psychological explanations of offending

Eysenck’s theory of the criminal personality (1964): extraversion and neuroticism

• suggests all personality types including criminal personality are innate.

• offenders inherit a type of nervous system that predisposes them to offending.

• personality linked to offending is neurotic-extravert (added psychoticism later).

• extraversion:

  • determined by overall level of arousal in a person’s CNS and ANS.

  • high E scorers have chronically underactive NS (low level of arousal) so need more stimulation, excitement and engagement.

  • high Es = sensation seekers and engage in risk-taking behaviour → 'thrill' of committing crime may draw them to offending.

  • do not classically condition easily.

• neuroticism:

  • determined by high levels of reactivity in ANS (specifically SNS) → respond quickly and strongly to threats.

  • general instability means behaviour is unpredictable.

  • high Ns → high levels of emotion → more likely to commit crime in emotionally charged situation.

  • do not condition easily.

Eysenck - conditioning and psychoticism

• conditioning:

  • linked personality to criminal behaviour via socialisation processes.

  • children are taught via conditioning to become better able to delay gratification and be more socially orientated.

  • when children act in immature ways they are punished and therefore associate anxiety with antisocial behaviour.

  • criminal behaviour - developmentally immature as selfish and concerned with immediate gratification.

  • people with high E and N scores (especially E) don’t easily learn from mistakes, as have nervous systems that make them difficult to condition → do not easily learn to respond to and associate antisocial impulses with anxiety.

• psychoticism:

  • added later in 1976.

  • he suggested psychoticism was influenced by biological factors, and correlated with levels of hormones such as testosterone.

  • more likely to engage in irresponsible or miscalculated behaviour.

  • they are cold and have a reduced sensitivity to guilt so concern for others will not prevent them committing a crime.

strength Eysenck - interaction of nature and nurture

• nature - believed personality had biological basis and a consequence of some personality types was certain social behaviours, e.g. crime.

• nurture - believed criminality wasn’t biologically inevitable and depended on quality of conditioning in childhood.

• even though a child’s biology may make it harder to condition, it doesn’t mean they couldn’t be conditioned to be socially orientated and therefore avoid criminality.

• strength in comparison to other explanations/theories that only attempt to explain offending behaviour from one perspective.

strength Eysenck - useful applications

• has potential to reduce crime.

• suggests that underlying tendencies that manifest as criminal behaviour are detectable in childhood and linked to the quality of conditioning and socialisation a child receives.

• may be possible to modify socialisation experiences of high-risk individuals.

• e.g. interventions based on parenting or early treatment for delinquency.

weakness Eysenck - contradicting research

• Farrington et al (1982):

  • reviewed several studies and reported that offenders tended to score high on P and N but not E.

• Hollin (1989):

  • pattern of findings with offenders showed higher P and N scores but not higher E scores.

• therefore, research doesn’t fully support theory for all three traits.

• E measures sociability and impulsiveness, and criminality may only be associated with impulsiveness.

Kohlberg’s level of moral reasoning theory

• stage theory of moral development.

• criminals are more likely to reason at pre-conventional level of Kohlberg's model and non-criminals generally progress to the conventional level and beyond.

• preconventional level:

  • associated with less mature, childlike reasoning.

  • stage 1: punishment orientation - criminals have reasoning based on whether or not act will lead to punishment, so may commit crime if believe they can get away with it.

  • stage 2: reward orientation - reason based on what is to be gained: may commit crime if they gain rewards, e.g. money, gang initiation.

strength Kohlberg - supporting research

• Ashkar and Kenny (2007):

  • compared moral reasoning of juvenile sex and non sex-offenders in a maximum-security prison in Australia.

  • used hypothetical offending situations (sexual and non).

  • found that they all used a pre-conventional level of offending when in a context related to the types of crimes they committed.

  • supports that offenders are operate on a lower level of moral reasoning.

• however → they found that when asked about a non-related crime, they were able to use a conventional level of moral reasoning → capable of higher levels just not for own offences.

weakness Kohlberg - beta bias

• only explain offending in males.

• stages were based on interviews with 58 boys from Chicago, but he claimed universality.

• Gilligan (1977):

  • redid research on females and argued there are gender differences in moral development.

  • she suggested that women focus on how actions affect other people and men consider fairness and justice.

• likely to be that men and women differ in moral development, as men commit the majority of crimes → Kohlberg fails to take this into account → stages only reflect male definition of morality (androcentric).

hostile attributional bias

• misinterpretation or misreading other’s actions, words and expressions as aggressive or provocative.

• may trigger a disproportionate and violent response.

• leads to offending → offender places ‘blame’ for their actions onto external factors e.g. “he was asking for a punch the dirty looks he was giving me”.

• leads to offending → gives excuse and helps remove guilt.

minimalisation

• an offender downplaying or denying seriousness of the offence committed.

• can include: downplaying effects of the crime, rationalising why they have committed the crime or trivialising the acts they committed.

• leads to offending → enables criminal to justify offence to themselves to avoid feelings of guilt.

• sexual offenders are prone to minimalisation, e.g. “I was only being affectionate”.

strength hostile attribution bias - supporting research

• Schonenberg and Justye (2014):

  • presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions.

  • when compared with a matched control group of non-aggressive ps, violent offenders were significantly more likely to perceive images as angry and hostile.

  • supports as violent offenders were misinterpreting neutral expressions as aggressive.

strength minimalisation - supporting research

• Barberee (1991):

  • studied a sample of offenders in custody.

  • found that 98% of criminals showed partial or complete denial of crime.

