Criminal Behaviour (Cognitive Factors) Flashcards
What are cognitive distortions
Criminals suffer from several cognitive distortions
Patterns of thinking that do not reflect reality and may account for some of the behaviour of criminals
Errors in attribution
“The process by which an individual attempts to construct causal explanations for his or her behaviour and the behaviour of others” (Gudjonsson and Singh, 1988)
There are generally two possible explanations that we give for out behaviour and the behaviour of others
Internal (dispositional) attribution - the behaviour is due to personality trait
External (situational) attributions - the behaviour is due to factors in the environment
We are constantly making attributions about the behaviour of other people, we often will fall into similar errors
Fundamental Attribution Error identified by Heider (1958) argued that we are predisposed to attribute behaviour to internal rather than external causes
Negative outlook and not giving the benefit of doubt may be attribution errors common in criminals
Hostile Attribution Bias is when someone has a leaning towards always thinking the worst
Linked to increased levels of aggression
Criminals may make errors when attributing their own behaviour
Gudjonson (1984) developed the Blame Attribution Inventory (BAI) to measure the way in which offenders attribute blame for their crimes
External Attribution - Criminals are more likely to blame their criminal behaviour on external factors
Society or blame their victims
Mental - Element Attribution - Blame their crimes on mental illness or a lack of self control
Guilt - Feeling Attribution - Feelings of regret or remorse for committing their crimes
According to Gudjonson and Singh (1988) different types of offenders are likely to make different attributions about their own behaviour
Sex offenders were more likely to have guilt - feeling attribution
Violent offenders were more likely to have mental - element attribution
Criminals who made external - attributions showed much higher levels of psychoticism
Minimalisation
Magnification and minimalisation refer to our perception of the consequences of the situation in which we find ourselves
Very common cognitive errors
Criminals are prone to minimalist thinking
They underplay the consequences of their actions, meaning that criminal behaviour can be engaged with minimal guilt and other negative emotions
Theory of Mind
You have your own mind and thoughts and others have their own thoughts
Spenser et al (2015) found that lack of social skills if a characteristic of a criminal
46 young male offenders and a control group completed tasks to assess theory of mind, empathic understanding and moral reasoning
A positive association was found
Contribute to a further understanding of how individuals respond to the world
Levels of Moral Reasoning
Kohlberg (1969) theory can apply to criminal behaviour
Three stages of moral development produce differing justifications from criminals for their crimes
Hollin et al (2002) found the following justification were common at each stage
Crimes are more likely to be committed by people at a lower level of moral development
Preconventional - Breaking the law is justified if punishment can be avoided or if the rewards outweigh the costs
Conventional - Breaking the law is justified if it helps to maintain relationships or society
Postconventional - Breaking the law is justified if it helps maintain human rights or further social justice Crimes
Hostile Attribution Bias Evaluation
Schonenberg and Aiste (2014) showed emotionally ambiguous faces to 55 antisocial violent offenders in prison and compared their responses to matched control ‘normal’ participants
Faces showed angry, happy, or fearful emotions, in varying levels of intensity
Offenders were more likely to interpret any picture that had some expression of anger as an expression of anger
Concluded that such misinterpretation of nonverbal cues may at least partly explain aggressive impulsive behaviour in susceptible individuals
Minimsation Evaluation
Kennedy and Grubin (1992) found that sex offenders accounts of their crimes often downplayed their behaviour
The offenders suggested that the victims behaviour contributed in some way t the crime, some simply denied that a crime had been committed
Maruna and Mann (2006) suggest that this is a part of a fairly ‘normal’ behaviour where all people try to blame events on external sources as a way to protect the self
Theory of mind evaluation
Dolan et al (2004) found that ToM was unimpaired in participants with antisocial personality disorder
These participants were also able to understand when social rules and spot when they were broken
They showed an indifference to the consequence of breaking these rules
Richell et al (2003) found that psychopaths showed no impairments with ToM
Seems that criminals may have no impairment with understanding the thoughts and feelings of others
Levels of moral reasoning evaluation
Gudjonson et al (2007) used an Offending Motivation Questionnaire to assess 128 male juvenile offenders
Found that 38% did not consider the consequences of what they were doing and 36% were confident they would not be caught
Suggests that juvenile offenders were at pre-conventional level
Chen at el (2007) used a test based on Kohlberg’s stages to assess 330 male adolescent offenders in Taiwan
Offenders who showed more advanced reasoning were less likely to be involved in violent crimes
Kohlberg’s theory concerns oral thinking rather than behaviour
Gender bias
Krebs and Denton (2005) suggest that moral principles are only one factor in moral behaviour and may be overridden by more practical factors such as making personal financial gains
When analysing real-life moral decisions, that moral principles were used to justify behaviour after it had been performed
