Incremental validity of the psychological inventory of criminal thinking styles as a predictor of continuous and dichotomous measures of recidivism

Postrelease recidivism data were collected on 137 male inmates released I to 72 months after completing the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) in follow-ups lasting 6 to 55 months. When a dichotomous measure of recidivism (0, 1+ arrests) was employed, Entitlement (En) was the only PICTS thinking-style scale to achieve significance after age, prior arrests, time at risk in the community, and the PICTS Superoptimism (So) scale were controlled in a binary logistic regression analysis. Both the Cutoff (Co) and En scales proved significant in predicting a continuous measure of recidivism (range = 0 to 6) after age, prior arrests, time at risk, and the So scale were controlled in a sequential linear regression analysis. Whereas the En scale displayed mixed incremental validity results relative to the Co scale, the Co scale failed to achieve incremental validity relative to the En scale.