Human Behavior Exam 3

learning theories

• argue that behavior is shaped by environmental stimuli

  • learning is an adaptive response to the environment

  • learned behaviors can be relatively permanent

• problem: if behavior is purely an adaptive response to environmental stimuli, why do different people respond to similar environments in different ways?

  • ex: poverty

behaviorism

• one of the oldest/most influential learning theories in psychology

• study how humans learn

  • not just humans, but all complex organisms

  • research often uses animals like mice, rats, primates

• study all types of behaviors

  • criminal behaviors are not special/learned the same way as any other behavior

• early behaviorists (Watson) emphasized that studying the mind (“mentalism”) was not scientific b/c it focused on subjective, unreliable, introspective accounts of thoughts/emotions

  • Watson strongly disagreed w/ Freud

• instead of focusing on phenomena that could not be directly observed (like thoughts/emotions), Watson argued that the focus should be on observable variables (like natural sciences)

  • the environment

  • behavior

• Skinner (1953) conceptualized thoughts/emotions as behaviors

  • the environments causes thoughts/feelings + other behaviors

  • mental processes do not cause behaviors — they are behaviors

    • thoughts/emotions are behavioral reposes to environmental stimuli

    • but thoughts/emotions are invisible/therefore cannot be observed/studied

• Watson’s position came to be known as “radical behaviorism” or “black box psychology:

  • only observable variables should be studied

environmental determinism

• human behaviors are solely responses to the environment they encounter

  • if humans are born as “blank slates,” then the environment must be responsible for all behavior

  • position of early “strict” behaviorists like Watson/Skinner

• strict behaviorists like Watson/Skinner

  • goal was to predict/control human behavior in the same way that the natural sciences sought to predict/control phenomena

• within context of psychological criminology, strict behaviorism begins w/ the assumption that all individuals are born criminally neutral

  • all criminal behavior is learned, including:

    • criminal propensity (motivation)

      • why would I want to steal a car?

    • criminal ability (skill)

      • how would I steal a car?

• later behaviorists backed away from environmental determinism

  • ex: Bandura (1977) → “reciprocal determinism”

    • behavior, the environment, and mental processes influence each other in a three-way interactive process

behavioral determinism

• human behaviors are solely determined by genetics

  • no modern scientific discipline argues this position

classical conditioning

• roots in early research on organisms’ involuntary reactions (reflexes/ANS) to environmental stimuli → physiological roots

  • salivating, perspiring, fight or flight

• basic principles first determined by Pavlov (1897)

  • stimulus (S) (food) → response (R) (salivation)

• Pavlov famously discovered that responses could be learned

• inspired by Pavlov, Watson (1920) discovered that responses could also be learned in humans

  • “Little Albert”

  • also turned a Santa bears into a CS

• classical conditioning is ubiquitous in everyday life

  • advertising!!!!

    • marketing doesn’t depend on rational thought, but appealing to emotions → Watson came up with this (“coffee break” example in class)

• conditioning can be used to both:

  • acquire behaviors

  • eliminate behaviors

    • un-conditioning → unlearn a behavior (also called “aversion therapy)

    • stimulus control → “cue response treatment”

classical conditioning/crime

• useful framework explaining certain types of crimes that involve autonomic physiological responses to environmental stimuli

  • violent crime

  • s** crime

  • substance abuse

violent crime

• related to classical conditioning/crime

  • “weapons effect” → do people get more violent/angry/prone to aggression if they see a weapon?

