Cognitive Explanations Of Offending Behaviour

Question 1

What is a cognitive distortion

Answer 1

• form of irrational thinking, where reality becomes twisted to no longer represent what’s actually true.
• in context of criminals, distortions allow criminals to deny or rationalise their behaviour.

Question 2

What is the hostile attribution bias

Answer 2

• when someone has a leaning towards always thinking the worst.
  Eg: someone smiles at u and u think they are having bad thoughts about u

Question 3

What is minimilisation

Answer 3

• cognitive distortions where the consequences of a situation are either over-understood or exaggerated.
• in criminal behaviour it can explain how an offender may reduce any negative interpretation of their behaviour before/after crime is committed.

Question 4

What’s an eg of minimilisation

Answer 4

• a burglar may think, when planning a crime that stealing stuff from a wealthy family has little effect on their lives, because of this, burglar won’t feel bad, show no remorse

Question 5

What’s is Kohlberg (1969) level of moral reasoning

Answer 5

• interviewed boys and men and the reasons for their moral decisions and constructed a stage theory of moral development. Each stage represents a more advanced stage of moral understanding.
• 3 levels to this, pre conventional, conventional, post-conventional, each level divided into 2 stages
• people progress through them bcs of biological maturity and by having opportunities to develop their thinking

Question 6

How does kohlbergs study of moral reasoning link to offending behaviour

Answer 6

• in a longitudinal study, kohlberg found that 10% of adults reach post conventional level
• most common level is conventional one.
• this means adults who break the law feel actions were justified, so an offender would break the law to protect member of their family

Question 7

What type of people are. Most likely to be at the pre£conventional level

Answer 7

• criminals, believe breaking law is justified if reward outweighs costs of punishment
• most people reach this stage age 10
• kohlberg longitudinal study found 20% of kids age 10 were at stage 1, 60% acts stage 2

Question 8

What research supports the hostile attribution bias?

Answer 8

• Schonenberg and aiste showed emotionally ambiguous faces to 55 violent offenders in prison, compared results to normal participants, offenders more likely to interpret any picture that had some expression of anger as an expression of aggression
• suggests misinterpretation of non#verbal cues may explain aggressive-impulsive behaviour

Question 9

What research supports minimilisation

Answer 9

• Kennedy and grubbin found sec offenders account of their crimes downplayed their behaviour, eg victims behaviour contributed to the crime
• this supports idea that cognitive distortions may underline offending behaviour

Question 10

What are the real life applications of understanding cognitive distortions

Answer 10

• CBT can be used to help rehabilitate people
• heller et al worked with group of men from Chicago, using CBT to reduce decision making errors, those who attended 13 one hour sessions had a 44% reduction in arrests compared to control group

Question 11

What research supports Kohlbergs moral reasoning

Answer 11

• Chen and howitt used a test based of kohlbergs stages to assess 330 male adolescent offenders. Offenders who showed more advanced reasoning were less likely to be involved in violent crimes
• supports the relegation ship between moral reasoning and offending behaviour

Question 12

What’s a limitation of kohlbergs theory

Answer 12

• concerns moral thinking rather then behaviour
• krebs and Denton suggests moral principles are only a factor in moral behaviour, may be overridden by more practical factors such as personal financial gains.
• they found moral principles were used to justify behaviour after it had been performed
• another issue is it was based on male samples, - gender bias

Question 13

What real world application does kohlbergs theory have

Answer 13

• he observed children raised on Israeli kibbutzim were morally advanced than those not raised on kibbutzim. Led him to believe belonging to a democratic group facilitated more moral development
• as a result he set up cluster schools in schools and a prison, leaving them with power to resolve disputes within the group, encouraging moral development