  • 54% of those convicted of rape and 66% of child offenders were in complete denial at the time of the study.

  • supports use of minimalisation by offenders (especially sexual offenders) as allows them to downplay the seriousness of their crimes and reduce feelings of guilt.

strength cognitive - useful applications

• if faulty/disordered thinking leads to offending, then changing this using CBT should reduce crime.

• police use cognitive restructuring - a process of learning that guides offenders to see behaviours as a direct result of their choices - avoids minimalisation.

• treatment programmes in prisons - ways to increase offenders' level of moral reasoning → help reduce reoffending.

weakness cognitive - issue with causation

• doesn’t explain primary source of distorted thinking and therefore the offending itself.

• ignores nature causes - dysfunctions in the pre-frontal cortex or limbic system.

• ignores nurture causes - the social and cultural context of an offender’s life and childhood.

• doesn’t offer understanding of why offending occurs.

Sutherland’s differential association theory (DAT)

• proposed that offending is learnt through socialisation.

• pro-criminal attitudes/behaviours occur through association and relationships with others who we learn social norms and values from, including deviant ones.

• he believed offending is more likely to occur if an individual’s social group values deviant/pro-criminal behaviour, than if a person’s social group values anti-crime behaviour.

• different associations, as expectations/attitudes of those around us reinforce our behaviour, e.g. through acceptance, social approval.

• if somebody is praised by their family for committing a criminal act, then this social approval is reinforcing and makes repeat offending more likely.

• reinforcement affects offending if rewards for offending are greater than rewards for not offending.

• offending behaviours/techniques are often passed on from generations or from peer to peer, e.g. learning how to shoplift.

strength DAT - explains wider range of crime

• can explain most types of crime that occur within different sectors of society where alternative explanations can’t.

• DAT can explain why white-collar crime like corporate fraud and tax evasion occur, but biological explanations focus on crimes involving aggression and violence.

• public corruption requires a high level of skill and very specific techniques only learnt from others → result of social norm and reinforcement, e.g. encouragement of workmates and financial benefits → socialisation rather than biological.

strength DAT - useful applications

• useful in crime prevention strategies, especially with the young.

• youth mentors in schools, particularly in high crime areas are designed to provide positive role models with anti-crime messages.

• programmes such as ‘sporting elite’ funded by government’s youth justice sports fund → help divert young people away from crime by providing mentors in form of coaches → through anti-crime messages and positive reinforcement from taking part in sport and from teammates and mentors.

strength DAT - supporting research

• Osbourne and West (1982):

  • found that 40% of the sons of convicted criminals also had convictions by the age of 18.

  • only 13% of sons of non-criminal fathers had a conviction.

  • supports as DAT predicts offenders will come from families and groups who have pro-crime norms and socialised to offend → higher rate of offending in sons of convicted criminals.

  • however → rate is only 40% so not fully supported - environmental determinism - ignores freewill and that some choose not to commit crimes despite exposed to pro-crime influences.

superego explanation

• Blackburn (1993):

  • argued that superego was a main reason for offending.

  • offending occurs because the ID is insufficiently controlled/moderated because of problems with development of the superego in the phallic stage.

• deviant superego:

  • deviant/criminal same sex parent → deviant superego has been internalised.

  • identification with deviant parent at phallic stage → person will not feel guilty about their crime.

• weak superego:

  • absence of same sex parents at the phallic stage → child fails to internalise a fully formed superego.

  • underdeveloped superego leaves individual to be dominated by the ID impulses → offending.

• over-harsh superego:

  • individual internalised a superego from an excessively harsh same-sex parent.

  • crimes are committed to fulfil unconscious desire for punishment.

defence mechanisms

• allows offenders to unconsciously justify criminal behaviour → removes anxiety from committing crime → increases chances of reoffending.

• displacement:

  • when the focus of a strong emotion is shifted from actual target to a neutral target.

  • explains why innocent victims are targeted as substitutes for real objects of anger/frustration.

  • e.g. lashing out at a stranger on a night out instead of your boss.

• rationalisation:

  • explaining behaviour in a rational and acceptable way when it is actually very negative.

  • e.g. unconscious belief that ‘rich people deserve to be burgled because they have more than everybody else’ - reduces anxiety of burglary and make it more likely.

• sublimation:

  • when a strong ID impulse is expressed in a more socially acceptable way so desire to commit an aggressive crime is diluted.

  • e.g. vandalizing a person’s car instead to physically attacking them.

weakness psychodynamic - falsifiability

• no empirical evidence to support.

• no research to suggest children without a same-sex parent during the phallic stage offend more which is said in weak superego explanation.

• lack of falsifiability is a reason for this, e.g. impossible to empirically test if the reason for somebody attacking a stranger was the unconscious desire to hurt their boss.

• we can only judge the explanations at face value rather than its scientific worth → contributes little to understanding of crime or how to prevent it.

weakness psychodynamic - psychic determinist

• states that all behaviour including offending, is pre-determined by the unconscious so outside of someone’s control.

• suggests that a person cannot be held responsible for crimes as they are rooted in childhood experiences determined before adulthood → removes blame and responsibility for crime → not compatible with legal system.

• suggests that an offender can’t change as offending is determined by the age of 6 → questions point of rehabilitation for offenders.

weakness psychodynamic - alpha bias

• exaggerates differences between males and females.

• Freud claimed that females were morally inferior to men as they didn’t go through the Oedipus complex and so have weaker superegos than males.

• however → official crime statistics - only 5% of UK prison population are female.

• therefore criticised for gender bias that is extremely incorrect as statistically men commit most crimes, so are clearly not morally superior.