3.1.3 Forensics - Psychological explanations Flashcards
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Who proposed the theory of the criminal personality?
Eysenck
Describe someone with a criminal personality
- Someone who scores high on measures of extroversion, neuroticism and psychoticism
- Cannot easily be conditioned
- Cold and unfeeling
- Likely to engage in offending behaviour
What did Eysenck argue about all personality types?
- All personality types have a biological basis and come form a nervous system an individual inherits
What three dimensions can behaviour be represented by?
Extroversion - Introversion
Neuroticism - Stable
Psychoticism - Sociable
What is extroversion?
- Outgoing people who enjoy risk and danger due to their nervous systems being under aroused
- Constantly seeking excitement which raises their cortical arousal
- Not easily conditioned and don’t learn from their mistakes
What is neuroticism?
- The degree a person experiences negative emotional states and sees the world as threatening and unsafe
- Respond negatively to stressors and are self conscious and shy
- High reactivity in the nervous system (respond quickly to situations of threat)
- Nervous, jumpy - behaviour is difficult to predict an dare emotionally charged in situations
What is psychoticism?
- Aggressive, antisocial person who lacks empathy, egocentric and insensitive
- Have high levels of testosterone
Aspects of the criminal personality
- Creates an individual who is cold, unemotional, difficult to predict and likely to engage in risk taking behaviours
- Neurotics: unstable + overreact to situations of threat // emotionally charged, may commit crime in response o emotional situation
- Extraverts: sensation seekers, engage in dangerous activities, thrill of committing a crime = likely to be an offender
Psychotics: aggressive, lack empathy and a conscience
Eysenck’s criminal personality - socialisation
- Offending behaviour: developmentally immature that’s selfish and concerned with immediate gratification (impatient)
- Cannot be easily conditioned in society due to difficult nervous systems
- Less likely to learn anxiety responses to anti-social impulses and therefore act antisocial
- Less likely to learn following punishment
How can the criminal personality be measured?
- EPQ
- 100 items
Eysenck’s criminal personality AO3
- Research support (2422 vs control group)
- Additional dimensions to be considered
- Biologically deterministic
What is moral reasoning?
- The process by which an individual draws upon their ow value system to determine whether an action is right or wrong
- Kolberg objectified this by identifying different levels of reasoning based on people’s answers to moral dilemmas e.g. Heinz Dilemma
What are the levels of moral reasoning?
The way a person thinks about right and wrong
- Such thinking can apply to moral behaviour
- The higher the level, the more that behaviour is driven by a sense of what is right and the less it is driven by avoiding punishment
What did Kolberg suggest about moral development?
Stage theory suggests that as someone matures, their moral reasoning becomes more sophisticated - the higher the stage, the higher their moral reasoning
How are the levels of criminality linked to criminality?
- Some individuals don’t proceed past certain stages of morality, making them more likely to offend
- Crime is committed as the offender is thinking how the situation impacts them and not society
Which level of moral reasoning are offenders most likely to be classified in?
- Pre-conventional level
- Characterised by a need to avoid punishment and gain rewards, associated with childlike reasoning
- Supported by studies suggesting offenders are more egocentric and display poorer social perspective-taking skills
- Higher levels: sympathise with the rights of others and exhibit more conventional behaviour e.g. honesty ad non-violence
Moral reasoning AO3
- Depends on the type of offence (financial gain = pre-conventional level)
- Useful - provides insights into the mechanisms of the criminal mind
- Gender biased - based on data from boys only
What are cognitive distortions?
- Faulty, biased and irrational ways of thinking that individuals perceive themselves, other people and the world inaccurately and negatively
- They are errors in people’s information processing systems
- Linked to the way criminals interpret the behaviour of others and justify their own actions
What is hostile attribution bias?
- The tendency to judge ambiguous situations or the actions of others as aggressive or threatening when they may not be
- Offenders may misread non-aggressive cues which may trigger a disproportionate, violent response
Hostile Attribution Bias: research support - Justye
- presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions
- Violent offenders were more likely to perceive images as angry than a matched control group
Where do psychologists believe the roots of hostile attribution bias lies in?
- Roots may lie in childhood
- Research: showed children a video clip of an ambiguous provocation, intention was neither hostile/aggressive
- Children who were identified as more aggressive before the study interpreted the situation as more hostile compared to those who were seen as non-aggressive
What is minimalisation?
- Type of deception that involves downplaying the significance of an event/emotion (common strategy with dealing with guilt)
- E.g. burglars describe themselves as doing a job to minimise the seriousness of their offences
Minimalisation: research support - Barbaree
- Individuals who commit sexual offences are prone to minimalisation
- Barbaree: among 26 rapists, 54% denied they committed an offence at all, 40% minimised the harm they caused to the victim
Minimalisation: correlation
- Psychologists found that when measuring cognitive distortions in anti-social young adults, there was a strong relationship between the level of anti-social behaviour and minimalisation
- Indicates offenders use minimalisation with negative behaviours
Cognitive distortions AO3
- Practical application - CBT
- Explanation is descriptive than explanatory
- Not used in the same way by all offenders/depends on the type of offence
What is the differential association theory?
