Morality and Crime

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Morality and Crime

• Social Cognition and Crime
• some evidence that criminals think in different
  ways to non-criminals.

Why do you think this is the case?
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Social Cognition of Crime

• Identification of Criminal Personality
• Yochelson and Samenow (1976)
• Locus of Control
• Attribution theory
• Impulsivity
• Learned Helplessness

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Identification of Criminal Personality

• Yochelson and Samenow (1976)
• emphasise cognitive processes, which lead to a
  distorted self-image.
• result not only in criminal choices but a denial
  of responsibility.

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Criminal Personality

• Focus on the role of cognitive dysfunction in
  criminal behaviour.
• They suggest that criminals have quite distinct
  and erroneous thinking patterns which
  differentiate them from non-criminals.
• From their interviews with 240 male offenders in
  clinics and a psychiatric hospital they conclude
  that criminals may be less intelligent than
  non-criminals.
• However they are essentially in control of their
  lives and their criminality is the result of
  choices made from an early age.

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Criminal Personality

• They identify 40 thinking errors made by
  criminals, the errors falling into three
  categories
• Criminal thinking patterns which are
  characterised simultaneously by fear and a need
  for power and control. Other features include a
  search for perfection, lying, and inconsistencies
  or fragmentation of thinking.
• Automatic thinking errors, which include a lack
  of empathy and trust, a failure to accept
  obligations, and a secretive communication style.
• Crime-related thinking errors, which include
  optimistic fantasising about specific criminal
  acts with no regard for deterrent factors.

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Evaluation

• Yochelson and Samenow are suggesting therefore
  that criminals are not necessarily impulsive,
  that they will have planned and fantasised about
  their actions, and it is these thinking patterns
  which need to be confronted in treatment.
• Wulach (1988) however, has criticised their
  approach, pointing out that Yochelson and Samenow
  are simply describing psychopaths and their
  theory cannot therefore be regarded as a general
  theory of crime.

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Locus of Control
Internal Locus of Control You pretty much control
your own destiny
External Locus of Control Luck, fate and/or
powerful others that control your destiny
What is your view of your destiny? http//www.psyc
h.uncc.edu/pagoolka/LocusofControl-intro.html
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Locus of Control

• A number of studies have shown that offenders
  tend to external control, that is they explain
  their behaviour as being controlled by influences
  beyond their personal control (Beck and Ollendick
  1976).
• Other studies have failed to show any difference
  in locus of control between offender and
  non-offender samples (Drasgow et al. 1974).
• Lefcourt and Ladwig (1965) found offenders to be
  more internally controlled than non-offenders.

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Locus of Control

• The varied findings are probably due to two
  unfounded assumptions that locus of control is a
  unitary concept, and that offenders form a
  homogeneous population.
• A number of studies have shown that there are
  several dimensions to locus of control, such as
  belief in control over one's immediate
  environment as opposed to belief in control over
  political events (Mirels 1970).

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Locus of Control

• Locus of Control within an offender population
  may be a function of race (Griffith et al. 1981)
• Type of offence, for example, violent offenders
  tend to external control (Hollin and Wheeler
  1982).
• Or time spent in prison (Kiessel 1966).

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Social Cognition/Attribution Theory

• Everyone is a naïve psychologist (Heider)
• Internal/External attributions
• Fundamental Attribution Error (Ross)
• Self-fulfilling Prophecy

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Everyone is a naïve psychologist

• Internal (dispositional) attributions
• personality characteristics
• beliefs
• External (situational) attributions
• situational pressure/influence
• Example Student turns in papers late
• Internallazy, partying all the time
• Externalfamily problems, working, girlfriend

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Fundamental Attribution Error

• Lee Ross Internal attributions more likely

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Our initial explanations about the world can
affect

• Our perception of others behaviour
• Also
• Our perception of new information
• Our perception of chance events

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Initial attributions are persistent

• ATTITUDES (Lord, Ross, Lepper)
• Students attitudes on death penalty determined
• Favored or Opposed
• Shown two new studies on death penalty
• Deterred crime or Didnt
• New opinions more extreme in initial direction
• CHANCE EVENTS (Langer Roth)
• Flipped coin/successful in first 10 flips or not
• Early success group Higher prediction of
  accuracy in next 100 flips

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Why are these biases important?

