Dr Michael Proeve

Area of Research

Remorse and related moral emotions.

Offender assessment and treatment, particularly sexual offenders.

Senior Appointments and Memberships

Member, APS College of Clinical Psychologists

Member, APS College of Forensic Psychologists

Awards

1985 Australian Psychological Society Prize for Honours Psychology.

Psychology Research Interests

I am interested in the moral emotion of remorse and its associated emotions of shame, guilt and regret. I am interested in the relationships of these emotions to clinical and criminological outcomes and in clinical approaches to addressing these emotions. I am also interested in remorse as an interpersonal issue, such as the effect of expressed remorse on judgments about offenders.

I have supervised several projects concerning mindfulness. I am interested in mindfulness interventions in clinical practice, particularly mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. I am interested in applications of mindfulness to mental health problems and in the relationship of the mindfulness construct to mental health outcomes.

I am interested in the assessment and treatment of offenders, particularly sexual offenders. I have conducted funded research in the area of risk assessment of sexual offenders.

Recent Key Publications

Proeve, M. & Tudor, S. (2010). Remorse: Psychology and Jurisprudence. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Books.

Proeve, M. (2010). CBT, happiness and evidence-based practice. In D. Loewenthal & R. House (Eds.). Critically engaging CBT: Modality perspectives, pp. 145-159. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.

Sim, D.J. & Proeve, M. (2010). Crossover and stability of victim type in child molesters. Legal and Criminological Psychology.

Proeve, M. (2009). Issues in the application of Bayes’ Theorem to child abuse decision making. Child Maltreatment, 14, 114-120.

Proeve, M. (2009). A preliminary examination of specific risk assessment for sexual offenders against children. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 18, 583-593