Cognitive Distortions (AQA A Level Psychology): Revision Note

Hostile attribution bias

• A hostile attribution bias (HAB) could be defined as a tendency to interpret neutral (or possibly even friendly) behaviour from others as threatening, menacing or dangerous

• Someone with a HAB is always on the lookout for confrontation and perceived threat from others, which in turn leads to them behaving in confrontational, threatening ways themselves

• Someone with a HAB may ‘read’ an accidental bump (e.g. whilst walking down the street) as an invitation to an argument or fight (often including physical aggression)

• Usually, the supposed ‘provocation’ is nothing more than a misconstrued glance from another person (e.g. Are you looking at me?) or an ambiguous act (e.g. Why did you call me ‘mate’? I’m not your mate!)

Minimalisation

• Minimalisation refers to the downplaying of an offence by the offender, probably as a way of reducing (minimising) guilt, shame and responsibility for the offence

• Like HAB, minimalisation is a type of cognitive bias which is a form of self-deception/denial so that they can tell themselves that they have not done anything wrong

  • E.g., ‘Nobody really suffered; I mean, really, it's not that bad’)

• Examples of minimisation are:

  • a prolific shoplifter arguing that ‘The shops overcharge for their goods, so what’s the harm?’

  • a drug-dealer reasoning that ‘People choose to take this stuff; I’m just supplying what they want; they can stop if they don’t like it’

• Minimalisation is highly prevalent amongst sex offenders who tend to blame the victim, with interview evidence showing that some offenders believe that the abuse was a positive thing for the victim; thereby, their culpability is reduced  (Kennedy and Grubin, 1992) 

Research which investigates cognitive distortions

• Pollock & Hashmall (1991) - assessed 86 child molesters using an ‘excuse syntax’ to define the structure of the offenders' reasoning about their crimes and found that over a third had reframed their crime as ‘consensual’ 

• Henning et al. (2005) – 1,267 men and 159 women convicted of intimate partner abuse were assessed using scales that measured minimisation, denial, and victim blaming

  • The results suggested that both male and female offenders attribute greater blame for their abuse to their spouse/partner than themselves, and that significant numbers of both genders minimise the severity of the offence

Evaluation of cognitive distortions

Strengths

• Understanding cognitive distortions may help to inform interventions and treatment programmes; e.g., Cartwright & Craig (2022) found that sex offenders with low empathy were more likely to use cognitive distortions; thus, empathy-targeted programmes could be used to reframe their thinking

• Cognitive explanations of criminality can be used to predict the likelihood of someone reoffending, as they highlight the extent to which an offender has been rehabilitated, e.g., by showing remorse for their offence

Limitations

• Attempting to quantify and measure cognitive distortions is problematic as thoughts are subjective and open to interpretation, plus using self-report methods is rife with bias (e.g., social desirability bias, response bias, self-serving bias)

• Cognitive explanations which hinge on the HAB and minimalisation may point out what characterises offending behaviour but not why; thus, they lack explanatory power

Issues & Debates

• Attributing crime to distorted thinking (especially in cases like sexual or violent offences) is socially sensitive, as it may oversimplify or excuse serious crimes

  • There's a risk of minimising victim impact or shifting blame away from the offender, which raises concerns about justice and accountability

• Suggesting that offenders inevitably act aggressively due to cognitive biases supports a deterministic view of behaviour

  • This clashes with the legal system’s assumption of free will and personal responsibility, particularly in assigning guilt or deciding on rehabilitation