Empathy, social skills, and other relevant cognitive processes in rapists and child molesters

Considerable theoretical and research efforts have gone into formulations w hich suggest that sex offenders differ from nonoffenders in their processin g of sexual material This article reviews the literature concerning pattern s of empathy, social skills, and other cognitive processes (i.e., theories, attitudes, and distorted cognitions) of incarcerated sex offenders or thos e who have identified themselves as sex offenders. We choose these three ge neral topic areas because many see these phenomena as central to the unders tanding of sex offending. First, we present general empirical findings rele vant to the phenomena of empathy, social skills, and distorted cognitions, We then move to a discussion of specific cognitive models that have been of fered to account for the data. We briefly discuss the available data releva nt to these cognitive models. The next section of the article reviews the t reatments that have been applied to sex offenders with the stated goal of m odifying the processes we are examining. Our final section attempts to summ arize and highlight some of the identified problems and weaknesses in the s tudy of the aforementioned processes in sex offending. I;Ve argue that tao little attention has been paid to basic cognitive psychology and the role t hat cognitions or conceptualizations can play in promoting our understandin g of the sex offender We suggest that following the information processing approach as a generalized model will help integrate and direct research eff orts. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.