7.4 Forensics - Psychological Explanation: Cognitive Explanation of Crime

Question 1

Moral Reasoning

Answer 1

Proces in which an individual draws upon their own values to determine if an action is right or wrong. By studying the answers from children of different ages to these questions. Kohlberg hoped to discover the way in which moral reasoning changed as people got older. He used the moral dilemma technique on violent youths and found lower moral development.

Question 2

Kohlbergs model of moral dilemma theory

Answer 2

• Level 1 Pre conventional mortality
• Level 1 stage 1: Obedience and punishment. Based on avoiding punishment and a focus on the consequences of your actions rather than your intentions. This is where criminals are – they don’t mature and act selfish
• Level 1 Stage 2: Individualism and exchange: The ‘right’ behaviors are those that are in the best interest of oneself, this is a tit for tat mentality
• Level 2 conventional mortality (most of the population)
• Level 2 Stage 3: Interpersonal relationships ‘good boy or girl attitude’ – sees individuals as filling social roles
• Level 2 Stage 4: Authority and social order: Law and order as highest ideals, social obedience is a must to maintaining a functional society
• Level 3 Post-conventional mortality
• Level 3 Stage 5: Social contract – Begin to learn others have different values; realization law is contingent of culture
• Level 3 Stage 6: Universal principles, develop internal moral principles, individuals begin to obey those above the law e.g. people who believe the law is wrong so protest

Question 3

Cognitive distortions

Answer 3

Ways in which our mind convince us on something that isn’t really true. This is usually used to reinforce negative thinking or emotion, these errors or biases are made during information processing sue to faulty thinking or emotion. These errors or biases are made during information processing due to faulty thinking or mental processes. Criminals often interpret others behavior and justify their own in a faulty way.

Question 4

Hostile attribution bias

Answer 4

Violence is caused the perception of others acts being aggressive. People may be perceived as confrontational when they are not e.g. ‘he was giving me a funny look’ as a reason for attacking someone, when no such look happened.

Question 5

Minimalisation

Answer 5

Downplaying the severity of an offence e.g. I was just doing it to survive as an excuse for stealing

Question 6

Schonenberg and Justye (2014) research on hostile attribution bias

Answer 6

Presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expression. When compared to non-violent control group, the violent offenders were more likely to view facial expressions as angry – supporting hostile attribution bias

Question 7

Barberee (1991) research on minimalisation

Answer 7

Found 54% of 26 incarcerated rapists denied committing any offence at all, 40% minimalized the level of harm that they caused

Question 8

Strengths of the cognitive explanation of crime

Answer 8

• Supporting research from Palmer and Hofflin (1998) who compared moral reasoning between over 300 non-offenders and 126 convicted offenders using the socio-moral reflection measurement (SRM) which found criminals scored lower on levels of moral reasoning compared to non-criminals
• Less determinist as it doesn’t claim we are preset by external factors

Question 9

Limitations of the Cognitive Explanation of Crime

Answer 9

• Artificial scenario in Kohlberg’s research as it tested people on very unfamiliar scenarios in which the real situation is likely to produce very different results.
• Reductionist as it reduces down to just faulty mental processes
• Androcentric sample, Kohlberg theory based on an all-male sample