Cognitive Distortions (Year 13 Booklet 7)

Define cognitive distortions

Errors, biases or irrational ways of thinking

Explain how cognitive distortions can lead to offending behaviour

Inaccurate and often negative self-perception, perception of others, and the perception of the environment around us leads to offending behaviour and justification of offending

Define hostile attribution bias

A tendency to misinterpret ambiguous situations, or the actions of others to be aggressive and/or threatening when in reality, they may not be

How does hostile attribution bias explain criminality?

Offenders may misread non-aggressive cues as confrontational and this may trigger a violent response

(Supportive Evidence for Hostile Attribution bias) What research did Schonenberg + Justye (2014) conduct?

• Procedure: Presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions

• Findings: Violent offenders were significantly more likely to interpret images as angry and hostile than non-aggressive control group

What is minimalization?

A type of cognitive distortion or deception that downplays the seriousness of an offence, event or emotion

Give an example of minimalization

A burglar says they are stealing to “support my family” to make offence seem less serious

What researchers showed that sexual offenders were prone to minimization?

• Pollock and Hashmall

• Found 35% of child molesters argued their crimes were non-sexual (they were just affectionate) and 36% claimed their victims had consented

What is a criticism of Pollock and Hashmall’s research?

Self report → Social desirability bias could affect answers

What practical application has cognitive distortions got?

• Development of CBT for criminal behaviour

• Studies that reduced incidence of denial and minimalization in therapy was highly correlated with reduction in recidivism

What does it mean by saying cognitive explanations are post-hoc?

They describe what is going on in the criminal mind but fail to explain why it occurs