AC2.2 Describe individualistic theories of criminality Flashcards
Individualist: Psychodynamic theory: Freud:
Our early childhood experiences determine our personality and future behaviour. The mind has three parts: id, ego and superego.
Id: contains powerful, selfish, pleasure-seeking needs and drives. It is governed by the pleasure principle which is the blind desire to satisfy urges at any cost. If we acted on these urges, it would often lead to anti-social and criminal behaviour.
Ego: the ego tries to strike a balance between the id and superego’s conflicting demands. The ego is driven by the reality principle. It learns from experiences in the real world that our actions have consequences.
Superego: contains our moral codes which are learnt through interactions with our parents during early socialisation. Through socialisation, the child internalises the parents ideas of right and wrong. If we act contrary to the superego it punishes us with feelings of guilt and anxiety.
Criminal behaviour comes from 3 possible causes:
- Superego is weakly developed – would cause someone to experience less guilt meaning the id can be dominant. They may not experience remorse and be more likely to commit crime
- Superego is overly harsh – cause someone to experience high levels of guilt and anxiety. They may commit crime in order to be punished.
- Superego is deviant – may occur where a child has been socialised into a family where crime is committed and pro-crime attitudes are the norm. They won’t experience guilt that should be associated with breaking rules and is therefore likely to engage in criminal behaviour
evaluation of freud
Strength – theory points to the importance of early socialisation and family relationships in explaining the role of nurture in criminal behaviour
Strength – psychoanalytic explanations have had some influence on some policies for dealing with crime and deviance. This real life application provides the theory with validity
Weakness – lack of empirical, scientific evidence for the existence of the id, ego and superego. It cannot be disproven that they exist, therefore it isn’t scientific
Weakness – the theory fails to account for crimes committed by individuals that come from balanced family backgrounds
Individualist: Psychodynamic theory: Bowlby’s maternal deprivation theory:
Individualist theories examine how individuals upbringing and their personality traits influence their behaviour. Bowlby’s theory suggests that criminal behaviour is the result of traumatic events in childhood and lack of an attachment figure in early childhood. In his view, a child needs a close continuous relationship with its primary caregiver from birth to age 5 in order to develop normally. If mother-child attachment is broken through separation, it can leave the child unable to form meaningful, emotional connections with others. Bowlby describes this as affectionless psychopathy and in some cases this can lead to criminal behaviour
Evidence: the theory is based on his study of 44 juvenile thieves at a clinic and compared them to 44 non thieves also at the clinic (control group). Found that 39% of thieves suffered maternal deprivation before age 5 compared to 5% in the control group. Bowlby also found that 15 of the 17 thieves showed little remorse for actions – which is affectionless psychopathy
what do individualist theories suggest
Individualist theories examine how individuals upbringing and their personality traits influence their behaviour.
evaluation of bowlby
Strength – his work shows the need to consider the role of parent child relationships in explaining criminality. This also led to some significant changes to reduce maternal deprivation which in turn will reduce criminality
Weakness – Bowlby doesn’t explain why the other 61% of thieves were delinquent. This therefore suggests that maternal deprivation cannot be the only cause
Weakness – Bowlby overestimates how far early childhood experiences have a permanent effect on later behaviour
Individualist: Psychological theory: Eysenck’s Personality theory:
Eysenck found that there are certain personality types more likely to commit crime:
Extraversion vs introversion
Neuroticism vs stability
Psychoticism
Eysenck’s theory predicts people who have extrovert, neurotic and psychotic personalities are more likely to offend because it’s difficult for them to learn to control their immature impulses. Hence criminals are impulsive, risk taking and unable to accept rules of society.
Evidence: Eysenck and Eysenck (1977):
They compared 2070 male prisoners scores with 2422 male controls. Groups were subdivided into age groups ranging from 16 to 69. On measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism. Across all age groups, prisoners recorded higher statistics than the control group.
evaluation of eysenk
Strength – this theory is useful in describing how some measurable tendencies could increase a person’s risk of offending
Strength – the evidence into high extroverted, neurotic and psychotic scores have been supported by research studies. This means the theory is scientific and reliable
Weakness – Farrington examined a range of studies. These show prisoners are neurotic and psychotic but not extraverted which was an outcome the theory didn’t suggest
Weakness – the use of self-report questionnaire in Eysenck and Eysenck’s study has weaknesses to the methodology as some participants may lie meaning the results from it cannot be trusted
Individualist: Learning theory: Skinner’s operant learning theory:
the operant learning theory suggests if behaviour is rewarded it’ll be repeated. if behaviour has undesirable outcomes it wont be repeated. skinner outlined an approach to learning called operant conditioning.
