Individualistic Theories Flashcards
What are the 4 types of theories within this topic??
Psychodynamic Theories
Eysenck’s Personality Theory
Learning Theories
Cognitive theories
What are the two Psychodynamic theories called and what is the overall message of these theories??
Freuds Psychoanalysis Theory
Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Theory
That our personality contains active forces that make us act the way we do and these forces are powerful urges, feelings and conflicts within our unconscious mind.
What is Freuds Psychodynamic Theory and what are the 3 personalities??
Our early childhood experiences determine our future and whether we will behave anti socially.
ID, EGO and SUPEREGO
Describe the 3 personalities of Freuds Psychodynamic Theory??
IDs are powerful, selfish seeking needs and drives like sex and food. Pleasure principle - satisfy the desire at any cost.
EGOs are in the middle by satisfying the IDs needs/desires in a morally acceptable way. Reality principle they know actions have consequences.
SUPEREGOs contain our moral values and conciseness. Learnt early through parents and this is reinforced so it internalises the parents idea of right/wrong in child.
How do you link the 3 personalities to crime??
Too strict or too neglected parenting can lead to a weak, overharsh or deviant SUPEREGO.
The weak will have a lowered guilty feeling to antisocial behaviour.
The harsh will have deep seated guilty feelings and will crave punishment to release these feelings.
The deviant is successfully socialised but into a deviant moral code. His father was deviant so he is deviant, this creates no guilty feelings.
What was Bowlby’s theory of Maternal deprivation??
The link in the first 5 years between mother and child is most crucial. Disruption even for a short time can lead to higher chance of emotional difficulites and antisocial behaviour. It can stop the child from forming meaningful relationships with others. ( Affectionless psycopathy )
Influenced by Freud
What was the evidence Bowlby found that supported this theory??
What was the study??
44 juvenile theives - 39% had depravation
Non deliquent control group- 5%
What is an affectionless psycopathy??
Inability to show affection or concern for others and they act on impulse with no regard for the consequences of their actions.
What is Eysenck’s Personality Theory??
He says that all personalities are made up of two dimensions.
Introverted V Extraverted and Neuroticism V Emotional Stability
What are the 4 sub sections of the two dimensions??
Introverted - Reserved, self controlled + reliable
Extraverted - out going, sociable, excitment seeking, aggressive and unreliable
Neurotic - Anxious, moody, often depressed and prone to over reacting.
Emotionally stable - calm, even tempered, controlled + unworried
What did Eysenck find criminals had??
Scored high on the extraverted and neurotic scale.
Why was this the case??
Neurotics are hard to condition to societies rules as their high anxiety means they cant be punished for bad behaviour ( Conditioning ).
Extraverts have a nervous system which needs a high level of stimulation from their environment so seek excitement and this leads to impulse, rule breaking behaviour behaviour which
Eysneck argues that people are born with these types of nervous systems.
What is the third personality dimensio??
Psyhocotism
Solitary misfits who are aggressive, cruel and insenstive they lack empathy. Can overlap with serious mental illness like schizophrena.
AO3 for Freud??
+ Points to importance of fmialy relationships and childhood
+ Psychoanalytic explanations has had some influence on policies involving crime and deviance
- Psychoanalytic explanations are unscientific and subjective - relies on the anaylist saying he can see into the mind of the working class to see their conflicts in their subconcious mind
- Due to difficulty of testing the subconcious mind offending theories with this are being discredited.
AO3 for Bowlby??
+ 39% of 44 deliquents and 5% of control group show the theory is correct.
+ His work shows the importance of consiedering the role of the parent ( how it helps society )
- Was a retrorespective study where deliquents had to recall past events which can be difficult.
- Another of his studies had 60 children and found no “affectionless psychopathy”
A03 for Eysenck??
+ Useful in describing how some tendancies make a person more likely to offend.
+ Say high E,N and P can lead to criminality and on surface level seems to be mostly correct.
- Farrington (1982) found criminals did have high P and N but were not extraverted.
- Evidence on prisoners shows correlation with personality types and criminals but it could be that prison time makes them neurotic not other way round.
What are the 3 theories for learning theory??
