CRJS 240: Exam #2

What is forensic psychology also known as?

Criminal psychology

Forensic Psychology

The application of psychological theory and behavioral treatment to crime and law

What are psychologists primarily focused on?

Nonmedical interventions like psychotherapy and counseling

Forensic Psychiatry

A medical subspeciality that applies psychiatry to crime prevention and solution, criminal, rehabilitation, and issues criminal law

What are psychiatrists also known as?

Medical doctors who can prescribe medications and often treat more complex psychiatric conditions

What are some of the fundamental assumptions of psychological and psychiatric theories of crime causations?

The individual is the primary unit of analysis; personality is the major motivation element within individuals because it is the source of motives; crime results from abnormal, dysfunctional, or inappropriate mental processes within the personality

What are some of the causes of defective, abnormal, mental processes?

Mental illness or personality disorder, inappropriate learning or improper conditioning, the emulation of inappropriate role models, and adjustment to inner conflicts

What are the two major ideas that characterized early psychological theories?

Personality and behaviorism

How does personality relate to early psychological theories?

Built on cognitive science, including personality disturbances, moral development, and disease of the mind

How does behaviorism relate to early psychological theories?

Examines social learning with an emphasis on behavioral conditioning

What is a personality disorders?

A personality disorder is a lifelong mental health condition that affects how you behave and feel about others and yourself which often causes distress or impairment

What is a personality disorder broadly referred to as?

Psychopathology

What do personality disorders tend to affect?

The way you think, how you feel, how you interact with others, and your ability to control impulses

What is the “DSM” is the DSM-5-TR stand for?

Diagnostic Statistical Manual (of Mental Disorders)

How many clusters of disorders are there according to the DSM-5-TR?

3

What is included in Cluster A Disorders (DSM-5-TR)?

Distorted thinking, distrustful and eccentric behaviors and thoughts, including paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal personality disorders

What is included in Cluster B Disorders (DSM-5-TR)?

Dramatic, emotion, or erratic behaviors; includes borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder

What is included in Cluster C Disorders (DSM-5-TR)?

Anxious or fearful behavior; includes avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders

What does the 5 in the DSM-5-TR stand for?

5th Edition

What does ASPD present as?

A pattern of unconcern or disinterest in the right and needs of others, often paired with a tendency for impulsivity and lack of remorse

What does ASPD stand for?

Antisocial Personality Disorder

What is ASPD often called?

Psychopathy

Psychopathy is not a formal what?

Clinical diagnosis

What do behavior patterns individuals with ASPD have tend to do?

Bring them repeatedly into conflicts with society

What is the defining characteristic of ASPD?

Poverty of affect

What is the poverty of affect?

The inability to accurately imagine how others think and feel

How can those with ASPD outwardly appear?

Well-adjusted and happy, making a positive impression that may prompt others to trust them

What are early indicators of ASPD?

Bedwetting, cruelty to animals, fire-setting, lying, lack of respect for authority, and stealing

What are some characteristics of ASPD?

Superficial charm and “good intelligence,” absence of delusions, hallucinations, or other signs of psychosis, absence of nervousness or psychoneurotic manifestations, inability to feel guilt or shame, unreliability, chronic lying, ongoing antisocial behavior, poor judgment and inability to learn from experience, an impersonal trivial, and poorly integrated sex life, unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations, failure to follow any life plan, and self-centeredness and incapacity to love

What is the cause of psychopathy?

Not exactly known, but experts suspect a combination of environment, experiential, and genetic factors

What percentage of people with ASPD have a close relative who also has the condition?

20%

In a large twin study in 2017, what did the find about ASPD?

50% of ASPD traits may be hereditary

What are some environmental and experiential factors of ASPD?

Childhood neglect, trauma and other adverse experiences such as childhood abuse, and growing up with people with ASPD or other mental health conditions

Is sociopathy another informal, non-clinical term?

Yes

Sociopathy

Tends to refer to individuals with primarily “nurture-based” antisocial personality disorder manifested in aggressively antisocial behavior and lack of empathy

What are some of the characteristics of sociopaths?

Tend to be nervous and easily agitated and outward/visible aggressiveness

What is the thought to be the cause of sociopathy?

Childhood trauma/abuse

Is it impossible for sociopaths to form attachments with others?

No, just difficult

Psychological Profiling

The attempt to categorize, understand, and predict the behavior of certain types of offenders based on behavioral clues they provide

Where does the FBI provide psychological profiling training?

Quantico, VA academy in the behavioral science unit

Who created trait theory?

German psychologist Hans Eysenk

Trait Theory

Psychological traits are primarily inherited and stable over one’s life even as we mature, move from place to place, etc, our personality remains largely intact

Who coined the term psychoanalysis in 1896?

Sigmund Freud

What happened to psychoanalysis concepts into the 1900’s?

Applied by others to criminal behavior

How does psychoanalysis view criminal behavior?

Maladaptive, or the product of inadequacies in the offender’s personality

What are the three components of personality according to Freud?

Id, ego, superego

Id

Operates on the pleasure principle, full and instant gratification of needs; most people are not fully aware of the urges that manifest from the id

Ego

Primarily charged with reality testing, mediating; emphasizes how objectives can best be accomplished and develops strategies that maximize pleasure and minimize pain

Superego

The moral guide to right and wrong; the conscience; guides the ego to select strategies that are socially and ethically acceptable

What does the psychoanalytic perspective suggest about criminals?

A poorly developed superego might result in criminal behavior

What is behavioral conditioning also known as?

Classical conditioning

Behavioral Conditioning

A psychological principle that holds the frequency of any behavior can be increased or decreased through reward (associated with stimuli)

What is an example of a behavioral conditioning?

