Social cognition and offending

What is impersonal cognition

• Our perception and understanding of the physical world around us

• Eg visual perception and auditory perception

What is Interpersonal cognition

• Our perception and understanding of the social world around us

• The capacity to understand other people and to solve problems in social situations

What is social cognition

• The perception of social cues and whether we pick up on this around us

• The understanding of social cues 

• Impulsivity, whether we act before we think

• Our attitudes, beliefs and values 

• Empathy, whether we are able to understand another person’s emotional state 

Social cognition and offending 

• Offenders typically show poorer social skills and show distinct patterns of social cognition

• Poor self control and greater impulsivity 

• Concrete reasoning skills'

• External locus of control

• Less empathy and poor social perspective taking skills

• Poor social problem solving skills 

How is impulsivity associated with antisocial behavior

• A range of terminology can be used eg impulsivity, self control, risk taking, hyperactivity

• Findings show that impulsivity is associated with antisocial behavior/offending (Farrington, 2005)

How is empathy associated with antisocial behavior

• Empathy is proposed to be positively related to prosocial and altruistic behavior 

• Negatively related to antisocial behavior and offending 

Empathy (Joliffe and Farrington, 2004) meta analysis

• 35 studies examining empathy in offenders vs non offenders

• 21 cognitive empathy, 14 affective empathy

• For all 35 studies it was found that offenders have lower empathy

• Cognitive empathy was more strongly related to offending

What is the 6 step model of social information processing (Crick and Dodge, 1994)

1. Encoding of social cues

2. Interpretation of social cues and mental representation of the social situation

3. Clarification of goals for social situation

4. Response access or construction

5. Response decision

6. Behavioral enactment

This is a circle model not linear

What is cognitive empathy

The ability to understand other peoples emotional state

What is affective empathy 

The ability to share other people’s emotional state 

What is encoding of cues

• A child will notice and select relevant situational cues, timing and silence from the environment 

• Internal cues are influenced by social scheme and scripts

• Selective attention to situational and internal cues

• Emotion recognition

• Empathic responsiveness

What is interpretation of cues

• Cues that have been encoded are used to interpret social situations and build a mental representation of it

• We may consider who/what caused the situation

• Or we may consider what is the intent of the other person/people in the situation

What is clarification of goals 

• The child will decide upon a goal or desired outcome for the situation

• Choice of goals are influenced by an individual’s goal orientation and motivations

• The choice of goal guides the response 

What is response access/construction

• The child will access possible responses from memory or past experiences to create a new one

• Or new responses are constructed

What is response decision

• The child will evaluate potential responses based on:

• Probable outcomes

• Self efficacy, with reference to goals, eg can i do this?

• Likelihood of success

• Social appropriateness

• Ease of execution

• Then they will choose a response

What is behavioral enactment

• The behavior is enacted and the child carries out the chosen response

• Their social skills ,communication and emotional regulation influence how well the behavior is enacted

What is social information processing influenced by 

• All steps are influenced by a ‘database’ 

• Memories, social knowledge and internal social schema are all based on past experiences

How is social information processing influenced by aggression and offending

• There are distinct patterns of social information processing among aggressive people and offenders (De Castro, Van Dijk, 2018)

• However most research is to do with children/adolescents but more recent work has extended to adults

How does aggression/offending influence encoding of cues

• Less information will be collected

• Only recent cues are remembered better

• Attentional bias to hostile/aggressive cues

How does aggression'/offending influence interpretation of cues 

• Hostile attributional bias 

• In ambiguous situations, there is an increased likelihood of interpreting a hostile intent to other people'

• Whereas in external attributions of causality, there is an increased likelihood of blaming others or external factors 

How does aggression/offending influence clarification of goals

• Inappropriate goals

• Goals may be based off revenge or dominance

How does aggression/offending influence response access/construction

• More likely to rely on previous responses than generate new ones

• There are fewer effective responses

• Aggressive, avoidant, antisocial retrieval as opposed to pro social 

How does aggression/offending influence response decision

• Evaluated by criteria

• ‘Positive outcomes’ that are in line with their goals are seen as more likely to result from aggressive responses

How does aggression/offending influence behavioral enactment

• Lead to poor social skills

• Poor behavioral choices

SIP and aggression/offending (Lanford, et al 2006)

• N= 576, aged 4/5 years, data is also collected at 7/8 years, 12/13 years and 15/16 years

• Measured SIP using videos and pictures 

• Incorporated a child behavior checklist monitoring externalizing behavior

• Mother reports at all times, teacher reports the first 3 times and self report at 15/16 years  

• Multiple steps of SIP were looked at eg early steps such as encoding cues or later steps such as choosing goals