    • yes, there seems to be an effect, but it could also be research bias/overestimated

s*x crimes

• related to classical conditioning/crime

• studies suggest that s****l responses are subject to classical conditioning

  • it has been theorized that some non-typical s****l interests are harmless, but some are illegal/described in the DSM-5 as “paraphilic disorders”

    • voyeurism

    • exhibitionism

    • pedophilia

  • pedophilia has been hypothesized to be a consequence of conditioning during childhood

    • extremely difficult to study

    • only limited, indirect research evidence

  • recent research suggests that consumers of CSAM have (other) deviant s***l interests (ex: best***ity) and may be accidentally exposed to CSAM at first

  • one potential explanation for obtaining CSAM is a process of increasingly deviant conditioning

substance abuse

• type of classical conditioning/crime

  • drugs (illegal)/alcohol (legal) are inherently rewarding/therefore at risk of being used/abused

    • you don’t need to condition someone into liking these things, they’re already thought of to be rewarding

    • in terms of classical conditioning → they’re an UCS that leads to UCR

  • classical conditioning perhaps most relevant to eliminating substance use behaviors, not their acquisition

    • aversion therapy

    • stimulus control

  • technically, aversion therapy involves the introduction of a new UCS alongside the undesirable stimulus

  • an alternate version — sometimes (incorrectly?) called aversion therapy — involves changing the response from pleasurable to unpleasure

    • ex: showing disgusting effects of cigarettes to smokers to help them quite

    • ex: the drug that someone struggling with alcohol can get that makes them sick if they slip up and drink

  • stimulus control involves limiting/eliminating exposure to stimuli

    • ex: avoiding going to the movies because you know that you might relapse and eat the food there even though you’re trying to keep down your cholesterol

    • UCS stimuli

      • cigarettes, drugs, alcohol

      • don’t keep them at home

    • CS stimli

      • people, places, activities

      • people/places where substances are commonly consumed

      • activities associated with consuming substances

  • recent advancement in substance abuse treatment are “antagonist” medications

    • they change the response from pleasurable to neutral

      • opioid antagonist Vivitrol → prevents frug from having the previous desirable/fun effect it did

operant conditioning

• B.F. Skinner expanded Classical Conditioning with this

  • behavior shaped by the consequences it produces

    • rewards → reinforcing

    • punishments → discouraging

  • conducted experiments with animals he placed inside variety of lab apparatuses → Skinner Box

  • through series of experiments, he found that behavior could be altered through both rewards/punishments

    • rewards/punishments could be both positive and negative

operant conditioning/crime

• for practical (and ethical) reasons, researchers have not directly examined whether operant conditioning can result in acquisition of criminal behaviors

  • but animal/human models find non-criminal behaviors can be acquired through reinforcement

• much qualitative research on criminal justifications have found that individuals commit crime because of rewards

  • theft, r****, violence

    • money, s**, power, prestige

• researchers have often examined whether antisocial behaviors can be eliminated or reduced via ****operant conditioning*****

• most policies designed to reduce antisocial behavior are premised on OC

  • deterrence theory

    • punishments → fines, community service, supervision (probation, jail, prison), death

  • rehabilitation theory

    • rewards → job training (employment), addiction treatment (sobriety)

• ex: HOPE in Hawaii

  • examples of rewards/punishments?

cognitive revolution

• this took place around the same time Skinner was conducting his Operant Conditioning experiments (1957)

• developments in linguistics/computer science prompted psychologists to turn their attention back to the “black box” of the mind

• mid-1950s → early computer scientists sought to build machines that mimicked human intelligence (AI)

  • doing that required investigating the human cognition, which had been avoided by behaviorists

• about the same time, Chomsky (1959) argued that humans use language to make infinitely new sentences

  • this could not be strictly learned via conditioning as behaviorists alleged

• in recent years, integration of computer AI w/ human language has resulted in huge advancements in “large language models (LLMs)” that demonstrate Chomsky’s argument

consciousness

• if studying “invisible” cognitive processes is important, then where would one start?

  • unconscious vs. conscious processes

    • automatic vs. controlled

    • unintentional vs. intentional

    • thinking fast vs. thinking slow

    • easy vs. difficult

    • inattentive vs. attentive

• conscious processes require full focus/can often overwhelm our mental resources

• unconscious processes can be very complex, but don’t drain our mental resources

• conscious processes can become unconscious

• w/ practice/effort, many complex processes can become nearly subconscious

  • example 1: jogging

  • example 2: playing an instrument

• strong relationship between conscious processes/attention

  • there are limits to how many things we can pay conscious attention to at one time

cognition/crime

• role of cognition in antisocial/criminal behavior has been explored in three main ways:

