Supporting studies Flashcards
Lombroso- Wu and Zhang (2016)
ID photos of 1856 Chinese men were entered into an artificial intelligence program. Half of them had a criminal conviction. The program identified 83% of the real criminals compared to innocent men who were only wrongly identified 6% of the time.
Supports atavistic features
Sheldon’s photographic study
He collected photos of a large group of collage students as well as criminals. They were rated on a scale of 1-7 on the LIKERT scale which measures how much they resembled mesomorphs. He found that the criminals had a higher mesomorph rating than the collage students.
Twin studies- Christiansen (1977)
He studied 3586 danish twins. He found that for DZ twins the concordance rate for crime was 13% whereas for MZ twins it was 35%
This tells us that there is a link between genes and criminal behaviour
Adoption studies- Crowe (1972)
He found that if an adoptees biological mother had had a conviction, they had a 50% chance of having one. Alternatively, if the adoptees biological mother did not have a conviction, they only had a 5% chance of having a conviction.
XYY theory- Jacobs prison study (1965)
XYY men are over represented in prisons. There are 15 XYY males in prison per 1000. This is large when compared to the 1 XYY male per 1000 in the general population.
Social learning theory- Bandura Bobo doll study
Children were shown an adult behaving aggressively to the bobo doll and when left on their own they acted accordingly. This was the same for when children were shown an adult being gentle with the doll by which they followed suit.
Freud’s theory of ID SUPEREGO AND EGO
He did not do any experiments or studies- weakness for validity
Bowlby’s 44 thieves study (1944)
Bowlby studied 44 juvenile delinquents and compared them to 44 non criminal juveniles. He found that 17/44 of the criminals had experienced early prolonged separation of six months or more before turning 5. 15/17 of the thieves were also classed as being affection less psychopaths (no guilt/remorse) while only 2/44 of the non criminals had experienced such separation. This creates a link between disrupted attachments and criminal behaviour.
Eysenck’s theory prison study
One study compared 2070 male prisoners with a control group of 2422 non criminal males. Prisoners scored higher on P, E and N, supporting the theory.
Behaviourist theory- skinners box
Rat is placed in a box with a lever. Rat presses the lever by chance, gets food pellet. Over time, rat learns that by pressing the lever it gets food. Conditioning
Behaviourist theory- skinners box
Rat is placed in a box with a lever. Rat presses the lever by chance, gets food pellet. Over time, rat learns that by pressing the lever it gets food. Conditioning