How did (Lanford et al 2006) use a profile analysis to evaluate SIP and aggression/offending 

• Based children into 4 groups and looked at how membership in these profiles related to externalizing behavior

• 1.No SIP problems 

• 2. Early step SIP problems, issues in encoding or hostile attributions

• 3. Later step SIP problems, problems in the later steps, generating aggressive responses

• 4. Pervasive SIP problems, problems spanning both early and later steps 

What were the findings for (Lanford et al 2006) study

• Children with later step SIP problems or pervasive SIP problems showed higher levels of externalizing behavior

• Some children changed profiles

• There was a higher proportion of girls in no SIP problem group at all times

What is reactive aggression

• Aggressive behavior as a response to perceived threat

• There is an association between reactive aggression and attentional bias

• Use of experimental/implicit tasks to measure attentional bias

• Associated with early SIP steps, encoding and interpretation of cues

What is proactive aggression

• Planned aggression to achieve a specific outcome/goal

• There is an association between proactive aggression and an expected rewards/benefits of aggressive behavior 

• Explicit and implicit tasks can be used to measure bias towards aggressive behavior 

• Later SIP stages, response generation and response evaluation/choice 

What influences SIP?

• Evidence shows that SIP patterns are established quite early in childhood

• Main influence on children is parenting

• Harsh parental discipline correlates with poor social information processing and high aggression in children

• Parental endorsement of aggression is associated in children

Social cognition and gender

• Males typically engage in more antisocial behavior, aggression and violence than females

• Could be due to differential development of social cognitive skills between females and males

• There is some evidence that females acquire social cognitive skills earlier than men

Gibbs’ sociomoral reasoning 

• 4 stage theory of sociomoral development

• Immature reasoning:

• Stage 1- importance of powerful people and physical consequences of behavior, little amount of perspective taking

• Stage 2- some limited understanding of social interactions, cost/benefit deals of behavior

• Mature reasoning:

• Stage 3- importance of interpersonal relationships

• Stage 4- understanding of complex social systems 

Sociomoral reasoning and offending-

• Stage 1- law breaking is justified if punishment is avoided

• Stage 2- law breaking is justified if the gains/reward outweigh the risks/costs

• Stage 3- law breaking is justified if it helps to maintain relationships

• Stage 4- law breaking is justified if it helps to maintain society or if it is sanctioned by social instuitions

Why are offenders more prone to sociomoral reasoning

• Developmental delay in sociomoral reasoning

• Self serving cognitive distortions

• Main cognitive distortion for immature sociomoral reasoning is egocentric bias

• Pervasive at immature stages (1 and 2)

• Egocentricity is common amongst offenders

Gibbs’ ‘secondary’ cognitions 

• Blaming others or external factors rather than oneself for behavior that harms other people

• Hostile attributional bias 

• Minimizing consequences/mislabeling of own antisocial behavior to reduce feelings of guilt and regret 

• (Helmond et al, 2015 + Wallinius et al 2011)

Development of sociomoral reasoning

• It is the role of peers to provide opportunities for social perspective taking, through interactions

• There is a weak link between sociomoral reasoning levels of parent and children

• However there is an association between child rearing practices (how the children are raised) and sociomoral reasoning

• Eg inductive discipline, discipline that explains why a behavior was wrong and how it affects others

• High parental warmth/low parental rejection that creates secure attachment

• Supportive but challenging environment when discussing moral issues

• Democratic family decision making, families where children do have a voice

What is sociomoral reasoning

The cognitive processes involved in making moral judgements within social contexts.

What is the rational choice theory (Cornish and Clarke, 1986)

• All individuals use cognitive strategies when deciding how to behave

• This theory is about the decision whether to commit crime and the costs/benefits

• Offenders seek to benefit from their crime, this involves a cost/benefit evaluation, hence ‘rational’

• However decision making is subjective as is the desired outcome and individual differences in weight are assigned to costs and benefits

• Decision making can take place at the scene of crime and takes into account environmental information

Cost/benefit of committing a crime

• Costs:

• Consequences of getting caught (arrest, conviction, prison)

• Family/friends disapproval

• Benefits:

• Material goods eg money

• Instrumental benefits eg status

Rational choice theory example

• Burglary

• Burglars are not opportunistic and typically plan their crime, fitting RCT assumptions

• Planning of targets, what makes a house an ‘attractive’ target

• Eg a burglar may not approach a house with security devices and dogs

• Have to weigh rewards and risk of getting caught and make a decision

Rational choice theory implications

• Situational crime prevention

• Reduce opportunity to commit crime

• Harden or remove target

• Increase risk of detection eg formal (CCTV) or informal surveillance (Neighborhood watch)

• Street lighting