Psychological explanations of offending (KOHLBERG) Flashcards
(18 cards)
2 cognitive explanations
Moral reasoning - Kohlberg’s theory of development
Cognitive distortions (hostile attribution bias and minimisation)
What did Kohlberg propose?
Concept of moral reasoning to criminal behaviour. Kohlberg proposes that people’s decisions and judgments on issues of right and wrong can be ORDERED IN A STAGE THEORY OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT -the higher the stage the more sophisticated your reasoning skills.
Only 10% of adults reach the post conventional levels.
Majority of ordinary people are at the conventional level and if they are commit a crime they feel their crime may be morally justified in the eyes of society.
Most criminals are at the pre conventional level of morality where they believe that breaking the law is justified if the benefits outweigh the costs.
Heinz Dilemma.
Levels of moral reasoning.
3 levels of moral development, with each level split into 2 stages. Kohlberg suggested that people move through these stages in a fixed order, and that moral understanding is linked to cognitive development.
preconventional, conventional and post conventional.
Many studies have suggested criminal tend to show a lower level of moral reasoning that non criminals.
What did Kohlberg find using his moral dilemma technique
A group of violent youths were significantly lower in their moral development than non-violent youths - even after controlling for social background.
What is level 1 of moral development?
Stage 1 - punishment orientation
The child obeys rules in order to avoid being punished. If a person is punished, they must have done wrong
Stage 2 - instrumental orientation / personal gain:
Rules are obeyed for personal gain if you gain something from it.
*Criminals are more likely to be classified at this stage.
Level 2 - Conventional morality
Stage 3 - Good interpersonal relationships:
The individual is good in order to be seen as being as a good person by others. (APPROVAL)
Stage 4 - Maintain the Social Order:
Individual becomes aware of the wider rules of society, so judgments concern obeying the rules ignorer to uphold the law and social order.
Level 3 - post conventional morality (adulthood).
Stage 5 -Morality of contract and individual rights:
Aware of rules and laws that exist for the good of the greatest number, but there are time where they will work against the interest of particular individuals..
Stage 6: Morality of conscience:
People at this stage have developed their own set of moral guidelines which may or may not fit the law. The principles apply to everyone, people who are at higher levels tend to sympathise more with the rights of others, so they are more g=honest, generous and non violent/
Research support for Kohlberg’s theory
PALMER AND HOLIN: compared moral reasoning between 210 female non-offenders, 122 male non-offenders and 126 convicted offenders using the Socio-moral Reflection Measure - short form (SRM-SF), which contains 11 moral dilemma related questions such as not taking things from others, keeping a promise to a friend.
The offending group showed less mature moral realising than the non offending group. Blackburn suggests that delinquents may show poor moral reasoning because of lack of role playing opportunities in childhood which would have otherwise helped develop moral reasoning.
Alternative theories of moral reasoning:
Gibbs, proposed a revised version of Kohlberg’s theory comprising two levels of reasoning: mature and immature.
Immature is characterised by avoidance of punishment and personal gain.
Mature - empathy, social justice and one’s own conscience. So like Kohlberg’s pre-conventional and conventional stages.
Gibbs argued that Kohlberg’s post conventional stage should be scrapped because it was culturally biased (towards western culture), and did not represent a natural maturational stage of cognitive development.
What are cognitive distortions?
Errors or biases in people’s information processing system characterised by fault thinking. It’s the way criminals interpret other people’s behaviour and justify their own actions.
What is the hostile attribution bias?
Tendency to judge ambiguous situations, or the actions of others, as aggressive and or threatening when in reality they may not be.
Offenders may mis read non aggressive cues (such as being looked at) and may trigger a disproportionate, and violent reaction.
Minimalisation:
A type of deception that involves downplaying the significance of an event or emotion. A common strategy when dealing with feelings or guilt. Such as stealing to ‘support a family’. Studies suggest that individuals who commit crimes of a sexual nature are particularly prone to minimisation.
Justye
Presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions. When compared with a non aggressive matched control group, the violent offenders were significantly more likely to perceive the images as angry and hostile.
Dodge and Frame
Suggests roots of bias may lie in childhood: showed children a video clip of ‘ambiguous provocation;, where the intention was neither hostile, not clearly accidental. Children who has been identified as ‘aggressive’ and ‘rejected’ prior to the study interpreted situations as more hostile than those classed as non aggressive.
Barabee:
Found among 26 incarcerated rapists, 54% denied they had committed an offence at all, and a further 40% minimised the harm they had caused the victim.
Hashmall:
Reported that 35% of a sample of child molesters argues that the crime they had committed was non sexual just being ‘affectionate’, and 36% stated that the victim had consented.
Evaluation for cognitive distortions:
Beneficial for treatment of criminal behaviour.
CBT - encourages offenders to ‘face up’ to what they have done and establish a less distorted view of their actions.
Studies show that reduced incidence of denial and minimisation in therapy is highly correlated with a reduced risk of reoffending.
Therefore understanding cognitive distortions can be useful and influential in the rehabilitation of offenders to prevent reoffending.
Weaknesses to cognitive distortions:
Attempting to quantify and measure cognitive distortions is problematic: thoughts are subjective and open to interpretation plus using self-report methods is rife with sources of bias (e.g. social desirability bias, response bias, self-serving bias)
