Cognitive factors Flashcards
What are cognitive distortions?
A form of irrational thinking.
Distortions are ways that reality has become twisted so that what is perceived no longer represents what is actually true.
What is the result of cognitive distortions?
A person’s perception of events is wrong but they think it is accurate.
What do distortions allow criminals to do?
To deny or rationalise their behaviour.
What is attribution? What’s an example?
What we think when we observe someone’s actions and draw an inference about what it means?
Example:
If a person smiles at you, you might infer they are communicating that they like you.
What’s hostile attribution bias?
When someone has a leaning towards always thinking the worst.
Such negative interpretations lead to more aggressive behaviour.
What is hostile attribution bias likely to be linked to in terms of criminal behaviour?
Increased levels of aggression.
What’s minimalisation?
Where the consequences of a situation are under-exaggerated.
What can minimalisation explain in terms of criminal behaviour? What does this help an individual to do?
How an offender may reduce any negative interpretation of their behaviour before and / or after a crime has been committed.
This helps an individual to accept the consequences of their own behaviour and means that negative emotions can be reduced.
Who did Kohlberg interview? What did he ask them? What did he construct?
Boys.
The reasons for their moral decisions.
Constructed a stage theory of moral development.
There are three levels of moral reasoning and each level is divided into two stages.
What does each stage in Kohlberg’s stage theory represent? Why does an individual progress through these?
A more advanced form of moral understanding, resulting in a more logically consistent and morally mature form of understanding.
People progress through these stages as a consequence of biological maturity and opportunity to develop their thinking, such as learning to take the perspective of another person.
What percentage of adults reach the post-conventional level?
In a longitudinal study, Kohlberg found that about 10% of adults reach the post-conventional level (Colby et al).
What is the most common level in Kohlberg’s stage theory? What does this mean in terms of criminality?
Conventional.
Adults at this stage of moral development who break the law would feel that their behaviour was justified because it helps maintain relationships or society.
What did Hollin et al suggest what the most common level of moral reasoning is of criminals? What does this mean in terms of criminality?
Most criminals are likely to be at the pre-conventional level.
They believe that breaking the law is justified if the rewards outweigh the costs or if punishment can be avoided.
What age does a child have to be in England and Wales to be charged with a crime? Why?
- It is believe that children under 1 don’t understand the idea of moral responsibility.
They are thought to be at the pre-conventional level where they judge right and wrong only in terms of consequences rather than any principles of morality.
What was Schonenberg and Justye’s sample? What was their procedure? What did they find?
55 antisocial violent offenders in prison.
Showed them emotionally ambiguous faces and compared their responses to matched control participants.
The faces showed angry, happy or fearful emotions, in varying levels of intensity.
Found that the offenders were more likely to interpret any picture that had some expression of anger as an expression of aggression.
What was Schonenberg and Justye’s conclusion?
Misinterpretation of nonverbal cues may at least partly explain aggressive-impulsive behaviour in susceptible individuals.
What did Kennedy and Grubin find? What’s an example?
Sex offenders’ accounts of their crimes often downplayed their behaviour.
Example:
The offenders suggested that the victim’s behaviour contributed in some way to the crime.
What did Maruna and Mann suggest?
Downplaying your behaviour is part of a fairly “normal” behaviour where all people try to blame events on external sources as a way to protect themselves.
What did Colby and Kohlberg report when studying moral reasoning in different countries?
The sequence of stages appears to be universal though post-conventional reasoning was less common in rural communities.
What did Gudjonsson and Sigurdsson use? What was their sample? What did they find?
Thei Offending Motivation Questionnaire.
128 male juvenile offenders.
Found that 38% did not consider the consequences of what they were doing.
36% were confident they would not be caught.
What does Gudjonsson and Sigurdsson’s findings suggest?
The juvenile offenders were at Kohlberg’s pre-conventional level of moral reasoning, supporting the relationship between moral reasoning and offending behaviour.
What’s one issue with Kohlberg’s theory?
Concerns moral thinking rather than behaviour.
What did Krebs and Denton suggest?
Moral principles are only one factor in moral behaviour and may be overridden by more practical factors such as personal financial gains.
