Cognitive Explanations Of Criminal Behaviour Flashcards
What is moral reasoning
Moral reasoning is the process by which an individual group draws their own value system to determine wether an action is right or wrong.
Kholberg proposed that reasoning proposed by the quality of people’s judgment of right and wrong can be summaries by their stage of moral development.
Moral reasoning and offenders
Offenders are more likely to have pre conventional moral reasoning which means they are punishment oriented and reward oriented so they may commit crime if they can get away with and gain rewards from it, thus behaviour typically lasts from age 3-7.
What are the three stages of reasoning
Preconventional- shows concern for self interest and external rewards and punishment
Conventional- Individuals so what is expected of them
Post conventional- they make more autonomous decisions and make decisions based on their own principles
Evaluation of moral reasoning
+) Palmer and Holin compared moral reasoning between 210 female non offenders, 122 male non offenders and 126 convicted offenders. They used 11 moral dilemmas to investigate their moral reasoning and offenders had less mature moral reasoning than the non offenders.
-) The level of moral reasoning may depend on type of offence, Thornton and Reid found that people which imaged crime,ez for financial gain such as robberies were more likely to show pre convent reasoning then people who where convicted of impulsive crime in which no reasoning was evident .
Cognitive distortions
Cognitive distortions are faulty and irrational ways of thinking that make people perceive themselves and the world inaccurately and often negatively.
Hostile attribution bias is the tendency to judge ambiguous situations or the actions of other as aggressive and threatening when they aren’t in reality. Offenders may misread cues and this can lead to disproportionate and often violent responses, offenders with this often blame the victims for starting it.
Minimisation
When the criminal believes their crime was trivial and displays the impact of their crimes on victims, this a common strategy to avoid feeling guilt. Sex offenders are particularly prone to minimisation.
Evaluation of cognitive distortions
+) understanding cognitive distortions has helped treat criminal behaviour such as through CBT as they face up to what they done and then have a less distorted view of their actions, less cognitive distortions is correlated with reduced risk of offending
- ) It expaojs our thinking but doesn’t explain the source of these thoughts, nature or nurture.
- ) Cognitive distortions can’t be inserted or measured so the explanation isn’t scientific
