COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS

→ Errors and biases in people’s information processing characterised by faulty thinking

~Hostile Attribution Bias~

→ The tendency to judge ambiguous situations or the actions of others as aggressive and threatening when they are not - this in turn leads to a disproportionate, violent response

Schoenberg & Justye (2014):

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

• When compared with a control group, they were deemed to be significantly more likely to perceive the images as angry and hostile

Dodge & Frame (1982)

• They found that children who have been identified as ‘aggressive and ‘rejected’ prior to the study (watching videos) viewed the situation as more hostile than those classed as ‘non-aggressive’ and ‘accepted’

~Minimalisation~

→ A type of deception that involves downplaying the significance of an event or emotion

→ It is a common strategy when dealing with guilt

→ Is elsewhere referred to as the application of a ‘euphemistic label’ (e.g. burglars may describe themselves as just doing the job)

→ Studies suggest that sexual offences are particularly prone to minimalisation

Barbaree (1991):

• Found that among 26 incarcerated rapists, 54% denied they had committed an offence at all, and a further 40% minimised the harm they had caused the victim

Pollack & Hashmall (1991)

• Found that 35% of a sample of child molestors argued that their crime was non-sexual (they were just being ‘affectionate’), and 36% stated that the victim had consented