Criminal psychology Flashcards
Defining criminal behaviour
An act that is against the law Can be broken down into: -Violence -Drug related -Anti social -Sexual -Acquisitive
Crime subjectivity
Diffrent cultures have diffrent norms and values that determine the way of life of a group of people. Deviation from the norm is when an act or behaviour goes against the accepted standards of society
How crime is measured
Reported - the official measures of crimes that have been reported and recorded by police forces
Self report - a method that involves participants reporting on themselves through answering questions
Social learning theory
We all learn our behaviours from others
Role model - a person held in esteem by anouther
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Identification - the process where a person aligns themselves with anouther
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Observation - the process where people pay attention to behaviours and retain them in memory
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Imitation- a process where people recall behaviours and reproduce them in their own actions
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vicarious reinforcement - when behaviour is strengthened by an individual observing this same behaviour being rewarded in anouther
Direct reinforcement - when behaviour is strengthened and likely to be repeated due to positive out comes for an individual
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Internalisation - the process whereby a behavior becomes an integral part of an individuals personality due to continuous reinforcement
Criticisms of social learning theory
- social learning theory only focuses on the role of nurture ignoring the role of nature in explaining criminal behaviour
- the theory doesn’t explain how criminal behaviour starts in the first place
- the theory doesn’t account for people who turn to crime even though the havnt bee exposed to criminal role models
- if social learning theory is correct then it should be easier to reduce crime
Cooper and maccie agression imitation - background and hypothesis
Background
Previous theory’s state that violent TV could lead to violent behaviour however watching TV is passive so they wanted to test somthing more active ie video games they also wanted to tsst the effect of observing video games and also the differences in gender
Hypothesis
They predicted playing an aggressive video game compared to other types of games would lead to increase aggression in children
Cooper and maccie agression imitation - method
Design
Laboratory experiments to carry out independent measures design
Iv-type of game played
Dv- measures aggression after playing /observing
Sample
84 9-11year olds who had been previously asked about there access to video games and then partnered w same gender and age one to play one to observe
Materials
Missile command, pac man, star wars and tron
Pen and paper maze game,warrior figure, basketball set pinball machine, building blocks, buzzer
Questionnaire for previous video game access and for rating games played in experiment
Cooper and maccie agression imitation - procedure
They watched /played either violent video game, non violent video game or pen and paper maze game (control)
Then they did an observation and a test the observation was where the child would get to pick a toy to play with each toy had different levels of agression associated the test was where the child got to diside how much to punish or reward some one the higher they punish the more agression
They they were asked to rate how much they liked the game they played
Cooper and maccie agression imitation - results
61% had video games at home higher in boys than girls wheatear they had previously played or not had no significant effect
Agressive game made girls play w aggressive toys where more boys went w aggressive toy but w limited effect by game played game played had no correlation with the aggression test
Boys scored better than girls and boys wanted to continue more than girls boys also rated the game higher than girls
Cooper and maccie agression imitation - conclusion
Playing /watching violent video games had an effect on girls possibly because they have less exposure to violence usually
There is no link between aggression towards others and video games only agression towards objects
Supports social learning theory
Cooper and maccie agression imitation - criticisms
Sample was biased and therefore it is difficult to make generalisations
The srudy was in an artificial setting leading to low levels of ecological validity
Aggressive behaviour was measured in a narrow was leading to low levels of construct validity
There was a number of uncontrolled extraneous variables making it difficult to establish cause and effect
Only immediate effects of aggressive video games were tested
Eysenck criminal personality theory
He believes some people have a set of fixed traits that make them more likely to commit crimes the 3 persoatity traits are extrovertsion(how outgoing an individual is) neuroticism (how anxious an individual is) psychotism (how impulsive and aggressive and individual is) high levels of all means individuals have a criminal personality
Eysenck criminal personality theory further detail
Extroverts - cerebral cortex is under aroused so craves arousal meaning they have a dopamine reward system which means they respond more positively to things like sex and money
Neuroticism - ANS is over aroused which can lead to higher levels of violence
Psychotism - result of excess dopamine neurons which leads to impulses in the brain
