Forensic Psychology

Question 1

What is the top-down approach?

Answer 1

o Profilers start with a pre-established typology and work down in order to assign offenders to one of two categories based on witness accounts and evidence from the crime scene

Question 2

Who uses the top-down approach and how was it created?

Answer 2

o American approach

o Created upon gathering data from in-depth interviews with 36 sexually motivated serial killers

Question 3

What is an organised offender?

Answer 3

o Show evidence of having planned the crime in advance
o Victim will be deliberately targeted
o High degree of control during the crime
o Above average intelligence, socially and sexually competent
o Usually married

Question 4

What is a disorganised offender?

Answer 4

o Little evidence of planning
o Offence may have been spontaneous 
o Body left at scene 
o Lower than average IQ 
o Unskilled, unemployed 
o Live alone

Question 5

What are the four main stages in the construction of an FBI profile?

Answer 5

o Data assimilation - profiler reviews evidence
o Crime scene classification - organised or disorganised
o Crime reconstruction - hypotheses in terms of sequence of events. behaviour of the victim etc
o Profile generation - hypotheses related to the likely offender e.g demographic, background, physical characteristics etc

Question 6

What is the bottom up approach?

Answer 6

o Profilers work up from evidence collected from the crime scene to develop hypothesis about the likely characteristics, motivations and social background of the offender

Question 7

What is investigative psychology?

Answer 7

o Attempt to apply statistical procedures alongside psychological theory to analyse crime scene evidence
o Used in order to develop a data base which then acts as a baseline comparison
o Significance of time and place
o Bottom up approach

Question 8

What is the marauder?

Answer 8

o Operates in close proximity to their home base

Question 9

What is the commuter?

Answer 9

o Likely to have travelled a distance away from their usual residence

Question 10

What is geographical profiling?

Answer 10

o Based on principle of spatial consistency, than an offender’s operational base and possible future offences are revealed by the geographical location of their previous crimes
o Bottom up approach

Question 11

What is Eysneck’s general personality theory?

Answer 11

o Proposed that behaviour can be represented along two dimensions
o Introversion/extroversion
o Neuroticism/stability
o Later added a third dimension, psychoticism

Question 12

What is the biological basis in Eysenck’s theory?

Answer 12

o All personality traits are biological and come from the type of nervous system we inherit
o Extroverts have an under-active nervous system which means they constantly feel excitement and stimulation
o Neurotic individuals tend to be nervous and over anxious and behaviour is often difficult to predict

Question 13

What is the criminal personality?

Answer 13

Extroverted
Neurotic
Psychotic

Question 14

What is the role of socialisation in Eysneck’s theory?

Answer 14

o Personality is linked to criminal behaviour via socialisation processes
o Concerned with immediate gratification, this is taught as a child if they’re not taught to delay gratification
o High E and N scores means they are difficult to condition and so worn;t learn to respond to antisocial impulses with anxiety

Question 15

How is the criminal personality measured in Eysnecks theory?

Answer 15

o Eysneck personality inventory

o Form of psychological test which determines the personality type

Question 16

What is level of moral reasoning in the cognitive approach?

Answer 16

o Refers to the process by which a individual draws upon their own value system to determine whether an action is right or wrong
o Kohlberg attempted to objectify this process by identifying the different levels of moral reasoning

Question 17

Where are criminal offenders and non-criminals likely to be classified on kohlbergs model?

Answer 17

o Pre-conventional level for criminals (immature)

o Conventional level and beyond for non-criminals

Question 18

What are cognitive distortions in the cognitive explanation?

Answer 18

o Faulty biased irrational ways of thinking that mean we perceive ourselves and other people and the world inaccurately and generally negatively

Question 19

What are two examples of cognitive distortions?

Answer 19

o Hostile attraction bias - the tendency to judge ambiguous situations, or the actions of others, as aggressive and/or threatening when in reality they may not be. Roots may like to childhood
o Minimalisation - a type of deception that involves downplaying the significance of an event or emotion. A common strategy when dealing with feelings of guilt.

Question 20

What is the scientific basis of the differential association theory?

Answer 20

o Scientific principles that explain types of offending
o Edwin Sutherland, his theory is designed to discriminate between individual s who become criminals and those who don’t, whatever their race or class

Question 21

How is crime learned behaviour?

Answer 21

o A person is socialised into a group with more pro-criminal attitudes then anti-criminal attitudes
o They will then go on to offend
o When in prison criminal would learn particular techniques for crime and be surrounded by pro-crime attitudes
o This explains why so many convicts go on to reoffend

Question 22

Inadequate superego as an explanation of offending

Answer 22

o Weak superego - same sex parent is absent during the phallic stage so child can’t internalise a fully formed super-ego as there is no opportunity for identification
o Deviant superego - same sex parent has immoral values
o Over-harsh superego - excessively punitive, crippled by guilt and so may unconsciously act out and perform criminal acts in order to satisfy superegos need for punishment

Question 23

What are the two psychodynamic explanations for offending?

Answer 23

o Inadequate superego

o Maternal deprivation

Question 24

Maternal deprivation as an explanation for offending

Answer 24

o Bowlby argued that ability to form meaningful relationships in adulthood was dependent upon the child forming a good relationship with a mother-figure
o Failure to establish bond can result in the personality type known as Affectionless Psychopathy

Question 25

What study was done on maternal deprivation and what were the findings?

Answer 25

o 44 juvenile thieves study
o Interviews and found that 14 out of sample could be identified as Affectionless psychopaths and 12 out of these had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers during infancy