Psychological- Cognitive Explainations For Offending Flashcards
What does the cognitive explanation of offending suggest
Cognitive explanations of criminal behaviour focus on the thoughts and beliefs of offenders.
These include inadequate development of moral reasoning and cognitive distortions such as hostile attribution bias and minimalisation.
What are cognitive distortions
Faulty, irrational ways of thinking which can cause individuals to perceive themselves inaccurately
These distortions allow an offender to deny or rationalise their behaviour
reality becomes twisted and what they perceive no longer represents what is actually true
A person’s perception of events if wrong, but they think it is accurate
What are the two examples of cognitive distortions
1- hostile attribution bias
2-minimalisation
What is hostile attribution bias
the tendency to misinterpret people’s actions as hostile or negative.
May trigger a violent response
Eg a man pulls up his pants someone with hostile attribution violence may see this as him getting ready for a fight, so they get ready to fightback.
Study support of hostile attribution bias
Wegrzyn
Showed 20 ambiguous faces to violent offenders, sexual offenders and control group
And asked to rate anger and fear
The violent criminals rated the faces as more angry than sexual offenders and control group.
Supports hostile attribution bias that they’re more likely to perceive things as negative/ more violent.
2- what is minimalisation
When offenders downplay the seriousness of their crime
Helps them reduce their sense of guilt, by trying to justify their actions.
Sexual offenders particularly prone to this.
Eg they’ve got loads of money so it won’t really effect their lives
Study to support minimalisation
Barbaree
26 rapists
98% showed minimalisation
54% denied they had committed any crime
Shows support for minimalisation
Evaluation of cognitive distortions
✅ Reduced minimalisation in therapy correlates with reduced offending and less likely to recommit crimes. Shows importance of reducing minimalisation.
❌ Beta bias- only studied on men don’t know if affects women in the same way. So don’t know if women minimise their offences or have hostile attribution bias so therefore don’t know how to treat them in therapy to stop them from reoffending.
What is Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning as a cognitive explanation to offending
Offending behaviour is directly influenced by our thought process. Inadequate development of moral reasoning (the ability to think about what is right and wrong) causes offending behaviour.
Your moral reasoning is developed in your childhood, criminals moral reasoning is lower than non criminals.
Kohlberg proposed 3 levels of moral reasoning, the higher level you was on the more sophisticated reasoning you had.
What are they ?
Level 1- pre-morality
Level 2- conventional morality
Level 3- post-conventional morality
What is level one pre-morality
Self-interest
Do what is right in order to get reward or avoid punishment
You do what is right for personal gain
What is level two conventional morality
Wider-sociatal interests
Doing what is right according to the majority to be good because it’s your duty and helps society.
Level 3 post-conventional morality
Doing what is right even if it does against the law cause the law is too restrictive.
What level are criminals likely to be at
Level 1 pre-conventional level
Self-interest- Breaking laws is justified to them if they get a higher reward. Eg stealing food for your family.
Supporting study - Palmer and Hollin
used questionnaires to compare the moral reasoning abilities of
126 male convicted offenders with 122 male non-offenders.
found that the offenders had significantly poorer moral reasoning compared to the non-offenders, which supports the idea that underdeveloped moral reasoning contributes to criminal behaviour
❌beta bias only done on men
