Psychological theories of offending- week 2. Flashcards
What do psychological theories aim to explain?
What do they always include?
What do they sometimes also include?
Psychological theories aims to explain why some individuals rather than others become offenders.
They always include postulates about psychological or individual differences factors such as impulsiveness, personality factors or intelligence and about family factors such as parental supervision or discipline.
They sometimes also include postulates about biological, peer, school, community neighborhood and situational factors.
Who made the moral reasoning theory?
What does moral reasoning refer to?
How many stages of moral reasoning are there?
What happens to reasoning?
What do people do?
Would it be difficult to test theories like this?
Kolhberg (1969, 1984).
Moral reasoning refers to how individuals reason about and justify their behaviour. Specifically their antisocial behaviour.
There are six stages of moral reasoning.
Reasoning becomes progressively more abstract and complex.
People move sequentially with age through the stages, although not everyone will reach the higher stages.
Difficult to test these theories, the hypothesis that they came up with because it is not as clear-cut as measuring something over time and then comparing the measurements.
What is level 1? Ages?
How many steps are in it?
What is step 1?
What is step 2?
Preconventional (younger than 6).
Two steps, step 1 and 2.
Step 1- Punishment and obedience orientation- Obey rules to avoid punishment.
Step 2- Naive hedonism- Conform to get rewards and to have favors returned.
What is level 2? Ages?
How many steps are in it?
What is step 3?
What is step 4?
What stage don’t most people move past?
Conventional level (7 to 11 years).
Step 3 and step 4.
Step 3- Good body/girl morality- conform to avoid disapproval or dislike by others.
Step 4- Conform to avoid censure by authorities.
Most people do not move past the conventional stage.
What is level 3? Ages?
How many steps are in it?
What is step 5?
What is step 6?
Postconventional (11 years on).
Step 5 and step 6.
Step 5- Conform to maintain communities + Emphasis on individual rights.
Step 6- Individual principles of conscience.
Who revised the moral reasoning theory?
What did he emphasise?
How many levels does Kohlberg’s theory have?
What is assumed here?
Gibbs (2003, 2010 and 2014).
Emphasised the importance of social perspective-taking skills to progress through the stages.
Two levels- immature moral reasoning and mature moral reasoning.
It is assumed that offenders do not move past stage 4 of mature moral reasoning- they lean towards immature.
What is offending behaviour a result of?
Offending behaviour is a result of sociomoral developmental delay beyond childhood accompanied by egocentric bias. There is also a hostile attribution bias (reacting to situations negatively). This is a secondary cognitive distortion.
Social information-processing theory:
Who made it?
What is the aim of this theory?
What is Crick and Dodge’s six stages relevant for?
How is Crick and Dodge’s six step model related to aggressive behaviour?
What happens if in each step, individuals exhibit problems?
Crick and Dodge (1994).
The aim is to explain aggression and delinquent behaviour- individual differences in aggressive behaviour.
These stages are relevant to the expression of aggressive behaviour.
- Step 1 and 2- Aggressive individuals have problems with encoding and interpreting social cues- leads to an inaccurate representation of the situation.
- Step 3 and 4- Dominance and revenge based goals- fewer responses (limited repertoire).
- Step 5- Evaluate aggressive responses positively- think it can help them achieve their goals.
Step 6- Aggressive response perceived as successful is reinforced.
The more steps they have problems, the more aggressive and antisocial behaviour.
Attachment theory:
How can you define the attachment theory?
What has permanent consequences?
What does the previous lead to?
Infant has a biological need to maintain close contact with its parents/primary caregivers.
Separation in the second six months has permanent consequences on later development.
It leads to them being a criminal- evidence from the 44 juvenile thieves study (thieves had been separated from their mothers before and some has affectionless characters.
Attachment theory continuation.
What is a criticism of the attachment theory?
Where is there evidence from?
One criticism is that they did not control for other variables that might have influenced delinquency- one is institutional rearing.
There is evidence from longitudinal studies.
McCord’s (1982) theory supports the attachment theory- shows how broken homes (loss of father), not having an affectionate mother and parental conflict can lead to later serious offending by boys.
Eyesneck personality theory:
What did Eyesneck use?
What is linked to offending? 2 things.
What did Eyesneck theory inspire? Explain.
Eyesneck used personality tendencies/traits to explain offending behaviour.
High neuroticism (but not extraversion) is related to official offending. High extraversion and not neuroticism is related to self-reported offending. The results are less clear about psychoticism (may be tautological).
Eyesneck theory inspired research on the link between impulsiveness and offending- Its important- It causes deficits in the executive function of the brain.
Social learning theory:
Who made the social learning theory?
What is the basic idea of the theory?
What do children raised in coercive families learn?
Patterson, 1982.
Actions that are rewarded are more likely to occur subsequently whilst actions that punished are not- This could be through conditioning.
Children raised in coercive families learn to use coercive behaviour to solve problems.
Continuation of the social learning theory:
How did Patterson apply his theory?
What is one child-rearing method which has been found to predict offending and delinquency?
He applied it by developing parent management training- His treatment was seen as effective in reducing child stealing and antisocial behaviour over short periods and in small-scale studies (Dishion et al 1992).
Poor parental supervision.
Lifestyle theory:
Who made the lifestyle theory?
What does it aim to do?
What are the four principles of a criminal lifestyle?
Walters, 2006.
It aims to explain the development of a criminal lifestyle and subsequent change in the desistance processes.
Four principles of a criminal lifestyle are social rule-breaking, irresponsibility, self-indulgence and interpersonal intrusiveness.
Continuation with the lifestyle theory:
What does Walter’s functional model want to explain?
Walter’s functional model wants to explain how this lifestyle develops, focusing on hedonistic motivation, excitement seeking, a desire for personal advantage and constructive and defensive reactions to fears and threats.
