cognitive explanations AO3

Question 1

Kohlberg’s research is highly artificial

Answer 1

E - heinz dilema, used to assess moral development, the wife was dying and it was used to assess 10-16 year olds who didnt have a wife
E - lacked mundane realism
L - results lack ecological validity, reducing the generalisability

Question 2

Kohlberg’s research has a biased sample

Answer 2

E - used only boys from Chicago to assess moral development
E- means research was very andro-centric and so not representative of a whole population as there is a possibility that girls moral development may significantly vary but this was not explored
L- difficult to generalise findings to other populations

Question 3

Kohlberg’s research weakness is that dilemma was hypothetical

Answer 3

• E - kohlberg used a made up screnario which had no relation to any of the ps
• boys had no emotional attachment and may have known that their answers had no affect on the people involved which may have prompted them to just say the first thing to come to mind rather than thinking it through morally
• reduces importance
• some answers may have been inaccurate which reduces validity

Question 4

cognitive explanations as a whole
- descriptive not explanatory

Answer 4

• good at describing criminal mind but it cannot explain them
• cognitive explanations are essentially ‘after the fact theories’ and although useful in predicting reoffending
• they do not give us insight into why the offender committed a crime in the first place

Question 5

cognitive explanations as a whole
- Langdon

Answer 5

• suggested that intelligence may be a better predictor of criminality than moral reasoning
• this would explain the findings that groups of people with very low IQ are actually less likely to commit a crime and high IQ = more likely

Question 6

cognitive explanations as a whole
- evidence of moral reasoning

Answer 6

• Harper and Holin compared moral reasoning between 210 fem non-offenders , 122 male non-offenders and 126 convicted offenders using socio-moral reflection measure short-form
• contains 11 moral dilemmas
• related questions such as not taking things that belong to others
• delinquent group showed less mature moral reasoning than the non-delinquent group which is consistent with Kohlberg’s suggestions