Unit 2 - Criminological theories - 2.2 Describe individualistic theories of criminality Flashcards
Psychodynamic theories - Psychoanalysis
According to Sigmund Freud, what determines our personality and future behaviour?
Our childhood
What three elements make up the human personality?
The Id, The ego and The super ego
What is the Id?
Located in the unconscious, instinctive, ‘animal’ part of the mind. It contains powerful, selfish, pleasure-seeking needs and drives such as food, sex and sleep. The Id is governed by the ‘pleasure principle’ - the blind desire to satisfy urges at any cost. If we acted on these urges whenever we felt them it would lead to anti-social or criminal behaviour
What is the Ego?
Freud saw our behaviour as the result of the struggle between the Id and the Superego. The ego’s role is to strike a balance between their conflicting demands. The ego is driven by the ‘reality principle’ - it learns from our experiences in the real world, actions have consequences. The ego seeks to control the Ids urges while still finding ways to satisfy them
What is the Superego?
Contains our conscience or moral rules, which we learn through interactions with our parents. Through socialisation, the child learns its parents idea of right and wrong and the superego develops as a sort of ‘nagging parent’. If we act in contrary to the superego it punishes us with feelings of guilt and anxiety
According to psychoanalytic theories, what causes anti-social behaviour?
Abnormal relationship with parents eg neglect or excessively strict parenting
What can these abnormal relationships cause for children’s superegos?
They can get a weak, over-harsh or deviant superego
What is a weakly developed superego?
The individual will feel less guilt about an anti-social action and less inhibition about acting on Id’s urges
What is a too harsh and unforgiving superego?
Creates deep-seated guilt in the individuals, who then craves punishment as a release for these feelings. The person may engage in repeat offending in order to be punished
What is a deviant superego?
A child is successfully socialised but into a deviant moral code. A son may have a perfectly good relationship with his criminal father and so he internalises his father’s criminal values. As a result, his superego would not inflict guilt feelings on him for contemplating criminal acts
Psychodynamic theories - Bowlby’s maternal deprivation theory
According to Bowlby, what causes deviant or anti-social behaviour?
Maternal deprivation. In his eyes a child needs a close relationship with its primary carer from birth to the age of 5 in order to develop normally
What can happen to a child if they do not form the correct attachment at an early age?
The child will not be able to form meaningful emotional relationships with others. This is known as ‘affectionless psychopathy’. In some cases this can lead to criminal behaviour.
Briefly outline the evidence that supports Bowlby’s theory
Study of 44 juvenile thieves who had been referred to a child guidance clinic. 39% of the thieves had suffered from maternal deprivation before the age of 5, compared to 5% of control group of non-delinquents
Psychological theories - Eysenck’s personality theory
According to Eysenck, what is criminality the result of?
For Eysenck criminality is a result of a particular personality type
What two dimensions is our personality made up of?
Extraversion versus introversion (E)
Neuroticism versus emotional stability (N)
What are the 3 dimensions of personality identified by Eysenck?
Extraverted, Introverted and Neurotic
Outline Extraverted
Outgoing, sociable, impulsive, carefree, optimistic, aggressive, short tempered and unreliable
Outline Introverted
Reserved, inward looking, thoughtful, serious, quiet, self-controlled, reliable and permissive
Outline Neurotic
Anxious, moody, depressed, prone to overreacting
Describe the Eysenck personality questionnaire
Eysenck devised a questionnaire to measure people’s personality traits, ranking them on a E scale and N scale. For example, people with a high E score are very extroverted and people with a low E score are very introverted. Eysenck found that most people have personalities around the middle on both scales. However, criminals score high on both E scale and N scale. In other words, criminals tend to be strongly extraverted and neurotic
What is meant by conditioning?
