical content scale were combined to create the Proactive composite scale, whereas the Cutoff thinking style scale, Problem Avoidance factor scale, and Current content scale were combined to form the Reactive composite scale. Using archival data it was determined that both composite scales exceeded the median performance of the thinking, factor, and content scales 54% of the time and at least one composite scale eclipsed the peak performance of the thinking, factor, and content scales 33% of the time. These results suggest that the Proactive and Reactive composite scales can be considered general markers of criminal thinking with ties to the psychological literature on cognitive distortion and the proactive-reactive dimension of childhood aggression. It is recommended that the Proactive and Reactive scales be routinely scored in future research on the PICTS. [(C) 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]