CT criminality personality test

Question 1

Who is behind the criminal personality test?

Answer 1

Yochelson and Samenow

Question 2

What actually is this theory?

Answer 2

It’s based on cognition, which refers to thinking and mental processes such as attitudes, and decision making. Cognitive theories argue that our mental processes have behaviour. Thought processes affect our emotions.
Yochelson and Samenow applied this cognitive theory to criminality. They suggest that criminals are prone to faulty thinking and this makes them more likely to commit crime.

Question 3

What study and sample supports this?

Answer 3

This theory is based on a study of 240 male offenders, most of whom had been committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Question 4

What is a thinking error?

Answer 4

They argue that criminals show a range or errors and biases in their thinking and decision making. This includes lying, the need for power, secretiveness, and lack of trust. These errors and biases lead them to commit crime

Question 5

Strength: does it have real life application? Explain CBT

Answer 5

Successful treatments, known as cognitive behavioural therapy, have been developed based on this idea of faulty thinking.

Question 6

Weakness: they didn’t use a control group, why is that bad?

Answer 6

Yochelson and Samenow didn’t use a control group of non criminals, therefore they can’t see if normal people also make these same thinking errors. Because of this the theory can lack validity

Question 7

Weakness: why is the sample unrepresentative? (240 men)

Answer 7

There was no women, can’t be generalised.
Most of the men had been found insane and sent to psychiatric hospitals. Yet they claim that offenders share the same thinking errors