things that i havent learnt yet

Question 1

Ethical implications of research and theory

Answer 1

Part of the process of scientific research is the responsibility that scientists have for the way that there research is used, should be using ethical implications to be able to resolve ethical issues

The research process

• the research question - simply asking the research question such as is homosexuality inherited could be damaging to the racial or sexual group that the research is aimed at as it adds scientific evidence towards prejudice
• conduct of research and treatment of participants - main concern is confidentiality of the information collected
• the institutional context - research may be funded by institutions that may misunderstand the data and misuse data or the media gets a hold of the data and misinterpret it
• interpretation and application of findings - findings may be used for other purposes than what the researchers intended it to be used for, for example IQ tests were used to show that other groups of people are disadvantaged

Ethical issues in socially sensitive research

• privacy - during research process an investigator may extract more information from participants than what they intended to give, some research may lead to policies that are an invasion of peoples private lives
• confidentiality - participants must be less willing to divulge information in the future if confidentiality is breached
• valid methodology - in the cases of poor methodology they may be invalid findings that are not made aware to the public or the media therefore port studies might shape the important social policy to the groups affected by the research
• deception - this includes self-deception whereby research may lead people to form untrue stereotypes which affects ones own performance
• informed consent - potential participants may not comprehend what is involved
• equitable treatment - all participants should be treated in an equal manner and may have resources which are vital to the participants wellbeing being held from one group and given to another
• scientific freedom - the scientists has a duty to engage in research but at the same time has an obligation not to harm participants as well as institutions in society
• ownership of data - some problems with determining ownership involve spondership of research and public accessibility
• values - psychologists differ in their orientation to subjective approaches such as nomothetic approaches and scientific approaches, sensitive issues arise where there are a clash between values between scientists and recipient of the research
• risk benefit ratio- risks and costs should be minimised but problems arise in determining the risks as well as the benefits

Question 2

Ethical implications of research and theory evaluation

Answer 2

The wider impact of research
- there is always social consequences to participiant in research but socially sensitive research there is the increased potential for a more indirect impact on the participants family, their co-workers or maybe even the group that the participant represents, does not seem sufficient therefore to safeguard the interests of the individual in research and there is some consideration of the likely impact on the research on the larger group of what the participiant is a member

The inadequacy of current ethical guidelines
- psychologists deal with ethical issues by using strict guidelines for the conduct of their studies, may protect the immediate needs of research participants but not deal with all the possible ways in which research may inflict harm on a group of people or section of society, for example at present ethical guidelines don’t ask researchers to consider how their research might be used by others, needs to happened

May disadvantage marginalised groups

• many groups in society have suffered the conseuqneces of having been excluded from research or being misrepresented when they have been included, might be argued that our understanding of human behaviour have been lessened by our misinterpretations of or our failure to include, representative samples of persons with disabilities, the elderly, the disadvantaged and members of minority cultures
• failure to represent and research groups is an additional ethical issue

Should socially sensitive research be avoided
It might be tempted to deal with sensitive research by avoiding it, lead to psychologists with nothing to examine accept for unimportant issues,Sieber and Stanley suggest that avoiding controversial topics is an avoidance of responsibility therefore psychologists have a duty to conduct research

Question 3

Restorative justice

Answer 3

Aims of restorative justice- restorative justice addresses two aims of custodial sentencing, this is rehabilitation of offenders so they do not re-offend and atonement for wrongdoing

• rehabilitation of offenders - the victim has an opportunity to explain the real impact of the crime and this enables the offender to understand the effects on the victim, offenders MacLean to take the perspective of others which reduces the possibility of re-offending
• Atonement for wrongdoing - offenders may offer concrete compensation for the crime, most importantly the atonement is psychological by simply showing their feelings of guilt, the offender can also show an understanding of the effects of their action, the victim has the opportunity to express their distress and this provides the offender with a chance of developing empathy by taking the perspective of the victim
• victims perspective - this can reduce their sense of victimisation because they are no longer powerless and have a voice, furthermore the victim may develop a greater understanding of the offender by listening to their account which in term reduces the victims sense of being harmed

A theory of restorative justice

• ted wachtel and Paul Macworld proposed a theoretical framework, their starting point is that the focus should be on relationships rather than punishment, crime harms people and their relationships and justice requires that harm to be healed as much as possible
• early models of restorative justice focused on the offender and victim only but more recent ideas recognise the effect on the wider community
• if only one stakeholder is involved the process is only partly restorative for example if the government pays financial compensation if two stakeholders are involved then it is mostly restorative for example if the offender receives therapy, full restoration involves all three stakeholders for example peace cricles

Peace circles

• have been set up in many communities where violence and crime levels are high, they aim to doster an environment of respect where the community offers support to victims of crime but also welcomes the offender into the circle to enable mural understanding
• everyone sits in chairs placed in a circle, talking piece is passed from one person to another around the circle so that the people can speak uninterrupted,

