Gudjonsson & Bownes - Cognition: Turning to Crime

Question 1

Aim

Answer 1

To examine the relationship between the type of offence and attributions offenders make about their criminal acts.
To cross validate early findings of an English sample.

Question 2

BAI

Answer 2

Blame Attribution Inventory - Gudjonsson created.
Psychometric test. Measures where your natural tendency is to lay blame.
EA - external attribution… blaming other people
MEA - mental element attribution… blaming crime on mood
Measure amount go guilt offender expresses about the crime.

Question 3

BAI statements

Answer 3

42 statements:
15 measuring EA eg. Society is to blame for crimes I committed
9 measuring MEA eg. I was very depressed when I committed the crime
18 measuring guilt eg. I feel very ashamed of the crime I committed

respondent can agree or disagree.

Question 4

Procedure

Answer 4

Self report using BAI
1st group: 20 violent offenders (mean age 29)
2nd: 40 sex offenders (mean age 41 for paedophiles, 28 for others)
3rd: 20 property offenders (mean age 29)

Question 5

Sample

Answer 5

80 convicts in Northern Irish prisons

Question 6

Findings GUILT

Answer 6

Sex offenders showed most guilt 12.7

Property the least guilt 5.5 (mean score)

Question 7

Findings MEA

Answer 7

Little difference in MEA between the groups

Question 8

Findings EA

Answer 8

Violent 5.8 highest

Sex offenders 2.4 lowest

Question 9

Findings - comparative study

Answer 9

English prisoners showed similar scores, except for violence.
Irish prisoners showed lower guilt and higher external attribution EA.

Shows consistency in the way offenders attribute blame for crimes, but suggests social factors do influence things - the different scores for violence might be kinked to the terrorist troubles in Northern Ireland at the time.

Question 10

Findings general

Answer 10

Violent: 
most mental element
most external attributions
Sex offenders:
highest remorse
lowest external attributions
Property offenders:
lowest mental element 
lowest remorse

Question 11

Attribution of blame = Social cognition

Answer 11

Ways our thoughts are influenced by social situation we are in and the people around us.
Perception of the social situation, judgement of individual and memory for social stimuli.

Question 12

Cognitive dissonance

Answer 12

Festinger… uncomfortable feeling produced by having two contradictory ideas in your head.
Creates tendency in offenders to blame their own victims.

Question 13

Why criminals make attributions?

Answer 13

Reduce feelings of guilt and personal responsibility.

Attributions affected by social context and social pressures.

Question 14

Treatments

Answer 14

As attributions are affected by social context and pressures it should be possible to use counselling to change the sort of attributions offenders make, consequently resulting in them taking personal responsibility, stop shifting blame and recognise own guilt. Basis for most sex offender programmes.
Other methods - behavioural therapy or biological treatment e.g.. chemical castration.

Question 15

Construct Validity

- degree to which a test measures what it claims to be measuring.

Answer 15

Construct validity as fits into wider body of cognitive dissonance, beliefs and attribution.

Question 16

Quantitative data

Answer 16

BAI on threee different dimensions

Question 17

Reliable

Answer 17

• Widely tested.
• High replicability: due to a highly standardised procedure, with the use of BAI
• Only generalisable to western prisoners, prisoners from other areas of the world may not have been the same.

Question 18

Useful

Answer 18

• Understand more about criminal attributions, hence we may be able to prevent crime by figuring out what makes criminals likely to strike and who is most likely to be a victim.
• Use knowledge to treat and rehabilitate criminals.
• Does not tell us anything valuable or special about criminal cognitions eg. ordinary people regard sex crimes as hideous and property crimes as petty. Similarly ordinary people make external attributions when its come to violence.
• To be useful in forensic psychology or real life environment, we would need to have a control group as we cannot establish with any degree of certainty if criminals really do have a different way of attribution of blame.
• Useful as used real criminals.

Question 19

Validity

Answer 19

• Issue of transparency, hence makes it very susceptible to demand characteristic. Eg. convicts filling out questionnaires will try to give the sort of answer they think the researchers are looking for in the hope this will make them out to be good prisoners and earn them privileges.
• Socially desirable answers if they think it will get them early release. eg. Sex offenders expressed the remorse for crimes, this may also be as they are seen as the lowest of the low in the prison hierarchy.
• High concurrent validity as agreement with earlier study of English prisoners.
• No control group, hence cannot see or establish with any degree of certainty if criminals really do have a different way of attribution of blame. To be useful in forensic psychology or real life environment, we would need to have a control group.

Question 20

Determinism

Answer 20

Say the way blame is attributed means you are most or less likely to commit a certain type of crime.

Question 21

Nature/Nurture

Answer 21

Nature to attribute blame to certain crimes more than others.

Question 22

Reductionist

Answer 22

Reductionist as it reduces why the criminal turned to crime down to their blame attribution and so they were more or less likely to commit that crime because they felt it was less or more blame for them doing it.

Question 23

Scientific

Answer 23

No scientific as it is subjective data from BAI.

Question 24

Individual/situational

Answer 24

Favours the situational side of the debate as social cognition refers to the way our thoughts are influenced by the people we mix with, but also how we understand social phenomena, but also the individual side as looking at an individuals cognitions.
The environment and interactions are important however also is an individuals perspective.

A criminal perceives its situations differently to non-criminals.

Question 25

Ecological validity

Answer 25

Low as criminals could respond to demand characteristics and act as if they were regretful of what they did eg. remorse, and want forgiveness

Question 26

Prevention

Answer 26

It is important to understand social cognition for crime prevention purposes.

Question 27

The social context =

Answer 27

= Criminal act

Hence helpful to find out what a criminal is thinking when they commit a crime.