  • cognitive learning

  • social cognition

  • decision-making

• *****these approaches are not entirely discrete; therefore, they have substantial conceptual overlap*****

cognitive learning

• in relation to cognition/crime

  • Bandura’s development of social learning theory created a bridge between Behaviorism and the emerging field of cognitive psychology

  • Bandura’s social learning theory (1977) gradual evolved to focus more on the role of cognition in learning and ultimately propose a “new” theory → social cognitive theory (1986)

    • although the two theories have different names, they appear to be very similar

      • main difference: social cognitive theory places more emphasis on personal agency in learning process via two core cognitive mechanisms

        • perceived self-efficacy

        • self-regulation

self-efficacy

• in relation to social cognitive theory

  • not the same thing as self-esteem

    • self-esteem is “global”

      • i.e. not task specific

      • “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, people like me”

  • definition: individual’s perception of their capabilities to perform a specific task

    • “how good am I at public speaking?”

    • “I’m not very athletic, but goof at public speaking”

  • perceptions of this have major impacts

    • which goals are set

    • how much effort is spent on achieving goals

  • perceived self-efficacy is influenced mainly by:

    • past performance (failure vs. success)

    • vicarious performance (Can I do that, too?)

    • social persuasion (you can do it! vs. boo!!!)

    • physiological arousal (too much vs. too little stress)

self-efficacy/crime

• in relation to social cognitive theory

  • this in prosocial behavior

    • perceptions of self-efficacy in academics/problem-solving affect goal setting/success in conventional pursuits

      • high self-efficacy associated with/ less delinquency/crime

      • low self-efficacy in conventional pursuits is associated with/ alternative strategies in achieving success/simply giving up → delinquency, crime, risk-taking, drug use, etc.

  • criminal self-efficacy

    • some research finds that higher perceptions of ability in criminal activity is associated w/ increased criminal success (less arrest) and persistence

      • “I’m really good at stealing cars”

self-regulation

• in relation to social cognitive theory

  • Bandura assigned this a central role in the learning process

    • learning via rewards/punishments gradually moved towards internal instead of external control

    • in other words, individuals have some control over their cognitive processes, therefore, also have control over their actions

self-regulatory efficacy

• Bandura saw self-efficacy and self-regulation as intrinsically linked

  • to what degree can I control my own behavior?

• research has found that individuals high in self-regulatory efficacy engage in fewer antisocial and illegal behaviors

  • how can individuals develop better self-regulatory efficacy?

    • CBT

CBT

• separately from Bandura’s cognitive learning theory, this method also emerged from behaviorism during the cognitive revolution

  • the “behavior” component is related to the concept of behavior modification from classical/operant conditioning

  • the “cognitive” component is related to the purposeful incorporate of conscious thoughts into the learning process

• by the 1980s, behavioral/cogntivie principles began to be merged into a treatment modality known as CBT

  • since that time, CBT has become the most widely used therapeutic technique in clinical psychology

• although not a panacea (“magic bullet”), the success of CBT in treating a wide variety of of psychological/behavioral disorders has been profound

effectiveness of CBT

• perhaps a major reason that this method is effective is b/c it does NOT try to change the environment

  • unfortunately, improving adverse environments is often not possible/feasible

  • similarly, a exposure to triggers in the environment may be difficult to avoid

    • incivility, disrespect, aggression are common

    • valuable items often weakly guarder/secured

    • family, friends, acquaintances may use drugs/alcohol

• this therapy seeks to challenge the way individuals think about their environment

  • ****can’t change the environment? change the way someone thinks about it****

  • and that can change the way we behavior and interact w/ our environment

    • exposure to triggers for crime may be unavoidable, but by thinking differently about the trigger, criminal behavior is not inevitable

CBT in relation to crime

• theory (Matza, 1964) and research on offenders’ belief systems suggest a variety of dysfunctional thinking styles support antisocial behavior, including:

