Short Answers Flashcards
What is psychopathy? Discuss the major categories of symptoms associated with psychopathy and provide an example for each.
Psychopagthy is a personality disorder
It is characterized by the four main types of symptoms
Affective - Lack of remorse
Inter-Perosnal - Manipulative
Behavioural - Impulsive
Life Style - Irresponsible
How is the criminal behaviour of psychopaths different from the criminal behaviour of non- psychopaths?
Frequency and versatility - jack-of-all-trades, commit a lot of crime
Nature of Violence - Atypical Motivation- when you least expect it
Criminal Recidivism - Recidivism - Commit a new offence, re-offend at a faster rate
Identify and describe two major theoretical explanations for the link between psychopathy and criminal behaviour.
Fearlessness Model: Fearlessness results in an inability to respond to and learn from the consequences of punishment
Threatened Egoism Model - A model that states individuals with an inflated sense of themselves react aggressively against the information source that say otherwise
According to Hans Eysenck, how is our conscience, or sense of right or wrong, developed through classical conditioning?
Hans Eysenck said that using classical conditioning peopel learn to associate bad things with uncomfortable feelings
Why is punishment imposed by the criminal justice system often ineffective according to the principles of operant conditioning?
Punishment severity is gradually increased
Punishment is delayed
Punishment is inconsistent
Offending behaviours are not replaced with acceptable behaviours
Compare and contrast two of Walters’ cognitive errors. Provide examples in your answer.
Molification - Avoiding responsibility by blaming it on other external factors and injustices
Entitlement - The belief that the rules do not apply and that one has the right to do or take anything
What is moral disengagement? Identify the four points at which moral sanctions can be selectively disengaged and provide an example of a form of moral disengagement at each point.
Moral disengagement is a process in which people use a variety of psychological mechanisms to avoid the negative feelings they might otherwise experience as a result of violating their moral standards
Recasting the behaviour - Moral Justification (shoplifiting from big companies, “they dont need the money”)
Minimizing responsible - Displacement of responsibility (blaming your actions on intoxication)
Minimizing the harmful effects
Recasting the victim - Dehuminization (Not seeing the victim as human)
What three phenomenological qualities of delusions may increase the risk of violence? Explain.
Persecutory Delusion - A strongly held, false belief that others are conspiring against you or wish to cause you harm
Delusional Distress - A sense of fear, anxiety, or sadness experienced as a result of delusions
Belief Maintenance - The effort by a delusional personal to confirm or deny their delusions
What is schizophrenia? Identify and describe the major symptoms that characterize schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia: A mental disorder characterized by different psychotic symptoms that are present for a long period of time
Positive Symptoms: A group of symptoms characterized by excess psychological functioning (ex. Delusions, hallucination)
Negative Symptoms: a group of symptoms characterized by a deficit in psychological functioning (ex. Flattened affect, alogia)
Disorganized Symptoms: A group of sympoms involving bizarre behaviour or confusing speech that reflect a severe underlying disturbance of thought (ex. Word salad)
What are command hallucinations? Identify four characteristics of command hallucinations that may increase the likelihood that an individual would comply and engage in violent behaviour?
Command Hallucination: A false auditory perception of being ordered to do something
Familiar, voices are more likely to obeyed
Seriouness of the command impact compliance
Pressue and persistence of the voice
Presene of delusions
What is the criminalization of mental disorder hypothesis? Identify and briefly describe the three major lines of support for this hypothesis.
Criminalization of Mental Disorder: processing individuals with mental disorder through the CJS for committing difficulty or disruptive behaviours instead of treating these individuals as patients in the mental health system
Deinstitutionalization: A policy implemented that involves transferring psychiatric patients out of large-scale institutions and into community-based care
Police Discretion: Police deciding weather or not to give a ticket to someone for speeding
Apprehension: Offenders and their crimes are more easily detected when a mental health disoder is identifed
Using Goldstein’s framework, identify and describe the three main types of drug-related crime
Systemic Violence - ex. Drug dealers protecting their terriotry
Economic Compulsive Violence - Drugs cost a lot of money
Psychopharmalogical Violence - Violence cause by being under the influence
According to disinhibition theory, why is there such a consistently observed correlation between excessive alcohol use and violent behaviour?
Alcohol impairs areas of the brain responsible for inhibiting responses and as a result of intoxication, behaviours normally suppressed are exhibited
Compare and contrast two cognitive-interference theories of the alcohol-violence relationship
The self-awareness Model - People must be actively conscious of what they are doing in order to evaluate their behaviour against normal behaviour
Attention Allocation Model - Alcohol interferes with the cognitive capacity needed to pay attention to multiple courses of information - Intoxicated people focus only the most important social cues in a situation
Comparing these two - The Allocation model states that intoxicated people only focus on the most important social cues while in a situation where as the self awareness model talks about how any person has to be actively conscious to knwo what their doing.
Using Excitation Transfer Theory, explain how the earlier incident involving the near car accident might influence the later loss of temper demonstrated in the airport.
Excitation Transfer Theory - Residual arousal from one situation is mistakenly attributed to a persons current situation where it is mislabeled, possibly driving inappropriate behaviour
Due to all of the things that happened prior, his anger is built up and let out at a person where it is mislabeled but it is because of the anger he had built up from previous experiences
