Psychological Explanation Of Offending Behaviour: Cognitive Flashcards
Eval of Cognitive Distortions:
Research support for hostile attribution attribution bias:
Schönenburg and Aiste (2014)
showed emotionally ambiguous faces to violent offenders in prison and compared their responses with a control group (normal)
the faces showed angry, happy or fearful emotions in varying intensities
the offenders more likely to interpret any picture as angry
thus such misinterpretation of non-verbal cues may partly explain aggressive-impulsive behaviour
Eval of Cognitive Distortions: Research support for minimisation:
Kennedy and Grubin (1992)
Maruna and Mann (2006)
K&G: found that sex offenders’ accounts of their crimes often downplayed their behaviour. Some also denied that a crime had been committed
M&M: suggested that this is part of a fairly ‘normal’ behaviour where people blame external sources to protect themselves
Eval of Moral Reasoning:
Research for Moral Reasoning: Colby and Kohlberg (1987)
Gudjonsson and Sigurdsson (2007)
C&K: reported that the sequence of stages appears to be universal although post-conventional reasoning was less common in rural areas
G&S: used their Offending Motivation Questionnaire to assess male offenders. They going that 38% didn’t consider the consequences of their action and were confident they wouldn’t get caught
this shows that they better at the pre-conventional stage, supporting the relationship between moral reason and offending behaviour
Eval of Moral Reasoning:
Limitations of Kohlberg’s theory:
Krebs and Denton (2005)
his theory concerns moral thinking rather than behaviour
K&D: suggest that moral principles are only one factor in moral behaviour and practical factors may be more important i.e. money
They found that when analysing real-life moral decisions, moral principles were used to justify behaviour AFTER it had happened
another issue is that his research was based on males and thus is gender bias
