Psychological Explanations of Offending Behaviour (AQA A Level Psychology): Flashcards

Criminals scored higher on E, N and P, with key predictors including unhappiness, anxiety, inferiority, risk-taking and impulsiveness.

Offenders scored high on psychoticism but not on extraversion or neuroticism, and EEG evidence for arousal differences between extraverts and introverts was weak.

It recognises a genetic basis for personality and overlaps with research into APD, where offenders are cold and incapable of empathy.

High E and N create a vulnerability, but offending only follows if conditioning in childhood has failed, bridging biology and socialisation.

We display different parts of our personality depending on who we are with and the situation, so there may be no fixed 'true self' directing behaviour.

False.

Moffitt proposed several distinct types of adult male offender based on when offending starts and how long it persists.

It adds openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness, so many combinations are possible and high E and N do not make offending inevitable.

Eysenck's use of the EPI reflects a nomothetic approach, seeking general traits that apply across all offenders.

How offenders can be held responsible for their behaviour if their personality type is innate.

They operate at a lower level of moral reasoning than non-offenders. He was the first to apply moral reasoning to criminal behaviour.

Using the moral dilemma technique, violent youths were significantly lower in moral development than non-violent youths, even after controlling for social background.

It is a stage theory with three levels, each divided into two stages, giving six stages of increasingly sophisticated moral reasoning.

False.

He thought the justification for each dilemma was more revealing, as the reasoning demonstrates the level of morality.

Heinz's wife is dying. A pharmacist charges ten times the cost of the only drug and refuses a lower price. Should Heinz steal the drug or follow the law?

Preconventional reasoning (level 1, ages 5 to 11) determines right and wrong by punishment avoidance (stage 1) and what is best for the individual (stage 2).

At stage 3, the 'good child' orientation, right and wrong are determined by the approval of others.

The law of the land, rules and regulations, e.g. society could not function if everyone broke the law when it suited them.

Postconventional reasoning (level 3, adults) covers stage 5 social contract, where unfair rules can be challenged, and stage 6 universal ethical principles based on human rights and dignity.

Preconventional (stages 1 and 2). They commit crime if they think they can get away with it or stand to gain rewards such as money or respect.

False.

They sympathise more with the rights of others and show conventional behaviours such as honesty, generosity and non-violence.

Using the Socio-Moral Reflection Measure, 126 offenders showed less mature moral reasoning than 332 non-offenders, consistent with Kohlberg.

The development of moral reasoning is strongly influenced by children's early socialisation experiences.

By incorporating moral reasoning into interventions. Blackburn (1993) suggests providing the role-playing opportunities delinquents lacked in childhood.

Offenders committing crimes for financial gain, like robbery, showed more preconventional reasoning than impulsive offenders, so it links to crimes where punishment can be evaded.

A two-level model of immature and mature reasoning, abandoning the postconventional level as biased towards Western culture.

Kohlberg's theory is deterministic, implying offending is determined by stage of cognitive development rather than free choice, undermining personal responsibility.

It was developed on a male-only sample. Gilligan (1982) argued women's care-based morality is placed at a lower stage, so female offenders may be unfairly judged.

Gibbs argued the postconventional level is not a natural maturational stage but reflects Western values.

Cognitive distortions are errors in information processing characterised by faulty thinking, linked to how offenders interpret others' behaviour and justify their own actions.

False.

We all occasionally show faulty thinking about our own behaviour, but research links it to how offenders interpret and justify actions.

HAB is a tendency to misinterpret the actions of others, assuming they are being confrontational when they are not.

The person is always looking for perceived threat, so an accidental bump may be 'read' as an invitation to an argument or fight.

Children identified as aggressive or rejected interpreted an ambiguous provocation video as more hostile than non-aggressive children, suggesting childhood roots.

Minimisation is an attempt to deny or downplay the seriousness of an offence, a 'euphemistic label' (Bandura, 1973) that reduces guilt, shame and responsibility.

Burglars describing themselves as 'doing a job' or supporting their family, and a drug dealer reasoning that people choose to take drugs.

Barbaree (1991) found 54% of 26 men convicted of rape denied any offence and a further 40% minimised the harm caused.

35% of men who had sexually offended against children claimed the crime was non-sexual, and 36% claimed the victim had consented.

Men and women convicted of intimate partner abuse attributed greater blame to their partner than themselves, and significant numbers minimised the severity of the offence.

CBT is the dominant rehabilitation approach for sexual offenders, encouraging them to face up to their actions. Reduced denial correlates with lower reoffending.

They highlight the extent of rehabilitation, e.g. whether the offender shows remorse for their offence.

False.

Thoughts are subjective, and self-report methods suffer from social desirability, response and self-serving bias.

They are descriptive rather than explanatory, good at describing the criminal mind but poor at explaining why the crime was committed.

It may oversimplify or excuse serious crimes, minimising victim impact and shifting blame away from the offender.

Suggesting offenders inevitably act on cognitive biases is deterministic, clashing with the legal assumption of free will and personal responsibility.

DAT (Sutherland, 1924) proposes that individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques and motives for crime through association and interaction with different people.

To develop scientific principles explaining all types of offending, discriminating offenders from non-offenders regardless of class or ethnic background.

False.

Criminal behaviour is learned through interaction with others, not inherited.

The closest, most intimate relationships.

Any three, e.g. criminality is learned via interaction, 'tricks of the trade' can be learned, criminality is strengthened by repeated exposure, and it is learned by observation, imitation and internalisation.

Attitudes towards crime and the criminal acts themselves.

Any two of disregard for other people's rights, seeing law-abiding behaviour as 'foolish', and viewing the police as the enemy.

Any two of how to break into a house with specific tools, the best spot to sell drugs, and how to evade capture.

Sutherland argued a person will offend if their pro-criminal attitudes outweigh their anti-criminal attitudes.

Mathematically, from the frequency, intensity and duration of exposure to deviant and non-deviant norms and values.

A longitudinal study of 411 South London males from age 8 to 50. 41% were convicted, and 7% were chronic offenders accounting for about half of all offences.

Family criminality, daring or risk-taking, low school attainment, poverty and poor parenting at ages 8 to 10.

Boys with criminal adoptive but non-criminal biological parents were more likely to offend (14.7% vs 13.5%), illustrating the importance of family influence.

It explains working-class crime such as burglary and middle-class 'white-collar' crime among groups sharing deviant norms.

Away from biology and individual immorality towards dysfunctional social circumstances, offering more realistic solutions than eugenics or punishment.

False.

Pro-criminal attitudes cannot easily be measured, so it is impossible to know when the urge to offend is triggered, undermining scientific credibility.

People from impoverished, crime-ridden backgrounds may be seen as 'unavoidably criminal', ignoring that many choose not to offend.

DAT is environmentally deterministic, assuming exposure to criminal attitudes inevitably leads to offending, reducing free will and personal responsibility.

Nurture, as offending is learned through social interaction, family and peer influence rather than inherited.