Question 4

Evaluation of restorative justice

Answer 4

Ethical issues
- from the victims perspective on major concern is what happens if the victim actually feels worse afterwards, from the offenders perspective making people face up to their wrong doing can lead to abuse of power, victims can gang up on an offender especially where the offender is a child, victims may try to shame the offender which is not the intention of the process

Success from the victims perspective
- there is good evidence that victims who have taken part in restorative justice schemes feel it was beneficial
0 uk restorative justice council report 85% atsifaction from victims in face to face meetings with their offenders, these reports of victim satisfaction covered a large range of different crimes from theft to violent crime,
- one police force Avon and Somerset reported 92.5% victim satisfaction with restorative justice when the victim had been the subject of a violent crime

Success in terms of reduced offending

• restorative justice seeks to help victims recover from the effects of crime and reduce re-offending and thus reduce crime rate, research indicates that this aim has been achieved, for example Sherman and strang reviewed 20 studies of face to face meetings between offender and victims in the US, UK and Australia,
• all studies showed reduced re-offending and none were linked to higher re-offending in one of the studies, there were lower reoffending rates compared to a matched control group who severed a short prison experiment
• UK restorative justice victim reported a 14% reduction in re-offending rates

Advantages of restorative justice compared with

• the above research indicates that two of the key aims of custodial sentencing can be achieved through restorative justice, a third aim of custodial sentencing is punishment which may be part of a restorative justice programme, as the process of facing a victim is unpleasant though probably preferable to incarceration it still may be unpleasant enough to act as a deterrent especially to those who had not experienced it before
• reduces long term prison issues from custodial sentencing
• reduces expsne £8 saved for every £1 spent on the restorative process

Question 5

Evaluation of neural explanations

Answer 5

Cause and effect

• neural explanations raise concerns about determinism, one issue is about ether abnormalities in regions of the brain or levels of neurotransmitters are the cause of offering behaviour, the result of it or an intervening variable.
• research only highlights a correlation between head injuries and alter criminality, it is possible that it is a supirous relationship for example someone who free up in a violent household or engages in risky behaviour is more likely to suffer a head injury

Real world application
- one potential benefit of research is that it can lead to treatment such as if low levels of serotonin cause increased aggressiveness in criminals then pople in prison could be given diets that enhance there serotonin levels and decrease there aggression

Based on research related to aggression rather than offending
- research on neurotransmitters relies on the study of non human animals, in such cases it is not criminality that is being studied by aggressiveness, this undermines the potential relevance of information for understanding offending behaviour, there is not 100% correspondence with any area of the brain or neurotransmitter so the data cannot be used to predict who might become and offender and who might not

Question 6

Evaluation of level of moral reasoning

Answer 6

Research support

• notion od a developmental sequence for moral reasoning was demonstrated n the research by Colby et al
• reported that the sequence of stages appears to be universal
• links to offering behaviour, the offending motivation questionnaire was used to assess 128 male juvenile offenders and found that 38% did not consider the conseuqnece of what they were doing and 36% were confident that they would not get caught suggesting that they were ate Kohlberg pre-congenital level of moral reasoning and supporting the link

Limitations of Kohlberg theory
- one major issue is that Kohlberg theory concenerns moral thinking rather than behaviour,
- Krebs and Denton suggest that moral principles are only one factor in moral behaviour and may be overridden by more practical factors such as making personal financial gains, when analysing real life moral decisions that moral principles were used to justify behaviour after it has been performed
0 a second issue based on male samples showing gender bias

Real world application

• Kohlberg observed that children raised on Israeli kibbutizim were more morally advanced that those not raised on kibbutzim, this led him to suggest that belonging to a democratic group and being involved in making moral judgements facilitated moral development,
• he set up a number o fluster schools in a number of schools and even one in a prisons, members had the power to define and resolve disputes within the group encouraging moral development

Question 7

Evaluation of differential association

Answer 7

Major contribution
- major strength of this theory is that it changed peoples views about the origins of criminal behaviour, theory marked an important shift from blaming individual factors to pointing to social factors,
- the theory suggested that crime did not need to be explained in terms of personality but could be explained in terms of social experience, led to real world implications and environments can be changed
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Supporting evidence
- one form of evidence that supports differential association theory is that criminality appears to run in families, for example Osborne and west found that where there is a father with a criminal conviction 40% of the sons had committed a crime but the age of 18 compared to 13% of non criminal fathers, they can be explained by genetics as well
- akers et al - deviant peers seemed out, peers encouraged drinking and drug behaviour

Methodological issues

• data is correlational does not tell use what is caused and what is effect, could be that offenders seek out other offenders
• some critics argue that the theory is not testable because of the difficulty disentangling learned and inherited influences,
• issue is about how one measures the effect of number and strength of associations on subsequent attitudes and it is not clear what ratio of favourable to unfavourable influences would tip the balance so that there person becomes a criminal

Role of biological factors

• absence of biological factors is a draw back
• diathesis model is better
• combines social factors with vulnerability factors, these could be innate or genetic ones