Forensic Psychology - Psychological explanations of offending behaviour Flashcards
Eysenck’s theory of the criminal personality
personality is biologically based and that personality traits include dimensions of extraversion and neuroticism that can be measured using a personality questionnaire.
He later added a third dimension - psychoticism
Extraverts and criminal behaviour
have an underactive nervous system which means they constantly seek excitement, stimulation and are likely to engage in risk-behaving behaviours.
They also tend not to condition easity
Neuroticism and criminal behaviour
Neurotic individuals tend to be nervous, jumpy and over-anxious and their general instability means their behaviour is difficult to predict
The criminal personality
The criminal personality type is neurotic-extravert
The typical offender would also score highly on measures of psychoticism - a personality type characterised as cold, unemotional and prone to aggression
The role of socialisation -
Eysenck
Criminal behaviour is developmentally immature - selfish and concerned woth immediate gratification; children are taught to delay gratification ad be more socially oriented
People with high E and N scores have nervous systems that make them difficult to condition - as a result, they would not learn to respond to antisocial impulses and instead act antisocially in situations where the opportunity presented itself
Evidence supporting Eyesneck’s theory:
Eysenck compared EPI scores of 2070 male prisoners’ scores and 2422 male controls. Prisoners recorded higher scores of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism than the control group
Bartol and Holanchock
studied Hispanic and African American offenders in a maximum security prison and found prisioners were less extraverted than a non-criminal control group.
Bartol suggested this was because the sample was a different cultural group which questions the generalisability of the criminal personality
Criticism of Eysenck
Farrington et al
Reviewed several studies and reported that offenders tended to score high on P measures but not for E & N. These findings therefore do not fully support Eysenck’s theory for all three traits.
Criticism of Eysenck
Mischel
Mischel argues we play many different parts and our personality may change depending on who we are with and the situation we are in.
There may be no fixed and unchangeable ‘true self’ directing our behaviour, criminal or otherwise so personality may not be reducible to a ‘score’ as eyesneck suggests
Criticism of Eysenck
Kohlberg
proposed people’s decisions and judgements on issues of right and wrong can be summarised in a stage theory of moral development - the higher the stage, the more sophisticated the reasoning
based on people;s responses to a set of moral deliemas
Levels of moral reasoning:
Level 1: preconventional morality - rules obeyed to avoid punishment or personal gain
Level 2: conventional morality - rules obeyed for approval or maintaining social order
Level 3: postconventional morality - individuals establish their own rules according to personal ethical principles
Kohlberg’s model - criminality
Criminal offenders are more likely to be classified at the pre-conventional level of kohlberg’s model whereas non-criminals generally progressed to the conventional level and beyond
The pre-conventional level is characterized by by a need to avoid punishment and gain rewards and is associated with less mature, childlike reasoning thus adults/adolescents who reason at this level may commit crime
Cognitive distortions
Erros/biases in people’s information processing system characterised by faulty thinking
Examples:
Hostile attribution bias
Minimalisation
Hostile attribution bias
Tendency to misinterpret the actions of others (assume others are being confrontational when they are not)
Offenders may misread non-agressive cues (such as being looked at) and this may trigger a disproportionate often violent response
Minimalisation
An attempt to downplay the seriousness of an offense
Burgarls may describe themselves as ‘doing a job’ or supporting my family as a way to minimise the seriousness of their offense
Palmer and Hollin
Compared moral reasoning between non-offenders and convicted offenders using the Socio-Moral Reflection Measure (SRM-SF) which contains 11 moral dilemma-related questions such as not taking things belonging to others and keeping a promise to a friend,
The delinquent group showed less moral reasoning which is consistent with Kohlberg’s predictions
Cognitive explanation - application of research
Understanding cognitive distortions has been proven beneficial in the treatment of criminal behaviour.
Cognitive behaviour therapy encourages offenders to ‘face up’ to what has been done and establish a less distorted view of their actions.
CBT reduced denial and minimisation is highly correlated with a reduced risk of reoffending
Thornton and Reid
found individuals who committed crimes for financial gain such as robbery were more likely to show pre-conventional moral reasoning (thinking they good get away with it) rather than those convicted of impulsive crimes such as assault where no reasoning seems to be evident
Thus the level of moral reasoning depends on the type of offense
Criticism of Kohlberg’s cognitive explanations
Cognitive explanations - lack of explaining origin
Cognitive explanations are ‘after the fact’ theories that may help predict/reduce ‘reoffending’, they do not give insight as why like the offender committed the crime in the first place like other theories e.g eyesnecks theory
Differential association theory
Proposes that indviudals learn the values, attitudes, techniques and motives for criminal behaviour through association and interaction with different people
DAF - Crime as a learned behaviour
Offending behaviour may be acquired in the same way as any other behaviour through the process of learning through interactions with significant others the child associates with e.g. family/peer group
Criminality arises from: learned attitudes towards crime + learning of specific criminal acts
DAF - pro-criminal attitudes
if the number of pro-crimiinal attitudes outweigh the number of anti-criminal attitudes, an individual will go on to offend
DAF - learning criminal acts
offender also needs to learn techniques of commiting crime e.g. how to break into someone’s house
explains how crime may ‘breed’ among specific social groups/comunities but also why prision inmates reoffend
Farrington et al
longitudinal study of males from south london identified one of the key risk factors to an individual committing crime was family criminality
Supports Sutherland’s differential association theory because he suggests we learn crime as we do any other behaviours through the process of socialisation and being exposed to criminal attitudes and behaviours which we may then go on to imitate.
supporting evidence for DAF
