intro Flashcards
dark figure of crime
-victimization, self-report surveys cause decline in crime because of its underreporting, under discovered criminal acts
types of crime?
-Mala in se: “Evil in itself” which is generally consistent across time and place
E.g. homicide, assault, theft, rape, arson and incest
-Mala prohibita: “Prohibited evil”
violence
an intentional act of threatened, attempted, or actual physical harm directed against a non-consenting person
instrumental violence
achieves an identifiable goal, planned act of violence, absence of emotional arousal, victims are strangers or have distant relationship with perpetrator
reactive violence
response to frustration or perceived insult, attack, is spontaneous
Sociological
-society culture, social environment
-Age, sex, race and the influence of society and culture , macro theories
psychological
-individual human behaviour, micro-level theories, science of the behaviour and mental processes
Psychiatric
psychobiological determinant of behaviour and criminal environments
psychological appr?
-cognitive, biological/neuro, developmental, trait
cognitive
attitudes, beliefs and values about thoughts, and perspective of human nature and oneself
biological/neuro
role of brain damage, abnormalities in antisocial and violent behaviour
developmental
Changes and influences across a lifetime → Risk and protective factors, family/peer relationships
trait
stable and enduring tendency for how a person behaves a certain way, declining in popularity because of how it describes criminal behaviour
scientific theories
a set of interconnected statements that explain the relationship between 2 or more events.
Interindividual differences
variations between 2 or more people
Intra- within one person
research designs
-Individual factors or variables
-Case studies→ small sample size
-Range from close-up to big- picture examination
limitations
-Are rarely scientifically verifiable
-No info about interrelationships of different variables
Correlational Research design
-Allows predictions of future events
-Relationships between 2 variables
-Third confounding variable that is uncontrolled and may be responsible for changes occurring in a study variable
-Longitudinal research helps several observations of the same study participants over a period of time
-Problem: determining direction →longitudinal research
experimental design
-Randomly assigned participants (exposed to the variable_ and the control group (not exposed to variable)
-Quasi experimental design is used if participants cannot be randomly designed. Pre-exposed to variable
-Participants could be pre-exposed to other variables than the study variable
-Can make causal inferences in all variables are held constant
-Challenging to hold all other variable constant
-Not really done on people because of morality and ethicality
lab research (pros and cons)
-Pros: high control over variables, Immediate effects, more conductive to causal claims
-Cons: hard to generalize to the real world because the variables are controlled and there are other confounding variables in reality
-E.g get participants to play a game to make them frustrated and give an option in game to expose violent behaviour effects
field research (pros and cons)
-Pros: real-world generalizability
-Cons: Hard to disentangle cause-effect because of the amount of confounding variables and hard to find overall cause.
meta analysis
-Generates a statistical estimate of overall magnitude of combined results of many findings
-Values rest on having clear inclusion criteria in which studies are to be included.
-Powerful way to summarize and understand the significance of research findings. Researchers could exclude certain variables
