Theories of Violent Offending

Violent Offending Theories

Outline

  • Violent offending includes various behaviors.

  • Its prevalence varies.

  • Understanding who engages in violent offending is crucial.

  • Theories attempt to explain why people engage in violent offending.

  • The effectiveness of these theories varies.

  • The necessity of having theories of violent offending is questioned.

The Importance of Theories

  • Effective interventions require a good theory of the key phenomena.

Key Reading

  • Polaschek, D. L. L. (2019). The Psychology of Violent Offending. University of Waikato (Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato), New Zealand.

Theories of Violent Offending

  • Neurobiological theories

  • Single factor theories

    • Psychopathy

    • Patriarchy

  • Typologies of aggression

    • Reactive vs. instrumental aggression

  • Theories of aggressive behavior

    • The General Aggression Model

  • Specialization in violent offending

  • Developmental theories of crime

Neurobiological Theories

  • Biological variables associated with violence:

    • Inheritable temperament factors

    • Low constraint

    • High negative emotionality

    • Low resting heart rate

    • Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) metabolism

    • Less developed pre-frontal cortical structures

    • Serotonin metabolism

  • Lower heart rate is correlated with lower fearfulness and anxiety, leading to higher violence.

  • Childhood trauma strongly associated with future violence.

  • Sensation seeking is linked to higher levels of boredom.

Limitations of Neurobiological Theories

  • Limited research linking neurobiology and future violent behavior.

  • Many studies are better characterized as "marker studies."

  • It is unclear how differences in brain structure identified with psychopathy or criminal history may be beneficial in understanding violence.

  • Dangerous to assume causal relationships when they are merely correlational.

  • Life experiences might lead to changes in brain functions.

Single Factor Theories - Psychopathy

  • Higher scores on measures of psychopathy are associated with violent offending.

  • However, generic antisocial behavior and lifestyle features of psychopathy are the most strongly associated with violence.

  • Personality trait facets are much less strongly associated with violence (e.g., Yang et al., 2010).

  • Criminal history may be the best predictor of future behavior.

Single Factor Theories – the Gendered Theory of IPV

  • Patriarchal views are seen as underpinning violence committed in relationships.

  • It posits a pattern of behavior men use against female partners.

Evaluating the Gendered Theory of IPV

  • Attitudes and beliefs about violence towards women remain an important risk factor for violence, particularly within relationships.

  • Limited treatment effectiveness of programs solely targeting patriarchal attitudes (Gannon et al., 2019).

  • Men’s violence is not solely motivated by patriarchal beliefs; women’s violence is not solely motivated by self-defense (Dixon et al., 2021).

  • It cannot account for:

    • Women’s perpetration/men’s victimization

    • IPV in same-sex relationships

    • Reciprocal aggression

    • Other risk factors associated with IPV

Typologies of Aggression

  • Reactive aggression

  • Instrumental aggression

Typologies of Aggression: Reactive Aggression

  • Driven by anger.

  • The immediate goal is harming the victim.

  • Often a reaction or retaliation.

  • Reinforcement from the reduction in tension.

Typologies of Aggression: Instrumental Aggression

  • Premeditated or unprovoked.

  • The victim is harmed to achieve some other goal, e.g.:

    • Gaining material goods

    • Addressing damage to social standing

    • Dispensing justice

Limitations of the Reactive-Instrumental Typology

  • Assumptions are overly simplistic.

  • Both reactive and instrumental aggression can occur rapidly without provocation.

  • Both instrumental and reactive aggression can be premeditated.

  • The same behavior can be reactive or instrumental.

  • Angry aggression is unlikely to be a specific type of aggression.

Social Interactionist Theory

  • Challenged to a fight in a bar.

  • Assault occurs, inflicting harm (proximate outcome).

  • This increases social standing AND deters others from further fights (terminal outcomes).

  • People make rational decisions; aggression is underpinned by more than one goal.

Social Learning Theory

  • Bandura doll experiment: Children imitated the behavior of adults being aggressive or playing nicely with a doll.

Social Learning Theory: Key components

  • Attention: Did you notice the behavior?

  • Retention: Can you remember the behavior?

  • Reproduction: Are you physically capable of the behavior?

  • Motivation: Do you want to perform the behavior?

  • What determines whether a behavior is imitated?

Social Learning Theory in the Real World

  • Witnessing violence, fights, parental familial guns, and threats impact behavior.

  • Child maltreatment and interparental violence are significant factors.

Social Learning Theory: Statistics

  • Individuals who experience or witness violence are more likely to engage in violence.

  • Even those who experience no maltreatment or parental violence still see 10-15% engage in violence, possibly learned from peers.

  • The majority, even those experiencing severe violence (over ¾), do not engage in violent delinquency in adulthood.

Social Learning Theory

  • Consistent with social learning theory.

  • Direct and indirect childhood exposure to violence and maltreatment within the family increased the risk of subsequent violent delinquent behavior.

  • The strongest effect occurred when children experienced AND witnessed violence.

  • Effects were mediated by parental moral authority.

  • Limitations of social learning theory:

    • 11.4% of children who did not experience violence reported engaging in violent delinquency.

    • 13% of children who did not witness violence reported engaging in violent delinquency.

  • Parental authority + parental monitoring = less violence.

