Idiopathic pedophilia and acquired pedophilia: is the public opinion influenced by anatomical or cognitive data?

The aim of this thesis is twofold: investigating public opinion regarding idiopathic and acquired pedophilia, and whether providing cognitive/neuroscientific information, such as neuropsychological information and brain images, to frame a forensic case of either idiopathic or acquired pedophilia would modulate one’s opinion about legal justifiability and juridicial punishment. After an introduction on the diagnostic framework and the different types of paedophilia, I will consider the public perception regarding pedophilia and the Italian juridical guidelines about this issue. I will continue by discussing the role of anatomical and cognitive data examined in previous studies.This will be followed by the part of the actual experiment that aims to test the aforementioned hypothesis with subsequent results and final discussions.