Aggression L9 Institutional aggression in the context of prisons: Dispositional Explanations

Question 1

What are Institutions?

Answer 1

• Places where people are often confined in surroundings where they can become violent and aggressive due to the surroundings
• Main institution studied by psychologists are prisons where aggression and violence has been a historic problem

Question 2

What is the Dispositional Explanation?

Answer 2

Proposes that the individuals disposition, the traits and characteristics that make a persons identity act as the main factor in their aggressive behaviour

Question 3

What is the Importation Model and who put this forward?

Answer 3

• Irwin and Cressey (1962) put forward the Importation Model
• Model proposes that the individuals characteristics are imported when they enter prison, if they had experienced aggression as a norm they will continue to display this in prison
• The model explains higher levels of aggression demonstrated by individuals with certain characteristics, e.g gender, race and social class
• Importation Model suggests that these people would be aggressive in any settings

Question 4

What did the key study of Matt DeLisi et al find?

Answer 4

• Studied a group of juvenile offenders in California institutions with negative backgrounds, e.g childhood trauma, anger, substance and violence
• Individuals were importing these characteristics and dispositions into prisons and this group was compared to a control group of inmates who did not have these negative backgrounds
• Found ‘negative’ inmates were more likely to engage in suicidal, sexual misconduct and acts of physical aggression, supporting the dispositional explanation

Question 5

What are the Strengths of the Dispositional Explanation? (2)

Answer 5

• Black Inmates
• Low security and High security

Question 6

Low security and High security (+)

Answer 6

• Studied 561 males with similar criminal histories and predispositions to aggression
• Half allocated to low-security California prisons and half to high-security California prisons
• Found no significant differences within two years, 33% low security, 36% high security
• Found features of prison are less important, it is more the characteristic of the inmates

Question 7

Black inmates (+)

Answer 7

• Found in American Prisons black inmates were likely associated with violent acts in comparison to white inmates
• This is due to them having tended to come from poorer backgrounds with higher rates of crimes and they have imported cultural norms into the prison supporting the dispositional explanation of aggression

Question 8

What are the Weaknesses of the Dispositional Explanation? (3)

Answer 8

• Administrative Control Model
• Research only on male prisoners
• Socially Sensitive

Question 9

Socially Sensitive (-)

Answer 9

Black prisoner stuff

Question 10

Research only on male prisoners (-)

Answer 10

• Only research is undertaken on male prisoners so very little is known about female prisoners
• Andocentric to assume the male reasons for violence in prisons are the same for female aggression in prisons
• Beta bias in the dispositional explanations as it does not consider the different factors that could affect female aggression in prisons

Question 11

ACM (Administrative Control Model) (-)

Answer 11

• States poorly managed prisons are more likely to have violence, with weak leadership more violence breeds
• States the importation model ignores how prisons are ran and the conditions