Some psychologists argue that through experience we learn to seek pleasure and aim to avoid pain. For example, if we misbehave we are punished and so we learn to stop doing it as to avoid further punishment. This process is called ‘conditioning’. Eysenck argues that we learn through conditioning, but some individuals inherit a nervous system that causes them to develop a criminal personality
Briefly explain Eysenck’s argument that genetic inheritance can cause a criminal personality in the case of Extraverts
Have a nervous system that needs high levels of stimulation from their environment so they are constantly seeking excitement. This leads to impulsive, rule-breaking behaviour. In turn, this is likely to lead to punishment.
Briefly explain Eysenck’s argument that genetic inheritance can cause a criminal personality in the case of Neurotics
Harder to condition into following society’s rules because their high anxiety levels prevent them from learning from punishment for their mistakes
Briefly describe the additional personality dimension of psychoticism
In his later research, Eysenck added psychoticism (P) as a further personality dimension. People with a high P score are more likely to engage in criminality. They tend to be solitary misfits who are cruel, insensitive, aggressive and lacking in empathy. High P can overlap with serious psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia
Learning theories
Describe 3 key features of learning theories
- Criminal behaviour is learned behaviour
- We learn this behaviour from family and peer groups (social environment)
- The key role of reinforcement and punishment in the learning process
Learning theories - Sutherland’s differential association theory
According to Sutherland, where do individuals learn criminal behaviour?
Family and peer groups (including working groups)
What are the two factors that can result in criminal behaviour according to Sutherland?
Imitation and Learned attitudes
Briefly describe Imitation
Individuals can acquire criminal skills and techniques through observing those around them
Briefly describe Learned attitudes
Individuals are exposed to attitudes about the law from family and friends. Some of these may be favourable to the law and others unfavourable. If the individual internalises more unfavourable than favourable attitudes, they are more likely to become a criminal
Use the example of white collar crime to illustrate Sutherland’s idea of learned attitudes
Sutherland found that In studies in workplaces many normalised criminal behaviour (by claiming ‘everyone is doing it’). This made it easier for individual members to justify their own criminal behaviour
Learning theories - Operant learning theory
What is the basic idea of operant learning theory?
Work of B.F Skinner. Its basic idea is that if a particular behaviour is rewarded, it is likely to be repeated. However, behaviour that has an undesirable outcome will not be repeated
What Is meant by ‘behaviourism’?
The cause of someone’s behaviour lies in the reinforcements (rewards) and punishments that shape it
Briefly describe how differential reinforcement theory explains criminal behaviour
All behaviour is the result of reinforcements and punishments, if so then this must explain most criminal behaviour. An example of this is Jeffrey’s differential reinforcement theory. Jeffrey argues that criminal behaviour is learned through the reinforcements of particular behaviours. If crime has more rewarding consequences than punishing ones, they will be more likely to engage in criminal activity. These rewards could be financial but also emotional eg respect of peers. If we want to explain someone’s offending we need to look at the balance of rewards and punishments for the individual
Operant conditioning
Explain Thorndike’s ‘law of effect’
Any behaviour that is followed by favourable consequences is likely to happen again but any behaviour that is followed by unfavourable consequences is not likely to happen again
In Skinner’s experiments, what was he trying to discover?
Proving how rewards and punishments affect our behaviour
What was the goal of the Skinner Box experiment (operant chamber)?
Teach the mice to touch the lever
What did Skinner call rewards?
Reinforcements
How did skinnier reinforce the behaviour of the mouse?
He would give it food every time it touched the lever
What happened to the behaviour of the mouse as a result of the reinforcement?
The mouse would continue to press the lever
What did Skinner do to the mouse in the Skinner box to demonstrate negative reinforcement?
He would electrocute the mouse if it didn’t touch the lever
Describe the example of negative reinforcement in our own life
Being nagged by our mums to clean our rooms. ‘Nagging’ stops once you clean your room
Describe how Skinner demonstrated punishment in the Skinner box
Skinner would electrocute the mouse if it touched the lever.
Explain how Skinner’s work on operant conditioning might help us to understand why some people commit crime
Individuals may be rewarded for criminal behaviour and so may continue to commit these offences or they may not receive negative reinforcement for these crimes
Learning theories - Social learning theory
According to Bandura, how do we learn much of our behaviour?
