Criminal Behaviour - Individual - Cognitive Factors Flashcards
What are Cognitive Factors and how do they lead to criminal thinking?
Cognitive Factors think about how our thinking patterns can affect our behaviour.
The main cognitive theory is that our mind works like a computer in terms of inputs and output responses. This can even be applied to criminal behaviour in that cognitive psychologists argue criminal behaviour is an output of faulty thinking processes.
What is meant by a ‘cognitive distortion’ and name the two cognitive distortions involved in criminality.
Cognitive distortions are a form of irrational thinking where someone’s reality becomes distorted. This results in someone’s perception of events being wrong, but they think that its accurate.
This is relevant to criminal behaviour as it is how offenders rationalise their behaviour.
The main two used in criminality are Hostile Attribution Bias and Minimization
What is the ‘Minimalization’ Cognitive distortion?
Minimalization is a method used by people to justify immoral behaviours such as criminal behaviours.
It involves under-exaggerating consequences of a situation to make it seem less serious. For example, ‘I robbed them but they’re wealthy, so it won’t affect them much!’
Describe the ‘Hostile Attribution Bias’ Cognitive distortion?
Hostile attribution bias is when someone automatically draws negative inferences from things, aka always thinking the worst about someone / something.
An example could be that you hear someone laughing in a pub and you automatically think they’re laughing at you. This links to criminal behaviour as if you interpret aggression you’re likely to respond back with aggression.
What key study supports the existence of a ‘Hostile Attribution Bias’
Key Study: Schoenberg et al (2014)
This study is done on 55 violent offenders in prison as an experimental group matched to a control group of non-offenders.
Both these groups were shown emotionally ambiguous faces (e.g happy, angry or fearful)
They found the violent offenders were more likely to interpret any picture that had some expression of anger as an expression of aggression than the control group.
This can help explain aggressive/impulsive behaviour in criminals.
describe the key study supports the existence of a ‘Minimalization’
Key Study: Gudjonsson (2007)
Study that involved 128 juvenile offenders where they were given a questionnaire on why they committed the crimes that they did.
They found 38% did not even consider the consequences.
36% were confident they wouldn’t be caught.
These suggest these criminals were at a pre-conventional level of moral reasoning and supports a relationship between moral reasoning and criminal behaviour.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of cognitive factors explanation of criminal behaviour
Method of Mod
Research Evidence
Reductionist
Descriptive
Give a strength of cognitive factors to do with MOD
Cognitive factors can be linked to a therapy to modify / rectify criminal behaviour in individuals. This is called cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which encourages offenders to face up to their criminal actions and establish a less distorted viewpoint on their actions and realise how it affected the victim.
This is a strength of this is that it can help prevent crime in day-to-day life showing its effectiveness, studies have suggested that it results in reduced incidents of denial and minimalizations and has also been heavily linked with reduced risk of reoffending. If changing offenders’ thoughts can help to reduce reoffending risk, it suggests that cognitive distortions may have played a role in their offending initially.
Give a strength of cognitive factors to do with research support
Another strength of cognitive factors is that it has research evidence to support the theories.
For example, with the cognitive distortion of hostile attribution bias, studies such as Schoenberg (2014) where 55 violent juvenile offenders were presented with images of emotionally ambiguous faces and found that when matched to a control group of non-offenders. The offenders were far more likely to judge faces showing any sort of aggression as angry or hostile. This suggests that these misinterpretations of non-verbal cues may be able to partly explain aggressive and impulsive behaviour in susceptible individuals and so supports the validity of cognitive distortions as an explanation of offending.
Give a weakness of cognitive factors to do with
One Weakness of cognitive factors is that it can be considered reductionist, for example the cognitive approach assumes that the mind works like a computer which helps to explain criminal behaviour as an output of faulty thinking processes.
This is an example of mechanistic reductionism as it seeks to understand a complex psychological phenomena of why people commit crime by reducing it down to smaller parts like faulty thinking processes in the brain while ignoring alternative factors. This is a weakness as it oversimplifies it for the sake of understanding and could also be considered determinist and lead to people disregarding the importance of free will and personal responsibility.
Give a weakness of cognitive factors to do with being descriptive
Another Weakness of the study is that it can viewed as descriptive rather than explanatory approach to criminal behaviour, this is because they are essentially ‘after the fact theories’. For example, this explanation suggests that criminality occurs due to distortions in cognitive processes however even though we can establish that these distortions exist through studies, the approach provides no insight into why these cognitive distortions appear in the first place.
This is a weakness of the approach as it questions its internal validity as a proper cause and effect cannot be established, it could be instead that the violent crime is what gave them hostile attribution bias instead of that bias causing the violent behaviour.
This has further social implications as if we don’t understand why these distortions occur, it means society cannot do anything but wait for these individuals to commit crime before we can even attempt to rectify these distortions.