Limitations of Social Learning Theory

  • Overvalues the role of observational learning.

  • Minimizes the role of cognitive factors.

  • Neglects biological factors.

  • Patterns of reinforcement are not included.

  • Cognitive factors: Abuse can lead to changes such as hypervigilance and hostile contribution bias.

  • Biological factors also play a role.

The General Aggression Model (GAM) (Allen et al., 2018)

  • Model includes multiple factors.

  • Biology and environment shape personality.

The General Aggression Model (Allen et al., 2018): Factors

  • Includes multiple factors.

  • ADHD, impaired executive functioning, hormone imbalances, low serotonin, and low arousal.

  • Cultural norms, maladaptive parenting, difficult life conditions, victimization, and violent peers/neighborhood.

  • Chronic exposure to violent media.

  • Nature + nurture = personality.

The General Aggression Model (Allen et al., 2018): Person Predisposition

  • Person's predisposition also plays a role in ending up in certain situations.

Violence-Supportive Beliefs (Polaschek et al., 2009)

  • "Beat or be beaten"

  • "I am the law"

  • "Violence is normal"

  • "I get out of control"

  • These are common beliefs from transcripts of interviews with men in prison for violence.

Hostile Attribution Bias

  • Interpret external stimuli out of cues in a more hostile way.

The General Aggression Model (Allen et al., 2018): Internal State

  • Routes include present internal state: cognition, arousal, affect; each can affect the others.

The Cognitive-Behavioral Model

  • Used in treatment to understand one's own internal experience.

  • Bidirectional arrows indicate that all aspects can impact each other.

  • Helps find interventions to break other aspects of experiences.

  • Displays present internal state aspect on the general aggression model.

The General Aggression Model (Allen et al., 2018): Outcome

  • The outcome is always a decision made.

  • Most times, the decision seems automatic – violence/aggression.

  • Immediate appraisal of the situation.

  • Consideration of whether there are sufficient cognitive resources.

  • Reappraisal may occur if the outcome is not satisfactory.

  • Even if reappraisal occurs, the decision may still be to engage in violence.

  • Target intervention: To get a better appraisal process so a nonviolent outcome is achieved.

Evaluating the GAM

  • Draws together multiple prior theories at different levels.

  • Can be applied to a range of violent offending.

  • Includes an explanation of why people may NOT be violent in some situations.

  • Informs effective methods of rehabilitation.

  • Lacks of detail about how combinations of risk factors interact.

Key Question

  • Do people specialize in violent offending?

The Case for Treating Violence as Special

  • Looked at the frequency of violent offenses compared to the frequency of overall offenses.

  • No evidence of specialization in conviction records.

  • Rates of violence convictions were proportionate to the rate of overall offenses.

  • Some evidence of specialization in self-report.

  • A few individuals had very high likelihoods of committing violent acts.

The Case Against Treating Violence as Special

  1. Violent and non-violent elements frequently co-occur within the same criminal event.

  2. For chronic offenders, the most common pattern is one of occasional violence and more frequent arrests for diverse other crimes.

  3. Risk factors for crime overlap risk factors for violent crime.

The Case Against Treating Violence as Special: Wilson (2004) Study

  • Illustrated a study looking at high-risk reoffenders.

  • Looked at criminal history total conviction of 149 people: 74.13 total convictions and 5.66 violent convictions.

  • Even among those high-risk offenders, violence is not a specialist behavior but part of a broader picture of widespread criminal behavior.

The Case Against Treating Violence as Special: Key Findings

  • Similar predictive accuracy for general and violent recidivism.

  • Lower predictive accuracy for sexual recidivism.

  • Risk measures intended to predict IPV predict both IPV and general criminal offending.

  • Conclusion: “Men arrested for IPV do not specialize in their criminal careers.”

The Integrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential Theory (Farrington, 2003)

  • Draws on Cambridge longitudinal studies.

  • Draws from earlier experiences which impact on neuro-attachment and socialization.

  • Not focused on violence just antisocial violence, violence as one of many.

  • This shows how people end up in situations where violence occurs.

  • Explains more broadly criminal behavior and antisocial behavior.

  • Limitation of model – doesn’t include why people desist from crime

Moffitt’s Typology and Violence

  • Life-Course Persistent

    • More likely to engage in all offending, including violence.

    • "biting and hitting at age 4, shoplifting and truancy at age 10, selling drugs and stealing cars at age 16, robbery and rape at age 22, and fraud and child abuse at age 30” (Moffitt, 1993, p. 679)

  • Adolescent-Limited

    • May engage in (serious) violence during adolescence.

    • Likely to move away from violence (and other offending) in adulthood

  • Consistent with the idea that violence is non-specialized.

Summary

  • There has been lots of research into why people commit violent offending.

  • This behavior cannot be explained with a single factor.

  • Multifactor theories that incorporate person- and event-related factors currently provide the best explanation of violent offending.

  • Social cognitive theories (e.g., GAM) are currently used to inform best-practice intervention.

  • The role of neurobiological factors receiving a lot of attention, but no causal mechanisms established.

  • Theories of general criminal behavior may also explain violent offending.

  • More longitudinal psychological research specifically focused on criminal violence would help to establish the uniqueness of violent offending.