biological explanations EVALUATION Flashcards

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1
Q

biologically determinist

A
  • The notion of a ‘criminal gene’ is a dilemma - the legal system is based on the premise that criminals have personal and moral responsibility for crimes
  • Only in extreme cases, such as mental illness, can someone claim that they were not acting on free will
  • This raises ethical issues
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2
Q

biologically reductionist

A
  • criminality is too complex to reduce to a genetic or neural level
  • lots of things seem to run in families e.g. poverty, emotional stability, social deprivation
  • difficult to account for all the possible influences
  • concordance rates in twin studies are never 100% = environmental factors may be responsible for criminal behaviour
  • diathesis model could be used to explain criminal behaviour where concordance rates for MZ twins are not 100%
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3
Q

twin studies lack validity

A
  • Most twins are reared in the same environment so concordance rates may be due to shared learning experiences rather than genetics
  • Also, Lange’s research was poorly controlled
  • judgements of whether twin pairs were MZ or DZ was based on appearance and not genetic testing
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4
Q

issue with adoption studies

A
  • Many children experience late adoption, so these children spent time with their biological parents before adoption
  • Lots of adoptees maintain contact with their biological parents
  • makes it difficult to assess just environmental factors
  • This makes it difficult to assess the impact the biological parents might have had
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5
Q

support for the diathesis stress model

A
  • Mednick et al (1984) studied 13,000 Danish adoptees and criminality
  • When their biological parents had no convictions, the percentage of adoptees that had a conviction was 13.5%
  • This rose to 20% when either the biological parents did
  • 25% both parents
  • This suggests that both genetic inheritance and environment influence criminality
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6
Q

brain evidence - neural explanations

A
  • Support for the link between crime and the frontal lobe
  • Kandel and freed 1989 reviewed evidence of frontal lobe and antisocial behaviour
  • Impulsive behaviour, emotional stability, inability to learn from mistakes
  • Supports the idea that brain damage may be a casual factor in offending behaviour
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