Sutherlands differential association theory
Operant conditioning
Social learning theory
What is Sutherlands differential association theory??
Individuals learn criminality through family and peers by
Imitation.
Learned attitudes - if they internalised norms and attitudes which favour criminality then they are more likely to be criminal.
A03 for Sutherlands theory??
+ Farrington (1995) found in 411 men involved in anti social behaviour 45% went on to commit crimes - those whose families had already done criminal acts were more likely. Reinforces the theory
+ Matthews found that juvenile delinquents had a lot of friends who were anti social showing the strengths of the Learned attitudes
- Farrington (1995) suggested that poverty and low educational achievement caused criminality
- Not everyone exposed becomes criminals - they might learn how to commit crimes but never out them into practice.
What is Skinners Operant theory??
People learn through the consequences of their actions.
Positive and negative reinforcement both make a behaviour occur
If crime is more rewarding than the punishment then it is more likely to occur
Jefferys differential reinforcement Theory
AO3 for Skinners??
+ Skinners studies of animals show the learning from reinforcement and this reflects in some human areas of learning
+ This can be applied to offending (Jeff 59) and this is evident as criminals usually repeat successful crimes
- Operant learning us based off of studies of animals - not a very adequate model of how humans learn.
- Ignores mental aspects of crime like perosnal values and attitudes
Both positives
What is the social learning theory??
Based on principles of observation and imitation.
Children observe then imitate a role model and if reinforced it will occur again.
Will observe those models who were similar, powerful and reinforced like a parent or member of family of a similar age especially if they see the behaviour being positvily reinforced. ( Vicarious reinforcement)
What was the social learning study??
4-5 year olds were split into 3 groups and all were shown a video of adults being verbally and physically abusive to a doll then :
1 was shown the behaviour rewarded - They imitated it
2 was shown one where the model was told off - Less likely to imitate it
3 was a control group so saw neither - Imitated it but not as much as 1
A03 for social learning theory??
+ Showed that children imitated bad behaivour if rewarded so shows importance of role models in learning devient behaviour
+ Study has been replicated with slight changes and simialr results were found
- Theory based on labatory tests which are artifical and not valid for real life situations
- Theory assumes that peoples learning expiriences only affect choices and ignores their freedom of choice.
What are the two cognitive theories??
Criminal personality theory
Kohlbergs moral development theory
What is Criminal personality theory??
Yochelson and Samenow have applied cognitive theory to criminality.
They suggest criminals are prone to faulty thinking and this makes them more likely to commit crime.
This theory is based on a study of 240 male offenders, most of whom had been committed to a psychiatric hospital
AO3 for Criminal personality theory??
+ The idea that criminals’ thinking patterns are different from normal led to other research. Creates more theories based of this so it is more likely to be true.
+ Successful treatments, known as cognitive behavioural therapy, have been developed based on the idea that criminal’s thought processes can be corrected with treatment
- Yochelson and Samenow did not use a control group of non-criminals to see if ‘normal’ people also make the same thinking errors.
- Their sample was unrepresentative: there were no women and most of the men had been found insane and sent to psychiatric hospitals. Yet, they claim that all offenders share the same thinking errors of this sample.
What is Kohlbergs moral development theory??
This theory is about how we develop our moral thinking.
Our ideas of right and wrong develop through a series of levels and stages from childhood to adulthood.
At the ‘preconventional’ or ‘pre-moral’ level, young children define right and wrong in terms of what brings punishment or rewards but in adulthood our ideas of right and wrong involve an understanding of underlying moral principles and values.
This suggests that criminals’ moral development is stuck at a less mature level than everyone else’s. They are likely to think solely in terms of whether their actions will lead to a reward or punishment, rather than how it might affect others. This makes them more likely to offend.
AO3 for Kohlbergs moral development theory??
+ Some studies show delinquents are more likely to have immature moral development
+ Thornton and Reid found the theory to be truer for cries such as theft and robbery (which may involve reasoning) rather than crimes of violence (which are often impulsive)
- Kohlberg focuses on moral thinking, rather than moral behaviour. Someone may perfectly capable of thinking morally whilst acting immorally
