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

Psychopathy

Racial profiling

Risk-Need-Responsivity

Secondary deviance

Social cognitive theory

Social labeling theory

Social learning theory