Cognitive factors 2

Question 1

What is it

Answer 1

Moral reasoning = study of how people think about right and wrong and how the acquire/apply moral rules

• level 1/2 = basic moral reasoning skills = will break law if they believe reward outweighs cost or if they think they can get away with it = criminals
• post conventional = less likely to commit crime at level 3 as strong moral compass, doesn’t fit typical criminal behav
• Crime can be justified at all levels, pre = justified if cost avoided or reward better than cost, conv = justified if helps maintain relationships or society, post = justified if helps maintain human rights or further social justice
• pre = burglary, theft, fraud, rape
• conv = stealing for family, self defense, speeding to hospital
• post = protesting, break into lab to free animals

Question 2

Strength

Answer 2

Practical applications
- develop programmes for kids to prevent crim behav later in life
E = we know people at pre level who more likely to become criminals = intervene and help develop them morally
- E = Kohlberg suggest grouping children into democratic groups where they were involved in making moral decisions facilitates their moral dev

• Applications will benefit society as less criminals in future

Question 3

Weakness

Answer 3

kohlberg research limitations
- Kohlberg measured moral reasoning by hypothetical scenarios
- Scenarios may not be accurate representation of how moral reasoning influences crim behav as they aren’t real situations that person has experienced and may not even be linked to crime
- There are better methods to measure