Biological Explanations of Offending Behaviour - Neural Explanations Flashcards
What is APD?
Antisocial Personality Disorder - associated with reduced emotional responses and a lack of empathy with order. They show no remorse, and are impulsive, manipulative and self-centred.
What is Raine’s research?
Raine found an 11% reduction in the volume of grey matter in the PFC of people with APD compared with a control group.
What are mirror neurons?
Mirror neurons fire when we watch people do a specific behaviour, allowing us to feel as if we are doing it too. Traditionally scientists believed that psychopaths could not feel empathy.
What was Keysers (2011) research?
He asked criminals to watch a character on film in pain. Only when criminals were asked to empathise with other did their empathy reactions activate.
What did Keysers research suggest about those with APD
That individuals with APD are not totally without empathy, but can turn it on and off, whilst the normal brain has the empathy switch permanently on.
What is the evaluation - Kandel and Freed?
They researched people with frontal lone damage, including the prefrontal cortex. They found evidence of impulsive behaviour, emotional instability and inability to learn from mistakes. This is a strength because it supports the idea that structural abnormalities in the brain are a causal factor in offending behaviour.
What is the limitation - Farrington
Other factors may contribute to APD and offending behaviour. He studied individuals who scored high on psychopathy. They hard experienced various risk factors during childhood such as abuse and neglect, which could be what caused the APD. This suggests that the relationship between neural differences, APD and offending is complex and there may be intervening variables.
What is the limitation - Biological determinism?
If this theory is correct, then we can identify a criminal gene or broken neural structure that causes criminality. This causes ethical issues for parents and the justices system, where the presence of a determining factor that leads to criminality means that criminals would not have free will in determining their own behaviour. This raises ethical questions about what society does with criminals or those with criminal genes, and what implications that may have for sentencing.