- Proposes that through interactions with others, individuals can learn the values, attitudes and techniques for criminal behaviour
- Offending behaviour may be acquired in the same way as any other behaviour through the process of learning
Differential Association Theory: where does the learning mostly occur from?
Interactions with significant others who the individual values most and spends most time with e.g. family and peer group
Differential Association Theory: can it be possible to predict an individual committing crime?
- It is possible to mathematically predict how likely it is that an individual will commit crim if the frequency, intensity and duration of which they have been expose to deviant behaviour is known
Differential Association Theory: offending arises from which two factors?
- Learned attitudes towards offending
- Learning of specific offending acts and techniques
Differential Association Theory: Learned attitudes towards offending
- When socialised in to a group, they will be exposed to the norms and values towards the law
- Values can be pro/anti criminal
- If pro-criminal attitude outweighs anti-crime, they’ll be more likely to offend
Differential Association Theory: Learning of specific offending acts and techniques
- Offender would learn technqiues for committing crimes
Differential Association Theory: why can it be assumed that those who offend would reoffend in the future?
- Whilst inside prison, inmates can learn specific techniques of offending from other experienced offenders that they can practice once they are released
- Universities of crime
Differential Association Theory: Alarid’s research
- Tested 1100 convicted criminals for the extent to which DAT could explain offending behaviour
- Found that DAT served as a good theory of crime and could explain offending behaviour (esp. of men)
- Argued it’s necessary to look at the context of offending and use it to predict the likelihood of someone committing a crime
Differential Association Theory AO3
- Accounts for crimes in all sectors within society (both MC and WC crimes)
- Realistic: considers dysfunctional social circumstances than dysfunctional people
- Concept aren’t testable as they cannot be operationalised e.g. difficult to see the number of pro-criminal attitudes an individual has
What do psychodynamic explanations for offending behaviour suggest?
A psychological theory that sees criminal behaviour as formed from early childhood experiences, esp. during the development of the Superego, which impacts later behaviour
What is the superego?
The irrational, moralistic part of the personality that acts as one’s conscience
When does the superego develop?
- End of the phallic stage ages 3-6
- Development of the Oedipus and Electra complex
What is the oedipus complex?
- Boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mother and a hatred for their father
- Due to castration anxiety, they repress their feelings for their mother and identify with their father, taking on their moral values and gender role
What is the electra complex?
- Girls experience penis envy after realising they don’t have one and desire their father ass the penis is the primary love object and therefore hate their mother
- Give up the desire for the father and in turn desire for a baby, identifying with the mother and taking on her gender role and moral values
Which principle does the superego work on?
- Morality principle: exerts it influence by punishing the id for wrongdoing and rewards it with pride for moral behaviour
- If the superego is deficient, offending behaviour is inevitable as the Id is not controlled
State the three types of inadequate superego
- Weak superego
- Deviant superego
- Over-Harsh superego
Describe the weak superego
- If there’s an absence of a same sex parent in the phallic stage, the child cannot identify with them
- Superego is not fully formed, child has difficulties distinguishing from right and wrong
- Superego doesn’t punish the child so will show criminal behaviour as it will not hold them back
- Dominated by the Id
Describe the deviant superego
- Child identifies with their same sex parent but the parent has immoral standards of behaviour
- Child internalises the morals that are not acceptable
- Do not see criminal behaviours in the same way others do and won’t associate guilt with criminal behaviour, leading to offending behaviour
Describe the over harsh superego
- Superego is not forgiving and guilt for wrongdoing is increased which can stem from harsh parenting
- Child will unconsciously seek opportunities where they will be reprimanded to reduce guilt
- Crime serves as a release from the overwhelming feelings of guilt by satisfying the superego’s need for punishment
Psychodynamic AO3
- Superegos = unconscious, lacks falsifiability
- Other factors to be considered for the deviant superego explanation
- Central principles for the over-harsh superego are not supported (harsher discipline = rebellious children)
What is maternal deprivation?
The emotional and intellectual consequences of separation between a child and their mother or mother substitute
What did Bowlby argue the ability to form meaningful relationship was dependent on?
- Dependent on the child forming a warm, continuous relationship with a mother figure
- Maternal bond is unique and superior to others and vital for the child’s wellbeing
- Failure to do so in the critical period results in the child experiencing damaging consequences in later life
State an example of an irreversible consequence in later life
Affectionless psychopathy
What is affectionless psychopathy?
A behavioural disorder in which an individual has no ability to experience shame or guilt and lacks a social conscience
- May find it easier to engage in acts of delinquency and commit crime
Describe Bowlby’s 44 thieves study
- Interviewed 44 juvenile thieves and their families and found 14/44 showed behavioural characteristics that were classed as an affectionless psychopath
- 12/44 had experienced prolonged separation from their mother during infancy (CP)
- Non-offender group: 2 experienced early separation
- Effects of maternal deprivation cause affectionless behaviour among juvenile thieves
Maternal deprivation AO3
- Methodological problems: researcher bias
- MD as a cause of offending can be questioned
- Preferrable to prevent the problem in the first place by avoiding early separations (real life application)