Through imitating others. For this reason, his approach is known as the observational or social learning theory
What did Bandura mean by ‘models’?
Other people by which we model our behaviour on. We are more likely to imitate models if they are of a high status
How do consequences affect our behaviour?
Whether we imitate their behaviour depends on the consequences of the certain behaviour. If we see the ‘model’ being rewarded for their behaviour we are more likely to imitate it than if we see them being punished for it
Briefly describe the three groups used in the Bobo doll experiment
Group 1 - Saw a version of the film where the model was being rewarded for beating the doll up with praise
Group 2 - Saw a version in which the model was being punished
Group 3 (control group) - In this version, the model’s behaviour was neither rewarded or punished
Briefly describe the responses of each of the groups in the experiment
Group 1 - Imitated the aggressive behaviour they had seen been rewarded
Group 2 - Least likely to imitate the behaviour as they had seen the model be punished for their behaviour
Group 3 - Imitated the aggressor but less so than Group 1
Briefly outline what the Bobo doll experiment shows about criminal behaviour
If an individual sees a model being rewarded for criminality, the theory predicts that the behaviour is more likely to be imitated
What was Bandura curious to learn with this experiment?
How we learn, whether or not we learn through others actions
What is a Bobo doll?
An inflatable doll that can be knocked down and pops up again
Briefly explain what Bandura did in his experiments
He would film adults beating up the Bobo doll with hammers and punches and show it to children and then record what the children did to the Bobo doll
What was Bandura trying to find out about the children?
How they would behave after watching the film
What did the children in the experiment do to the Bobo doll?
Beat It up and imitate the actions from the model from the film
What did the children’s behaviour show?
Children could learn from what other people would do
Describe the criticism received about the experiment
People said that if the children did not know about Bobo dolls before the experiment they would not know how else to act with it, apart from what was shown in the video
How did Bandura change his experiment after the criticism?
He would have children watch the film and then he would put them in a room with other children and see how they acted
How did the children who had watched the Bobo doll behave, compared to the children who had not?
They acted more violently
What does this prove?
By watching violence it does translate into becoming more violent in other aspects of life
What is “modelling”?
We watch other people do certain behaviour, they then act as a model for our own behaviour
What are role models?
Parents or older siblings of whom we ‘mode’ our behaviour off
Why is modelling so important?
We look at other people and we learn to behave and act eg eating cake or putting 20p into the lollipop machine
Cognitive theories of crime
What is meant by ‘cognition’?
Thinking and other mental processes like attitudes, beliefs, problem solving, decision making and how we interpret the world
What do cognitive theories of crime argue?
These mental processes shape our behaviour
Cognitive theories of crime - Criminal personality theory
What is the key idea of Yochelson and Samenov?
They proposed criminals have faulty thinking, making them more likely to commit crime based on a long term study of 240 male offenders most of whom lived in psychiatric hospital
What did Yochelson and Samenow base their theory off of?
It was based on a long term study of 240 male offenders most of whom lived in psychiatric hospital
Briefly explain what is meant by ‘thinking errors’
Criminals show errors in their thinking and decision making leading them to commit crime such as lying, secretiveness, need for power and control, lack of trust, uniqueness and victim stance
What are the top ten criminal thinking errors?
Closed channel thinking, Victimstance, views self as a good person, lack of effort, lack of interest in responsible performance, lack of perspective, fear of fear, power thrust, uniqueness and ownership attitude
Cognitive theories of crime - Kohlberg’s moral development theory
Briefly outline Kohlberg’s view of how our ideas of right and wrong develop
Kohlberg argued that ideas of right and wrong develop through stages from childhood to adulthood. In Childhood these ideas are pre-conventional and based off punishment and reward but in adulthood they are based on moral principles and values
What does this theory suggest about criminals moral development?
Criminals have a less developed set of morals. They are stuck in a child like state based on punishment and reward rather than how their actions affect others, making them more likely to reoffend