  • sense of entitlement

  • desire for power over others/blaming victims

  • no concern for consequences

  • impulsiveness

  • a lack of critical thinking

  • discounting harms and emphasizing good deeds

  • misinterpreting social cues and inferring aggression

• meta-analyses and reviews provide consistent evidence for the effectiveness of CBT in reducing antisocial/criminal behavior:

  • both juveniles/adults

  • s*** offenders

  • addiction

  • violence

  • BUT → this is not a “silver bullet",” but it does gave modest effects and works decently

social cognition

• in relation to cognition/crime

  • social cognitive perspective overlaps in many ways w/ areas we have already discussed:

    • social learning theory

    • social cognitive theory

    • CBT

  • fundamental premise w/ social cognitive perspectives is that individuals do NOT respond to an objective reality, but rather to the reality that they have created in their mind

    • the real world doesn’t really exist, it’s whatever they’ve made up in their mind

  • individuals do NOT interact w/ objective reality, but rather w/ their own version of reality

    • everybody sees things in their own perspective

  • how do individual differences in perception of reality affect human behavior?

    • causal attributions

    • locus of control

    • stereotyping

    • schemata

causal attributions

• in relation to social cognition

  • refer to:

    • how individuals explain why something happened

    • how individuals infer the motived behind other people’s behaviors

  • humans constantly assign this

    • but our conclusions are often inaccurate

  • different individuals may interpret the same event to be caused by different forces

    • that effects how different individuals respond to similar events

      • it’s not the event that causes a behavioral response, but rather the interpretation of the event

      • there are individual differences in perceptions of whether events are caused by:

        • internal (person) vs. external (environment) forces

        • long-term (stable) vs. temporary (unstable) forces

        • intentional (controllable) vs. accidental (uncontrollable) forces

  • in relation to crime:

    • road rage → intentional vs. unintentional (cutting you off the road)

    • random bar fights → hostile attribution bias

locus of control

• in relation to social cognition

  • refers to the extent to which an individual believes they have control over the events in their life

  • locus: a particular position, point, place

    • in other words, where does one’s control reside?

      • internal vs. external

  • ****causal attributions are about how people interpret events****

  • ****locus of control is about why people make attributions the way they do****

  • research finds individual variation in where control is perceived to be located

  • internal locus of control

    • “things that happen in your life are consequences of my own actions/endeavors”

  • external locus of control

    • “things that happen in my life are fun to fate, luck, or actions of other people w/ power over me”

  • in relation to crime → research tends to find that offenders report external locus of control

decision making

• central premise of some theories of crime is that offenders are acted upon by powerful external forces

• other theories treat individuals as active decision-makers

  • why do some individuals choose crime when most people don’t?

• explanations of offender decision-making can be placed within two perspective:

  • rational choice

  • irrational choice (“beyond rational choice”)

rational choice

• notion that offenders use rationality in their decision-making has its roots in 18th century enlightenment thinking (e.g. Beccaria/Betham)

  • severity of punishment should just outweigh benefits of crime

• 20th century → economic theory was applied to offender decision-making

  • “expected utility model” → weighs the probabilities of benefits of crime against costs

• humans do not always make strictly calculated decisions, even when there is an objectively best” outcome

• rational decision-making has been applied to criminal behavior in two ways:

  • deference theory

  • Cornish/Clarke’s Rational Choice Perspective

bounded rationality

• part of rational decision-making

• humans don’t always make strictly calculated decisions

• limits to our rationality:

  • cognitive abilities

  • amount of relevant information to use

  • emotional state

  • time available

• instead of strictly rational decisions, humans typically make satisficing decisions

  • sufficient + satisfying

  • this isn’t particularly rational, but also not totally irrational → sub-optimal, but good enough

deterrence theory

• part of rational choice

• people will not commit crimes with the punishment meets a certain degree of:

  • severity

  • certainty

  • celerity (swiftness)

• does this work?

