A2 FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY - COGNITIVE EXPLANATIONS; KOHLBERG'S MORAL REASONING AND COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS Flashcards
Describe K’s theory of moral reasoning
- A stage theory that says that moral reasoning dev.s w/ age
- There are 3 levels, and criminals tend to be at the lowest level; they only think about how the beh. will affect them and don’t consider others. Each level has 2 stages.
- The levels are: pre-conventional morality (split into punishment stage and reward stage), conventional morality (split into “good-boy/good-girl” stage and “law and order” stage) and post-conventional morality (split into social contract stage and ethical principle stage)
- Pre- focuses on the self, conventional focuses on society and post- focuses on their own mind.
Describe the first level of K’s model
The pre-conventional stage is split into the punishment stage and the reward stage.
Punishment stage: the most basic reasoning; only considers whether they will be caught or not (if punishment isn’t certain then crime will be more likely to occur). Here they dont even think about any potential gains from the crime; it’s just a matter of whether they’ll get caught and punished or not.
Reward stage: they now consider what they’ll gain from the beh. If good rewards are likely the beh. is more likely to occur.
Describe the second level of K’s model
Conventional morality is split up into the good-boy/good-girl stage and the law-and-order stage.
Good-boy/good-girl stage: they now consider what others would think of them as a result of their beh; if closest ppl to them are also criminals then crime is more likely to occur.
Law-and-order stage: considers the law and whether the act is illegal; if illegal then beh is less likely to occur. Ppl who reach this stage are much less likely to be criminals
Describe the third level of K’s model
Post conventional morality is split into social contract stage and ethical principle stage.
Social contract stage: they obey the law but may sometimes commit a crime if they feel that the law is wrong/ shouldn’t apply
Ethical principle stage: they now have their own moral code and might commit a crime if they feel the law is unjust.
Evaluate K’s model
(+) Palmer and Hollin used moral dilemmas like the Heinz dilemma to measure moral raesoning of offenders => found most criminals showed lower moral reasoning than non-offenders.
(-) Individual differences; some offenders seem to be at pre-conventional whilst others are higher, especially if they’ve planned their crimes carefully; not a blanket rule
(-) Descriptive not explanatory; doesn’t really tell us why, just that criminals do tend to be in lower stages
(-) Gibbs (1979) said the post conventional level should be abandoned as it is cultrally biased to Western society and doesn’t represent “natural” development.
Describe cog. distortions as an explanation of offending
There are 2 parts to cog distortions: hostile attribution bias and minimalisation. Cog distortions in general are errors/biases in information processsing characterised by faulty thinking.
HAB: a tendency to misinterpret other ppl’s beh as targetting them and this can lead to aggressive beh., e.g. thinking ppl are staring/laughing at you.
Minimalisation: criminal underplays the severity of their actions, e.g. when a burglar says their actions were fine as they stole from a rich family who could afford to replace it.
Evaluate cog distortions
(+) Supporting evidence for HAB: Schöneberg and Justye (2014) showed 55 violent offenders pictures of emotionally ambiguous faces. Compared to the non-violent control group, the violent offenders were sig. more likely to interpret the faces as threatning/ aggressive
(+) Supporting evidence for minimalisation: Pollock and Hashmall (1991) found that 35% of child molesters interviwed said their crime was non-sexual and that they were “just being affectionate”, and 36% stated their victim had consented.
(+) Partly led to dev of restorative justice; offender sees the real effects of their actions, not their downplayed, minimalised ones
(-) Descriptive not explanatory; doesn’t explain where these cog distortions actually come from; it just says they’re there, i.e. incomplete explanation
