Chapter 3- Understanding Crime Key Terms

Adverse experience

Human experience that is negative and influences people’s lives, although not traumatic in an acutely life-threatening sense.

Anomie

A sense of alienation or meaninglessness.

Antisocial personality disorder

A pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.

Biological theories of crime

An explanation for the causes of criminal behavior that uses heredity and constitutional characteristics of the lawbreaker.

Classical conditioning

A procedure in which one learns to associate a new response with a stimulus.

Classical school of criminology

The point of view, which evolved in the 1700s and 1800s, emphasizing the role of free will and cost-benefit analysis in determining criminal behavior.

Concordance rate

The extent of similarity in a behavior or characteristic between twins.

Containment theory

The proposition that societal pressure controls the rate of crime.

Control theory

The proposition that people will act in an antisocial way unless they are prevented from doing so.

Correctional psychology

Application of psychological assessment and intervention to those individuals involved in the correctional system, including those on probation, parole, incarcerated, or involved in alternative, community-based dispositions to offending.

Criminology

The study of crime and criminal behavior.

Differential association reinforcement theory

A learning theory approach that asserts that criminal behavior is the result of socialization into a system of values that is conducive to violations of the law.

Dizygotic twins

Commonly called fraternal twins, occurring when two eggs are fertilized.

Executive function

The cognitive ability to plan and regulate behavior.

Extraversion

The personality cluster characterized by outgoing orientation, enthusiasm, and optimism.

Forensic psychology

The specialized sub-discipline involving the application of scientific findings and knowledge to questions and issues related to the legal system.

Good Lives Model

A correctional rehabilitation theory that is strengths-based and uses principles of risk, need, and responsivity to promote outcomes that are broader than recidivism.

Learning theory

A form of criminological theory that emphasizes how specific criminal behaviors are learned directly from reinforcement and modeling influences.

Monozygotic twins

Commonly called identical twins, multiple births that occur when a single egg is fertilized to form one zygote, which then divides into two embryos.

Neuroticism

A major dimension of personality involving the tendency to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, and depression, often accompanied by distressed thinking and behavior.

Operant learning

A form of learning in which the consequences of a behavior influence the likelihood of its being performed in the future.

Positivist school of criminology

A point of view that emphasized that criminal behavior by a person was determined, rather than a product of free will.

Primary deviance

Behavior that violates a law or norm for socially acceptable conduct.

Proportionality in sentencing

The nature and duration of the sentence should correspond to the seriousness of the offense.

Psychological theories of crime

Scientific principles that are formulated and applied to the analysis and understanding of cognitive and behavioral phenomena.

Psychopathy

A personality disorder characterized by a long-term pattern of antisocial behavior and personal characteristics such as shallow emotion, limited capacities for guilt and empathy, and failure to learn from experience.

Racial profiling

The police practice of using race as a factor in determining actions such as traffic stops, arrests, and questioning of suspcts.

Risk-Need-Responsivity

A theory that describes three separate considerations (risk, need, responsivity) involving interventions for criminal offenders.

Secondary deviance

Creating or increasing the deviant identity of a person using official labels of formal legal sanctions.

Social cognitive theory

The theory that focuses on the role of cognitive processes in social interactions.

Social labeling theory

The theory that the stigma of being branded deviant by society can influence an individual’s belief about himself or herself.

Social learning theory

A theory of human behavior suggesting that social behavior is learned by observing and imitating others’ behavior.

Social-psychological theory of crime

A group of theories that propose that crime is learned in a social context; they differ about what is learned and how it is learned.

Sociological theories of crime

A group of theories that maintain that crime results from social or cultural contexts (family, school/workplace, peer groups, community, society). The various theories emphasize different social features and differ on the social causes of crime.

Stimulation-seeking theory

Theory suggesting that the thrill-seeking and disruptive behaviors of a psycopath serve to increase sensory input and raise arousal to a more tolerable level. As a result, the psychopathic person seems “immune” to many social cues that govern behavior.

Structural explanations

A key concept of structural approaches is that certain groups of people suffer fundamental inequalities in opportunities that impair their ability to achieve the goals valued by society.

Subcultural explanations

The subcultural version of sociological theory maintains that a conflict of norms held by different groups causes criminal behavior. This conflict arises when various groups endorse subcultural norms, pressuring their members to deviate from the norms underlying the criminal law.

Threat assessments

A process that involves carefully considering the nature of the threat, the risk posed by the individual making it, and the indicated response to reduce the risk of harmful action.

Trauma

An emotional response to a very threatening or stressful event.

Vicarious learning

Learning by observing the actions of another person and their outcomes.