  • much research in criminology concludes that deterrence effects are weak/non-existent

    • or even that certain deterrence strategies increase crime

  • some people (often non-academics) assert that evidence for robust deterrence effects is patently obvious

  • Mears/Stafford (2025) argue tat deterrence theory and research is currently inadequate

  • safest empirical conclusion: “we don’t know”

    • most research does not extinguish effect of incapacitation on reducing crime from deterrence

    • almost all research focuses on punishment severity only

    • crime has both costs/benefits, but research focuses only on costs

  • similar to Mears/Stafford, Wortley argues that existing deterrence theory and research is inadequate

    • ex: difficult to know what would happen if deterrence was eliminated completely

      • what is it was drastically reduced?

• it’s possible that offenders — at least to some extent — do think differently?

  • rational choice perspective explore this idea

rational choice perspective

• situational decision-making approach was developed by Cornish/Clarke (1985)

  • NOT a theory

    • even though often called one → not falsifiable

    • instead, it’s a “heuristic device or conceptual tool”

      • practical/good enough for purpose of understanding offender decision-making

• argues that offenders mostly focus on immediate situational factors rather than distal (medium- and long-term) legal system factors

• specifically, offenders weigh perceived benefits of a specific crime against perceived costs of committing that crime

  • perceptions follow an imperfect “bounded rationality” model rather than a perfect “expected utility” model

    • perceptions influenced by cognitive abilities, availability of relevant information, emotional states, and available time to make decisions

• perceptions are subjective, not objective

rational choice/crime

• many studies have investigated offender decision-making

  • quantitative interveiws

  • self-report questionnaires

  • scenarios

  • simulations

• burglar examples in the slides

beyond rational choice

• concept of bounded rationality implies that there are limits to which offenders can truly make rational decisions

• however, much evidence also suggests that offenders sometimes make objectively irrational decisions, even when they should know better — why?

• four main factors that may induce irrational decision-making:

  • thinking fast (sub-consciously)

  • cognitive biases

  • hot decisions (emotional arousals)

  • cognitive impairments (his edition — not in text)

• when thinking about these factors, consider that they affect all humans, including:

  • criminals

  • police officers

thinking fast

• below level of rational thought; thinking just happens

• refers to decisions-making that occurs without much conscious effort and therefore happens somewhat automatically

  • sometimes because of experience/practice (become second nature to some)

    • opportunity → action

  • sometimes reflexively (automatically pretty much)

    • provocation → violence

• if thinking were slowed down and situation were deliberated more, decisions might change

  • “seemed like a good idea at the time”

cognitive biases

• specific type of “fast” thinking

  • AKA “rules of thumb”

  • AKA “heuristic shortcuts” → still prone to systemic error sometimes

• these biases are not necessarily a “bad thing”

  • in fact, rule of thumb are an essential adaptive strategy for efficiently processing information

  • conclusions based on rules of thumb are often correct, that’s why they’re useful

• however, they can lead to irrational decisions/negative outcomes

• textbook discusses 10 different cognitive biases to look over

• *****note that cognitive biases are typical of “fast” thinking, but are also often used even when thinking “slow”*****

• prospect theory was developed to describe how people make decisions about risks/rewards and describers four cognitive biases:

  • loss aversion

  • diminishing sensitivity

  • certainly principle

  • probability weightings

loss aversion

• people assign more cognitive weight to losses compared to gains of equal magnitude

  • less obvious example related to crime is that citizens tend to weigh bad experiences w/ the police far more than positive experiences

  • strong preferences to avoid loses compared to acquiring gains results in notable behavior consequences

  • research has shown that when faced w/ possibility of loss, individuals often take long-shot gambles that have a small chance of completely avoiding the loss at the probable cost of making the magnitude of loss even worse

    • other words → individuals often engage in maladaptive self-defeating behaviors in an effort to to avoid losses

• common examples:

  • gambling (“chasing losses”)

  • investing (“throwing good money after bad”)

  • war/conflicts (“fighting a losing battle"“)

  • lying (“digging a hole”)

  • relationships (“we’ve come this far”)

  • crime → resistance to police authority

cognitive impairment

• if an individual’s brain is not functioning correctly due to drugs, alcohol, or mental illness, then rational decision-making may not be possible

• cognitive impairment implicated in many crimes

  • sometimes, it appears rationality is abandoned