Skinner conducted experiments with rats to see if behaviours could be controlled, this is called The Skinner Box. rat was given positive reinforcement in form of food for pressing lever. rat was given negative reinforcement in form of stopping electrical shocks for pressing lever. Punishment would occur if shock was given after lever pressed
there is supporting evidence from Differential reinforcement theory: Jeffrey argues that criminal behaviour learnt through reinforcement of particular behaviours. if crime has more rewarding consequences than punishing ones for an individual, they’ll be more likely to engage in criminal behaviour.
operant learning theory explains crime as positive reinforcement for crime would be the rewards of committing that crime e.g. money. the negative reinforcement would cause crime, as crime is committed to alleviate a condition e.g. poverty. punishment of crime would be imprisonment
evaluation of skinner
strength - skinner studies of learning in animals found positive and negative reinforcement changes behaviour. some human learning is also like this
strength - this theory can be applied to offending. Jeffrey states that if crime leads to more rewarding than punishing outcomes for an individual they’ll be more likely to offend
weakness - operant learning theory is based on studies of animals which isn’t an adequate model of how humans learn criminal behaviour. humans are more complex and have other social factors affecting behaviour
weakness - the theory ignores internal mental processes such as thinking and personal values. it only explains criminal behaviour in terms of external rewards and punishments
Individualist: Learning theory: Bandura’s social learning theory:
the theory suggests we learn behaviour through observation. they perceive the behaviour they observe to be socially desirable. we learn much of our behaviour by imitating other people. bandura calls these people models. we are more likely to imitate models behaviour if they are of higher status than us. whether we imitate model depends on consequences. if we see model rewarded for the behaviour, we’re more likely to imitate it.
Evidence: Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment: bandura demonstrated his theory on 4-5 year olds. they were split into 3 groups and all shown video of an adult behaving aggressively towards bobo doll. group 1 saw adult praised. group 2 saw adult punished. group 3 saw neither praise nor punishment (control). children were then observed playing with the bobo doll. group 1 imitated the aggressive behaviour. group 2 least likely to imitate. group 3 imitated but less than group 1. whether they imitated depends on consequences observed.
this links to crime as if individuals observes model rewarded for criminal behaviour the theory predicts the behaviour is more likely to be imitated. theory also suggests if people observe criminal behaviour they may normalise it and imitate it.
evaluation of bandura
strength - bandura takes into account that we are social beings. we learn from experiences of others. shows children who observe aggressive behaviour being rewarded imitate that behaviour. this shows the importance of role models in learning deviant behaviour
strength - scientific research metthods applied to study of aggression with control groups showing limited aggressive behaviour. suggests the study has validity and its findings can be trusted
weakness - theory is based on lab studies. labs are artificial setting so the findings may not be valid for real life situations
weakness - the explanation is deterministic, meaning it assumes we have no free will over our behaviour. this conflicts with the legal view of crime which assumes we have free will to commit crime
real life case related to social learning theory
James Holmes case
Holmes is responsible for the 2012 Aurora theatre shooing that killed 12 people and injured 70 others. he imitated the joker due to the power and status he had. Holmes got 12 consecutive life sentences without parole and an additional 3318 years
Individualist: Learning theory: Sutherland’s differential association theory
differential associations are interactions with others. Sutherland supports bandura.
Sutherland suggests people learn their values and techniques for criminal behaviour from differential associations. if more favourable attitudes about crime are learnt rather than negatives then people see criminal behaviour as acceptable. criminals learn methods of how to commit crimes from those around them. differential associations will vary in frequency and importance for each individual.
this theory also accounts for high reoffending rate as in prison criminals learn from those around them and become more versed in certain criminal techniques and offences
evaluation of Sutherland
strength - DA theory can explain different crimes and crime people from different socioeconomic background commit. e.g. middle class learn to commit white collar crime by association
strength - DA theory successfully moved away from biological explanations. instead of blaming genetic factors they blame social factors which have real world application
weakness - the DA theory can explain less severe crimes like burglary but not crime like murder limiting its application
weakness - the research is based on correlations so we don’t know if interactions and associations with others are the real cause of crime. it could be that people who have delinquent attitudes seek out people similar to them
