criminal psychology key terms

Role model

A person who is admired and imitated

Vicarious reinforcement

Seeing someone else rewarded for their behaviour

Direct reinforcement

Being rewarded for your own behaviour

Internalisation

A behaviour becomes a habit - will continue with or without reward or punishment

Imitation

People recall behaviours and reproduce them in their own actions

Observation

People pay attention to behaviours and retain them in memory

Identification

The process where a person aligns themselves with another

Social norm

What is considered socially acceptable

Deviation from norm

Different from what is normally socially acceptable

Social construct

Something that isn’t real but exists because people in society have created it or agreed it is a ‘thing’