Forensic psychology: psychological explanation (cognitive explanations)

Question 1

what are the 2 types of cognitive explanation?

Answer 1

.Kohlbergs levels of moral reasoning
.cognitive distortions

Question 2

what is kohlbergs levels of moral reasoning?

Answer 2

.the idea that as we mature, our sense of morality develops and matures too
.criminals reason at a lower level

Question 3

what are the 3 stages?

Answer 3

.preconventional stage
.conventional stage
.postconventional stage

Question 4

what is the preconventional stage?

Answer 4

.where we are only concerned with preventing punishments for bad behaviour

Question 5

what is the conventional stage?

Answer 5

.where we are concerned with preserving our reputation as a ‘good boy/girl’

Question 6

what is the postconventional level?

Answer 6

.where we develop our set of ethics and principles

Question 7

what stage do criminals reason at?

Answer 7

.more likely to reason at a postconventional level because they don’t have moral principles to prevent crime

Question 8

what is a strength to kolhbergs theory of moral reasoning?

Answer 8

.research support (palmer and hollins 1998) -found that male offenders scored significantly worse on moral reasoning tests that non-offenders

Question 9

what is a negative to kohlbergs theory of moral reasoning?

Answer 9

cognitive explanations rely on inference -we cannot directly observe internal mental processes so we make assumptions based on behaviour -subjective as it requires interpretation

Question 10

what is meant by cognitive distortions?

Answer 10

.these are irrational ways of thinking that offenders demonstrate, which help to cause and justify offences

Question 11

what are the two types of cognitive distortions?

Answer 11

.hostile attribution bias
.minimalisation

Question 12

what is hostile attribution bias?

Answer 12

.offenders see ambitious behaviour from others as having a negative or aggressive motive, so are more likely to act negatively

Question 13

who conducted the research to support hostile attribution bias?

Answer 13

.dodge (2014)

Question 14

how did dodge’s (2014) research support hostile attribution bias?

Answer 14

.he found that aggressive children were more likely to perceive ambiguous hypothetical scenarios as having a negative motive (BUT this doesn’t necessarily apply to adult offending bevhours)

Question 15

what is minimalisation?

Answer 15

.offenders downplay the severity of their crimes in the way that they think or talk about them

Question 16

who conducted research to support minimalisation?

Answer 16

.kennedy and grubins (1992)

Question 17

what did Kennedy and grubbins (1992) do?

Answer 17

.they interviewed sex offenders and found that only 1/2 were unwilling to take full responsibility and only a 1/3 believed they had harmed the victim

Question 18

what are the negatives to cognitive distortions?

Answer 18

.reductionist -they may be forgetting other factors that could interact with irrational thinking patterns to prevent offending behaviour eg: a person might have hostile attributional bias however they were raised to have anti crime attitudes