Psychological explanations of offending behaviour

Question 1

What’s the psychological explanations of crime?

Answer 1

Family dysfunction, criminal personality, cognitive explanations, differential association theory and psychodynamic explanations.

Question 2

What’s family dysfunction?

Answer 2

Psychologists have attempted to linked SZ with childhood and adult experiences of living in a dysfunctional family.

The Schizophrenogenic Mother
Psychodynamic explanation proposed by Fromm-Reichmann (1948).
The Schizophrenogenic mother. (SZ causing)
Cold, controlling and rejecting.
family environment fuelled by tension and secrecy.
Leading to distrust and paranoid delusion then SZ.

Question 3

What’s expressed emotion?

Answer 3

Level of emotion expressed by carers towards their patients.
EE contains several elements:
Verbal criticism of the patient, often with violence
Hostility towards them with anger and rejection
Emotional over involvement in the needs of the patient including needless self-sacrifice.
This becomes a serious source of stress for the patient.
Primarily an exp for relapse in SZ patients. However also been suggested that this source of stress can trigger the onset of SZ in a person who is already vulnerable. E.g. due to genetic makeup.

Question 4

What’s the double-bind theory?

Answer 4

Emphasised the role of communication within a family. Bateson et al, (1972)
Trapped in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing but receive mixed messages about what this is.
Don’t comment on unfairness or seek clarification
When they ‘get it wrong’ (often) the child is punished with a withdrawal of love.
See the world as confusing and dangerous which is reflected in symps like disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions.
Suggested it was just a risk factor not the only factor/main type of communication.

Question 5

What are the cognitive explanations?

Answer 5

explanations that focus on mental processing such as thinking, language and attention.
Dysfunctional thought processing: info processing that isn’t functioning normally that produces undesirable consequences.
SZ is characterised by disruption to normal processing.
Frith et al (1993), characterised two types of dysfunctional thought processing which could underlie some symptoms:
1. Metarepresentation
2. Central Control

Question 6

What is a strength of family dysfunction as an explanation of SZ?

Answer 6

Strong evidential support for the idea that information is processed differently by SZ sufferers. Using the stroop test and other tests to compare the functioning of SZ patients and controls, Stirling et al., 2006 found that patients with SZ took nearly twice as long to read the colours on the stroop test than the controls. These findings are in line with Firth’s theory of central control functioning.

Question 7

What are the limitations of family dysfunction as an explanation of SZ?

Answer 7

Reductionist. Bio explanations are not considered within these explanations which makes the explanations biologically reductionist.

Remains unclear about whether cognitive factors are a cause or are a result/consequence of the negative correlates and abnormal neurotransmitter levels.

No mention of the role of the father in development of SZ

Psychodynamic explanation

Question 8

What’s the general personality theory?

Answer 8

Hans Eysenck was an important figure in personality and intelligence research (1950/60s).
Proposed that behaviour can be explained by examining two dimensions:
Introversion Extroversion (E)
Neuroticism Stability (N)
The two combine to form personality characteristics or traits.
Later added third dimension- Psychoticism (P)

Question 9

What are the dimensions?

Answer 9

Extraversion-introversion - extraverts are characterised as outgoing, having positive emotions, but may get bored easily.
Neuroticism-stability - neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotional states (such as anger, anxiety and depression) rather than positive emotional states.
Psychoticism-normality - psychotics are egocentric, aggressive, impulsive, impersonal, lacking in empathy and generally not concerned about the welfare of other people.

Question 10

What’s the biological basis of the criminal personality?

Answer 10

Although it’s a psychological explanation, Eysenck argued that behaviours have a biological basis.
Personality traits are biological in origin, they come about through the type of nervous system we inherit = all personality types incl. criminal personality has biological basis.

Question 11

What’s the biological basis within personalities?

Answer 11

Extraverts:
Under active nervous system, means they constantly seek excitement, stimulation and are likely to engage in risk taking behaviours.
Don’t condition easily.
Don’t learn from their mistakes.
Neurotic individuals:
Tend to be nervous, jumpy and over-anxious.
General instability makes behaviour unpredictable.

Question 12

What’s the role of socialisation?

Answer 12

In Eysenck’s theory, the personality is linked to criminal behaviour via socialisation processes. Eysenck saw criminal behaviour as developmentally immature, it’s selfish and bothered by immediate gratification. i.e. impatient and cannot wait for things.
Process of socialisation, children are taught to become more able to delay gratification and are more socially orientated.
People with high E and N scores has nervous systems which meant they are difficult to condition. This means they don’t easily learn to respond to antisocial impulses with anxiety. = more likely to act antisocially in situations where possible.

Question 13

What’s the criminal personality?

Answer 13

Criminal personality type - Neurotic-extravert.
Nervous system is hard to condition.
Additionally, Eysenck suggested that the typical offender will also score highly on measures of psychoticism.
Psychoticism- personality type which is cold, unemotional and prone to aggression.

Question 14

How is the criminal personality measured?

Answer 14

This is measured using a personality questionnaire. (Eysenck Personality Inventory EPI).
Psychological test which places people along the E and N dimensions to determine their personality types

Question 15

What is a strength of the criminal personality?

Answer 15

Evidential support. Eysenck and Eysenck (1977) compared 2070 male prisoners EPI with 2422 male controls. On all three measures (write what they are) prisoners scored higher than controls. However, Farrington et al (1982) reviewed several studies, criminals tended to score high on measures of P but not E and N.

Question 16

What are the limitations of the criminal personality?

Answer 16

Culture bias. Bartol and Holanchock (1979) . Conducted a study in a maximum security prison in New York. Defendants were divided into 6 groups based on criminal history and offence. Hispanic and African American defendants. All six groups were found to be significantly less extroverted than a non criminal control group. Bartol suggests this is because of cultural difference. The sample used by Bartol et al is very culturally different to Eysenck’s. This is a weakness because it questions the generalisability of the criminal personality and it’s use as an explanation of criminal behaviour.

Theory was built on the idea that its possible to measure personality through the use of a psychological test. Critics have suggested that personality types may not be reducible down to a ‘score’ like this (Mischel 1988) suggested that on a daily basis we play many different parts and our personality may change depending on who we are with and the situation we are involved in. There may be no fixed and unchangeable ‘true self’ directing our general / criminal behaviour.