Unit 2 AC2.2 Flashcards
What are the four Individualistic theories?
Psychodynamic, psychological, learning & cognitive
What are Psychodynamic theories?
They see our personality as containing active forces that cause us to act the way we do.
Psychoanalytic theories see anti-social behaviour caused by abnormal relationships with parents during early socialisation.
What is Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalyse theory?
Key idea: Early childhood experiences determine personality and behaviour. Freud identified 3 elements of the human personality: the ID, Ego and Superego.
What is the ID? (Freud)
- Found in the unconscious mind
- Instinctive part of mind
- Governed by pleasure principle - desire to satisfy urges
What is the Superego? (Freud)
- Contains conscience of moral rules
- Learnt through interactions with parents during early socialisation
- Develops idea of right and wrong
What is the Ego? (Freud)
- Role is to balance ID and Superego
- Reality principle
- Learns from experience in real world
- Ego works to satisfy ID’s desires in a morally acceptable way
How does Freud’s theory link to crime?
- Weakly developed superego: individuals will feel less guilt about anti-social actions. Acts on the ID’s selfish and aggressive urges.
- Harsh and unforgiving superego: creates extreme guilt, craves punishment as a release from feelings, may be involved in repeat offending
- A deviant superego: Child is successfully socialised but into deviant morals (child has a good relationship with criminal father and as a result superego will not feel guilt).
What is Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Theory
He sees maternal deprivation as a cause of criminality. A child needs a close relationship with its mother from birth to age 5 in order for normal development. If that relationship is broken the child could be unable to form meaningful emotional relationships.
What is affectionless psychopathy? (Bowlby)
An inability to show affection/concern to others.
How does Bowlby’s theory link to crime?
He believed that disruption of this primary relationships could lead to a higher incidence of juvenile delinquency, emotional difficulties and antisocial behaviour.
44 Thieves study (Bowlby)
- 1944
- Study of 44 juvenile thieves who had been referred to a child guidance clinic
- Found that 39% of them had suffered maternal deprivation before the age of 5
- Compared with only 5% of a control group of non-delinquents (also 44)
What is Eysenck’s Personality theory?
Eysenck sees criminality as the result of extraverted-neurotic personality. Extraverts seek stimulation, leading to rule breaking, while neurotics’ anxiety prevents them learning from punishment.
What were Eysenck’s conclusions?
Conditioning and genetic inheritance.
- Conditioning: some psychologists argue that through experience, we learn to seek pleasure and avoid plan
- Genetic inheritance: E argues that we learn from others but we also inherit a nervous system which causes us to develop criminal personality.
How does genetic inheritance cause criminality? (Bowlby)
Extraverts: have a nervous system that needs a high level of stimulation from the environment so they are constantly seeking excitement. Leads to impulsive rule-breaking behaviour.
Neurotics: Harder to condition into following society’s rules due to high anxiety preventing them from learning from punishment
What is psychoticism (Bowlby)?
People with a high P score are more likely to engage in criminality. Tend to be solitary misfits who are cruel, insensitive, aggressive and lacking in empathy.
What are learning theories?
- Criminal behaviour is learned behaviour
- Influence our immediate social environment
- Key role of reinforcement and punishment in the learning process
What is Sutherland’s differential association theory?
We learn criminal behaviour through socialisation in social groups where the attitudes and values we are exposed to in these groups favour law-breaking.
- Imitation: individuals acquire criminal skills and techniques by observing others around them
- Learned attitudes: socialisation within the group exposes individuals to attitudes and values about the law
How does Sutherland’s theory relate to white collar crime?
Sutherland found that group attitudes in the workplace often normalised criminal behaviour by claiming everyone was doing it. This made it easier for individual members to justify behaviour.
What is the Operant Learning theory (Skinner)?
The idea that if a particular behaviour results in a reward it is likely to be repeated. On the other hand, behaviour that is punished is unlikely to be repeated. (Behaviourism)
What is the differential reinforcement theory?
Skinner argued that all behaviour is a result of reinforcement and punishment. This must explain criminal behaviour. Tested this theory using rats.
How does the Operant Learning theory link to criminal behaviour?
Criminal behaviour is learned through the reinforcement of particular behaviours. If a crime has rewarding consequences, people are more likely to engage in the behaviour.
What is the Social Learning theory?
Bandura argues that we learn behaviour through observation and imitation of others. If we see a model being rewarded for acting in a deviant way, we don’t need to experience the reward ourselves in order to copy it.
What were Bandura’s experiments?
- Divided 4/5 yr olds in three groups
- Shown a film of an adult model being verbally and physically aggressive towards an inflatable doll
- Group 1: saw the version where the model was rewarded and so imitated the aggressive behaviours
- Group 2: saw the version where the model was punished and so were the least likely to imitate the aggressive behaviour
- Group 3: a control group, neither rewarded or punished however they also imitated the model, slightly less so than G1
How does the Social Learning theory link to criminal behaviour?
If an individual observes a model (e.g. a peer) getting rewarded for their criminality, the theory predicts that the behaviour is more likely to be imitated.
What are Cognitive theories?
Refer to thinking and mental processes such as attitudes, beliefs, reasoning, decision-making and how we interpret the world. The theories argue that mental processes shape behaviour.
What is the Criminal Personality theory?
Yochelson and Samenow argued that criminal behaviour is the result of errors and biases in criminals’ thinking patterns. Based on a long-term study of 240 male offenders, most were in a psychiatric hospital.
What ‘thinking errors’ do criminals show?
- Closed channel thinking (listens to themselves)
- Victim stance (views self as victim)
- Uniqueness (unique to others)
- Fear of fear (refusal to admit irrational fears)
What is Kolhberg’s moral development theory?
Argues that our idea of right and wrong develops through a series of levels and stages from childhood and adulthood.
At the ‘preconventional’ or pre-moral level, young children define right and wrong simply in terms of rewards and punishments.
How does Kolhberg’s moral development theory link to criminal behaviour?
Criminals’ moral development is stuck at a less mature level than others. They think in regard to rewards and punishments of actions rather than how it affects others. Making them more likely to offend.
