forensics: psychological explanations of offending- cognitive

Question 1

how do cognitive explanations explain offending behaviour

Answer 1

suggests offending behaviour is either a result of faulty information processing or underdeveloped moral reasoning

Question 2

what is moral reasoning and what level are criminals

Answer 2

process by which an individual uses their own value system to decide if an action is right or wrong - criminals have a lower level

Question 3

what are kohlbergs stages of moral reasoning

Answer 3

• pre-conventional
• conventional
• post-conventional

Question 4

what is the pre-conventional stage (offenders)

Answer 4

children don’t have a personal code of morality, and instead their moral decisions are shaped by the standards of adults and the consequences of breaking or following their rules

Question 5

what is the conventional stage (non- offenders)

Answer 5

accepting of social rules, we begin to internalise moral standards

Question 6

what is the post-conventional state (non offenders)

Answer 6

understanding of universal ethical principles. abstract but may include: preservation of life at all costs and importance of human dignity

Question 7

what stage did Kohlberg suggest criminals were stuck in? why

Answer 7

pre - conventional: need to avoid punishment and gain reward (immature - child like reasoning)

Question 8

what research did Kohlberg et al 1973 conduct, what did they find

Answer 8

research : used moral dilemma technique

finding: found violent youths to be significantly lower in moral development than non-violent youths
- effects persisted even when controlled for social background

Question 9

how did chandler et al (1973) support kohlbergs theory

Answer 9

found criminals more ego-centric and have poorer social perspective taking than non - offender peers

Question 10

ao3: how did palmer +
Hollin (1998) support Kohlbergs moral reasoning?

Answer 10

• compared 126 offenders with 210 females and 122 male control on moral reasoning test , found offenders showed less mature moral reasoning

Question 11

ao3: what other alternatives are there to Kohlberg’s moral reasoning theory? why is this a limitation?

Answer 11

Gibbs 1979 - suggested 2 levels of reasoning , mature and immature as he thought Kohlberg’s third stage was at a non-natural maturation stage and culturally biased towards western countries

Question 12

how might individual differences be a limitation of this explanation of offending behaviour

Answer 12

level of moral reasoning may depend on the type of offence , Reid 1982 found people who offended for financial gain + people who thought they had a good chance of evading capture showed more pre-conventional reasoning than those convicted of impulsive crimes

Question 13

what factor might be a better explanation of criminality than moral reasoning? why is this a limitation?

Answer 13

Langdon et al 2010 suggested intelligence a bigger predictor of criminality than moral reasoning. people with lower IQ also likely to have lower moral reasoning

Question 14

define cognitive distortions and explain how it links to offending behaviour

Answer 14

cognitive distortions are errors, biases or irrational ways of thinking. they can lead to inaccurate and often negative self perception, perception of others and perception of the environment around us. It explains how offending behaviour links cognitive distortions

Question 15

define hostile attribution bias. how does this explain criminality?

Answer 15

HAB= a tendency to misinterpret ambiguous situations, or the actions of others to be aggressive +/ threatening when in reality, this may not be.

offenders may misread non-aggressive cues (being looked at) as confrontational and this may trigger a violent response

Question 16

what research did Schoenberg + Justye (2014) conduct? what did they conclude?

Answer 16

• presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions
• found when compared when compared to a non aggressive control group, violent offenders more likely to interpret images as angry and hostile

Question 17

what evidence suggests that hostile attribution bias may be rooted in childhood?

Answer 17

• Dodge + Frame (1982)
• showed children a clip of an ‘ambiguous provocation’ (confrontation)
• found that children who identified as ‘aggressive’ and ‘rejected’ interpreted the situation as more hostile than control group

Question 18

what is minimalisation? give an example

Answer 18

(or minimisation) is a type of cognitive distortion or deception that downplays the seriousness of an offence, event or emotion, commonly used to deal with effects of guilt.

• example : burglars say they are ‘just doing a job’ or ‘supporting their family’ to make their offences seem less serious

Question 19

what type of offender is particularly prone to minimalisation? what research found this

Answer 19

Pollock + Hashmall (1991) found 35% of child molesters argues their crimes were non sexual (just affectionate) and 36% claimed the victims consented

Question 20

what practical application has cognitive distortions got?

Answer 20

understanding cognitive distortions has lead to the development of CBT for criminal behaviour- most common way of treating sex offenders through challenging their distorted views of events

Question 21

what does it mean by saying cognitive distortions are post-hoc? why is this a limitation of this explanation?

Answer 21

post hoc = taken evidence and created the explanation after an event, they describe what is going on in the criminal mind but fail to explain why it occurs, limitation as could mean cognitive distortions is a limited explanation of offending behaviour

Question 22

what are the two factors causing offending behaviour?

Answer 22

• learned attitudes towards crime
• learning of specific criminal acts