Psychological Explanations: Cognitive explanation Flashcards
What are the 2 parts of the cognitive explanation to offending behaviour?
Levels of moral reasoning - Kohlberg
Cognitive Distrtions
- Hostile attribution bias
- Minimalisation
What is meant by levels of moral reasoning ?
Kohlberg applied the idea of moral reasoning to criminal behaviour and suggests that people’s decisions of right and wrong can be summarised into a stage theory of moral reasoning. The higher the stage, the more sophisticated their reasoning. He based these stage off responses to different dilemmas such as the Heinz dilemma.
He found that most offenders are in the preconentional level where as non-offenders tend to progress onto the conventional level.
What are Kohlberg’s moral stages ?
Pre-conventional - Up to the age of 9, Less mature, childlike reasoning
- Punishment and obedience - right and wrong is learnt through punishment,
- Instrumental relativist - Right and wrong determined by what we are rewarded for so punishment is avoided
Conventional - Most adolescents and adults
- Interpersonal concordance - Right and wrong determined by majority, they accept a conformist attitude to morality
- Law and order - Obey laws without question
Post - conventional
- Social contract - Right and wrong determined by personal values and choose to ignore some laws
- Universal ethical principle - We live by our own values and principles and they’re seen as more important than laws
What cultural variations to kohl bergs levels of moral reasoning is there ?
- At the age of 16, stage 5 had thinking was more prevalent in the USA compared to either Mexico or Taiwan where this stage was reached at a later age
- Taiwanese boys ages 10-13 tended to give stage 2 responses
What is meant by a cognitive distortion in terms of explaining offending behaviour ?
Errors or biases in people’s information processing systems and is characterised by faulty thinking. This links to offending as criminals often view their crime in a different way others do and often misinterpret peoples intentions
What are the 2 parts of cognitive distortions as an explanation to offending behaviour?
Hostile attribution bias
Minimisation
What is meant by hostile attribution bias and outline research to support this ?
When an individual has a tendency to misinterpret peoples actions and intentions and see them as threatening. This means that they assume that people are being confrontational when they are not. This often results in violent acts
P - Supporting evidence
E - Schönenberg & Jusyte - Presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions. When compared to a control group, the offending group were more likely to perceive the images as angry and hostile
E - This supports hostile attribution bias as it showing that those who offend are much more likely to misinterpret other peoples behaviour which causes them to act out against it completely irrationally
L - Therefore, this shows how offenders are likely to misinterpret people actions which can result in them acting violently and offending
What is meant by minimisation and give some research to support it ?
This is an attempt to downplay or deny the seriousness of their offence. Studies suggest that those who commit sexually violent acts are more prone to minimisation
P - Supporting evidence
E - Barbaree - Found among 26 incarcerated rapists, 54% denied they had committed an offence and a further 40% minimised the harm that they had caused to the victim
E - This shows that offenders tend to downplay their crime to almost justify their offence and make it seen less bad than it actually is and this study supports the idea that its more likely among this who have committed sexual crimes
L - Therefore, this increases the validity of mineralisation as part of the cognitive explanation to offending as it has evidence to prove that offenders do use this as a way of justifying their offence.
Strengths of the cognitive explanation to offending behaviour
P - Supporting evidence
E - Schönenberg & Jusyte - Presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions. When compared to a control group, the offending group were more likely to perceive the images as angry and hostile
E - This supports hostile attribution bias as it showing that those who offend are much more likely to misinterpret other peoples behaviour which causes them to act out against it completely irrationally
L - Therefore, this shows how offenders are likely to misinterpret people actions which can result in them acting violently and offending
P - Supporting evidence
E - Barbaree - Found among 26 incarcerated rapists, 54% denied they had committed an offence and a further 40% minimised the harm that they had caused to the victim
E - This shows that offenders tend to downplay their crime to almost justify their offence and make it seen less bad than it actually is and this study supports the idea that its more likely among this who have committed sexual crimes
L - Therefore, this increases the validity of mineralisation as part of the cognitive explanation to offending as it has evidence to prove that offenders do use this as a way of justifying their offence.
Weaknesses of the cognitive explanation to offending behaviour
P - Kohlbergs levels of moral reasoning may not be aplicable to all types of crime
E - Thornton and Reid found that those who committed crimes for financial gain were (eg robbery) where more likely to show pre-conventional moral thinking as opposed to those committing impulsive crimes
E - This shows that not all criminals are at a pre-convention level as their crime may be committed for other reasons such as impulsivity or to survive as opposed to gaining a reward
L - Therefore, this decreases the generalisability of the levels of moral reasoning as it cannot be applied to all types of crimes which ultimately decreases the validity of it as it isn’t an accurate representation of all crimes
P - Not useful
E - This is because to doesn’t show cause and effect as not everyone at a pre-conventional level is going to 100% commit and crime and similarly, those at a different level may decide to commit a crime.
E - Due to the lack of cause and effect it means that all evidence is correlational so it isn’t helpful when trying to make predictions
L - Therefore, the cognitive explanation does not align with the scientific part of psychology and is not helpful at making predictions as all evidence to support it is purely correlational so cause and effect cannot be established.