Pavlov’s dogs

Who coined modeling theory?

Bandura

Modeling Theory

A form of social learning theory that asserts people learn how to behave by modeling themselves after other who they have had the opportunity to observe

What did researchers find in relation to modeling theory

Found that people tend to imitate those they spend more time with and modeling tends to be top-down

What does top-down mean in modeling theory?

Imitating those who are older, have more authority, or high social status

Sociological theories refer to a group of perspectives that focus on what?

The nature of the relationships that exists between social groups and the influences of various social phenomena on human behavior

What are the three areas of focus for sociological theories?

Social structure, social process, and social life

Social Structure

The stable pattern of social relationships that exists within a society

Social Process

The interaction between and among social institutions, individuals, and groups

Social Life

The ongoing and (typically) structured interaction that occurs between persons in a society, including socialization and social behavior in general

What are the three key sociological explanations for crime?

Crime is the result of an individual’s location within the structure of society, crime is the product of various social processes, especially inappropriate socialization and social learning, and crime is the product of class struggle

What are the three major types of social structure theories?

Social disorganization theory, cultural conflict theory, and strain theory

Who invented social organization theory?

Emile Durkheim

Social Disorganization Theory

Identifies the breakdown of social institutions, such as the family, the economy, education and religion, as a factor in crime causation

What did Durkheim believe about crime?

It is a normal part of all societies and law was a symbol of social solidarity

Who created the concept social pathology?

Park and Burgess

Social Pathology

A concept that compares society to a physical organism and that sees criminality as an illness or disease

How does social disorganization/pathology arise?

When a group is faced with social change, uneven adaption to new cultures, lack of consensus, and/or social conflict

How did Park and Burgess view cities?

In five concentric zones each having its own unique characteristics wherein unique populations and typical forms of behavior could be found

The “Chicago School”

Identified a tendency for crime to be associated with urban transition zones characterized by lower property values, low-income households, and a general lack of privacy

What are the five “Chicago School” zones?

Central business district → zone of transition → zone of independent workers’ homes → zone of better residences → commuter’s zone

Broken Windows Theory

The idea that visibly deteriorating buildings/neighborhoods and the prevalence of minor crimes will lead to more serious crimes and an increase in public fear

How to combat broken windows theory?

Repairing/revitalizing old or derelict buildings and aggressively cracking down on minor crimes will discourage other crimes and reassure community members

Culture Conflict Theory

A sociological perspective on crime that suggest criminality results from a clash of values between variously socialized groups over what is acceptable or proper behavior

Subcultures

A group of people within a society who hold different values from the society at large

Who made the idea of cultural transmission?

Shaw and McKay

Cultural Transmission

Through a process of social communication, crime/delinquency is “transmitted” (passed on) through successive generations of people living in the same area

When thinking about cultural transmission, what question do you ask?

Does is have more to do with the environment itself, and less to do with the people living there?

What is the premise of strain theory?

A sociological and criminological theory where members of society feel pressure to achieve socially valued goals that they may lack the legitimate means to achieve, causing a strain that may lead some individuals to commit crimes

Who developed strain theory?

Robert K. Merton

Relative Deprivation

A sense of social or economic inequality experienced by those who are unable to achieve legitimate success within the surrounding society which suggests that inconsistencies in the ability to achieve the American Dream are to blame for most criminal activity

Who developed GST is 1992?

Robert Agnew

General Strain Theory (GST)

A reformulation of strain theory that suggests that law-breaking behavior is a coping mechanism that enables those who engage in it to deal with the socioemotional problems generated by negative social relations

Social Process Theories

Theories that suggest that criminal behavior is learned in interaction with others and that socialization and learning processes occur as the result of group membership and relationships

What are some examples of social process theories?

Social learning theory and labeling theory

Children of those who have been incarcerated are about six times _____ _____ to go to prison than children of parents who have never been incarcerated

More likely

What are some of the explanations for why children of those who have been incarcerated are more likely to also be incarcerated?

Children are inheriting some type of biological predisposition to criminal behavior form their parents (contemporary biological/biosocial theories), modeling or imitating their parents’ criminal behavior (modeling theory or social learning theory), caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy after being labeled “deviant” by others (labeling theory), single-parent households may have less supervision

Social Learning Theory

A perspective that places primary emphasis upon the role of communication and socialization in the acquisition of learning patterns of criminal behavior and the values that support that behavior

According to social learning theory, criminal behavior can be learned in the same way that what can be learned?

Behaviors

What is the textbook definition of labeling theory?

Society’s response to known or suspected offenders determines the individual’s future incidence of criminality by reducing the behavior options available to labeled offenders

What is the regular definition of labeling theory?

Those who are labeled as being prone to deviant/criminal behavior are more likely to become and/or continue to be deviant or criminal

Why is labeling theory a valid explanation for deviance?

Because that’s what society expects of those labeled “deviant,” those with negative labels are more likely to be limited to associating with people who actually are deviant/criminal, negative labels can reduce the legitimate options available to individuals who are also labeled

What is labeling theory associated with?

The concepts of self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotpying

Tagging

What happens to offenders following arrest, conviction, and sentencing; once a person has been defined as bad, few legitimate opportunities remain open to him or her

What is the difference between primary deviance and secondary deviance?

Primary deviance is the initial act of deviance, secondary deviance is the continued acts of deviance, especially from forced association with other offenders

What does labeling theory help explain?

Either primary or secondary deviance, or both, depending on the circumstance

Life-Course Criminology

A developmental perspective that draws attention to the fact that criminal behavior tends to follow a distinct pattern across the life cycle

Criminality is relatively ______ during childhood (LCC)

Uncommon