Forensic psychology - Psychological explanations for offending behaviour: Cognitive explanations Flashcards
What is the cognitive explanation for offending behaviour?
-Cognitive explanations suggest that there are ways of thinking, internal mental processes about the world and moral decisions that lead to offending behaviour
What are the levels of moral reasoning?
-Kohlberg suggests that through development, we gain greater moral maturity in 3 levels: The preconventional, conventional, and postconventional level
What is the pre-conventional level of moral reasoning?
- Criminals are argued to be stuck at this level, individuals in this stage are concerned only with how their actions affect them personally:
- Stage 1, punishment (Rules are obeyed to avoid punishment)
- Stage 2, rules are obeyed for personal gain
What is the conventional level of moral reasoning?
- Conventional morality is the second stage of moral development, and is characterized by an acceptance of social rules concerning right and wrong
- Authority is internalized but not questioned, and reasoning is based on the norms of the group to which the person belongs
- Stage 3, roles are obeyed for approval
- Stage 4, rules are obeyed to maintain social order, uphold the law and to avoid guilt
What is the postconventional level of moral reasoning?
- Postconventional morality is the third stage of moral development, and is characterized by an individuals’ understanding of universal ethical principles
- Stage 5, rules are obeyed if they are for the good of the greatest number of people, however there are times when rules will be disobeyed as the rules work against the interest of particular individuals
- Stage 6, the individual establishes his or her own rules in accordance with a personal set of ethical principles
What level of moral reasoning are criminals said to be stuck in?
- Kohlberg states that criminals are stuck in the pre-conventional level of morality
- This is because the criminal commits crimes if they can get away with it or gain rewards in the form of money, increased respect etc
What are cognitive distortions?
- Faulty, biased and irrational ways of thinking that mean criminals perceive themselves, other people and the world inaccurately
- This can lead to criminal behaviour
What is hostile attribution bias?
-Hostile attribution bias is an example of a cognitive distortion that involves judging ambiguous situations or the actions of others as aggressive and/or threatening when in reality they may not be
What is minimalisation?
- Minimalisation is an example of a cognitive distortion that involves interpreting behaviour our own behaviour as less serious than it really is
- For example: Denying actions that have caused harm
What is a strength of the cognitive explanations for offending behaviour?
- Hollin and Palmer conducted a study which showed that male offenders showed poorer moral reasoning on 10 out of the 11 questions on level of moral reasoning compared to male non offenders
- This suggests that offenders do have developmental moral deficits
What is a strength of the cognitive explanations for offending behaviour?
- Understanding the link between offending behaviour and cognitive processing means that CBT could be used to change offender’s irrational thinking
- This application of psychological research could reduce the cost offending has on society
What is a weakness of the cognitive explanations for offending behaviour?
- Kohlberg’s theory is based on the use of hypothetical “Dilemma” tasks
- There is a chance that the findings were affected by social desirability bias as people were unlikely to respond honestly or even know how they would act in the situations
- This limits generalisability to real-life offences
What is a weakness of the cognitive explanations for offending behaviour?
- When women were tested, they appeared to be less morally developed
- As men are significantly more likely to be offenders, this suggests that Kohlberg’s ideas are not generalisable
- Gilligan argues that Kohlberg’s entire theory is gender biased as it focuses on male ideas of justice rather than female ideas of “Care”
