Cognitive explanations Flashcards
What did Kohlberg apply to criminal behaviour?
Moral reasoning
What did Kohlberg say?
That people’s decisions to commit crime can be summarised in the stage theory of moral development
The higher the stage…
the more sophisticated the reasoning
What did Kohlberg et al (1973) find?
Using the moral dilemma technique, found that a group of violent youths were significantly lower in their moral development than non-violent youths, even after controlling for social background
What are criminal offenders likely to be classified as?
Pre-conventional
What is the pre-conventional level characterised by?
A need to avoid punishment and receive rewards and is associated with less mature, child-like reasoning
Why might those with a pre-conventional level commit a crime?
If they can get away with it
To gain rewards such as money
To gain more respect
What did Chandler (1973) find?
Individuals who reason at higher levels tend to sympathise more with the rights of others and exhibit conventional behaviours such as honesty, generosity and non-violence
What are cognitive distortions?
Errors or biases in people’s information processing system characterised by faulty thinking
How have researchers linked cognitive distortions to criminality?
Linked to the way in which criminals interpret other’s behaviour and justify their own actions
What is hostile attribution bias?
Criminals tend to misinterpret the actions of others, assuming they are being confrontational when they aren’t.
Eg. They may think they are being looked at when they aren’t
What did Schonenberg and Justye (2014) find?
Presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions
When compared to a non-violent control group, the violent group were far more likely to perceive the image as hostile
What did Dodge and Frame (1982) find?
Showed children a video clip of an ‘ambiguous provocation’. Children who were identified as aggressive and rejected prior to the study interpreted the situation as more hostile than those classified as non-aggressive and accepted
What is minimisation?
An attempt to downplay the seriousness or deny the offence and has been referred to by Bandura as a ‘Euphemistic label’
What type of criminals is minimisation common in?
Sexual offenders
What did Barqabee (1991) find?
Among 26 rapists, 54% denied they had committed the offence at all and a further 40% minimised the harm they had caused to their victim
What did Pollock and Hashmall (1991) find?
Reported that 35% of a sample of child molesters argued that the crime they committed was non-sexual and they were just being affectionate.
36% stated their victim had consented
What did Palmer and Hollin (1998) find?
Compared moral reasoning between 210 female non-offenders, 122 male non-offenders and 126 offenders using the socio-moral dilemma related questions
Delinquent group showed less mature moral reasoning than the non delinquent group which is consistent with Kohlberg
What did Blackburn (1993) find?
That delinquents may show poor moral development due to a lack of supportive roles in childhood.
Opportunities should be given to develop moral reasoning
What did Gibbs (1979) propose?
a revised version of Kohlberg’s theory which comprised of both mature and immature reasoning
What did Gibbs argue?
Pre-conventional levels should be abandoned as it is culturally biased and did not represent the natural maturation stage of cognitive development.
What is Gibbs’ argument supported by?
Piaget’s theory of moral development which suggests that childlike reasoning is self-centred and egocentric which gives way to empathy and concern as children get older
How can research be applied?
Beneficial for the treatment of criminals
Rehabilitation for sex offenders is CBT and allows them to face up to what they have done
What is reduced incidence of denial and minimisation in therapy highly correlated with?
Reduced risk of offending and this is key to anger management
What did Reid (1982) find?
Individuals who committed crimes for financial gain such as robbery were more likely to show pre-conventional moral reasoning than those convicted of impulsive crimes such as assault where reasoning tends to be associated with crimes which offenders believed they had a good chance of evading
What does Reids findings show to be a problem?
Individual differences
What did Langdon (2010) find?
Suggested that intelligence may be a better predictor than moral reasoning
This would explain the findings that those with low intelligence are less likely to commit crime even if they have less moral reasoning
What is the issue with the theory being descriptive?
It is not explanatory
Doesn’t tell us why the crime was committed in the first place