• We may be totally wrong (false beliefs)
• For example Fundamental Attribution Error
• These beliefs persist, resist disconfirmation
• Our incorrect beliefs may create a new reality
• For example Self-fulfilling Prophecy

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Components of Self-fulfilling Prophecy

• False belief (Expectation)
• Actions, based on that belief
• New reality created

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Palmer and Hollin (2000)

• Palmer and Hollin (2000) found that self-reported
  delinquency in young offenders was associated not
  only with lower levels of moral reasoning
• but also with increased tendencies to inaccurate
  attributions of hostility,
• especially in ambiguous situations where it may
  be difficult to accurately ascertain intentions.

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Dodge (1986)

• Dodge (1986) has argued that much violence comes
  from Hostile Attributional Bias.
• Ambiguous actions, like accidentally standing on
  a person's foot, are interpreted as threatening
  and must be countered with action.

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Impulsivity

• Failure in self-control
• Unable to delay reward
• a failure to learn to stop and think
• a failure to learn effective thinking'
• a failure to generate alternative responses
• a reflection of hopelessness.

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Impulsivity

• Studies designed to find a link between
  impulsivity and crime give mixed results
• The difference between studies may be due to
• differing definitions and measures of
  impulsivity,
• and the heterogeneity of the offender population.

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Impulsivity

• Uncontrolled episodes of anger may result from
  impulsivity or a tendency to follow impulses
  instinctively and without thought for the
  consequences.
• It has been suggested that this is a common
  characteristic of most offending behaviour, i.e.
  the satisfaction of immediate needs.

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Impulsivity

• Impulsivity is strongly associated with
  psychopathy and anti-social personality
  (Blackburn, 1993)
• can be measured using the Minnesota Multi-phasic
  Inventory (MMPI)

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Cognitive-Social Learning

• Learned Helplessness
• Seligman (1975)
• Learned helplessness the expectancy that one
  cannot escape aversive events the motivational
  learning deficits that result from the belief.
• Human depression - Explanatory style
• pessimistic explanatory style
• causes of misfortune internal rather than
  external
• positive illusions

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Cognitive scripts (Huesmann, 1988).

• A script is the details of how people should
  behave in a certain situation and what will
  happen if they behave that way.
• These are learnt from the environment in direct
  experience and from watching others, and from the
  media.
• Each script is unique to an individual, yet
  resistant to change.

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Cognitive scripts (Huesmann, 1988).

• They become more resistant with use and rehearsal
  over time.
• For example, if insulted, a man with an
  aggressive script' will respond violently.
• He will justify this behaviour by seeing the
  insult as aggression, and aggression must be
  faced by aggression.

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Cognitive scripts (Huesmann, 1988).

• During high levels of physiological arousal,
  people resort to largely unthinking behaviour,
  and thus well-rehearsed scripts' take over.
• So to teach non-aggressive scripts' will reduce
  violence in situations of high arousal (Zillmann
  (1988))

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Cognitive consequences and distortions.

• It is central to much of social psychology that
  people try to maintain cognitive consistency
  between their attitudes and their actions, and
  that they experience a subjective sense of
  discomfort when there is inconsistency.
• It is easier to resolve this by changing ones
  cognitions than ones behaviour (Berkowitz 1969).

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Moral justification.

• This operates on the nature of the behaviour
  itself. What is culpable can be made honourable
  through cognitive restructuring... reprehensible
  conduct is made personally and socially
  acceptable by portraying it in the service of
  moral ends (Bandura 1986).
• As an example, Bandura points to military
  training people who have been taught to deplore
  killing as immoral can be transformed rapidly
  into skilled combatants.
• In the criminological context moral justification
  is likely to be associated with political crimes.

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Attribution of blame.

• Offenders seek to exonerate themselves by
  attributing the blame for their actions to the
  victim.
• The most obvious example is that of rape a
  claim that in the past was frequently accepted by
  the courts.
• It will be found also in other person crimes and
  to some extent in property crimes.

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The End