Cognitive explanation

• level of moral reasoning: the way a person thinks about right and wrong. It is presumed that such thinking then applies to moral behaviour. The higher the level, the more that behaviour is driven by just avoiding punishment or avoiding the disapproval of others
• Moral development

  • Kohlberg was the first researcher to apply the concept of moral reasoning to offending behaviour
  • Kohlberg suggested that there are 3 universal levels of moral reasoning, each characterised by a certain logic. These include the pre-conventional level (punishment orientation), the conventional level (maintenance of the social order) and the post-conventional level (morality of contract and individual rights).
• Level of moral reasoning link with criminality

  • Kohlberg proposed that criminals have a childlike, immature sense of reasoning, and so reason at the pre-conventional level, whilst non-criminals will reason at the conventional or post conventional levels, thus being able to display more civilised and empathic behaviours, as suggested by Chandler (1973).
  • Individuals who reason at higher levels, tend to sympathise more with others and exhibit more conventional behaviour such as honesty, generosity and non-violence.
• Cognitive distortions: faulty, biased and irrational ways of think that mean we perceive ourselves and other people and the world inaccurately and usually negatively
• Two examples of cognitive distortions are hostile attribution bias and minimalisation
• Hostile attribution bias: The tendency to judge ambiguous situations or the actions of others as aggressive and threatening when in reality they may not be
• Hostile attribution bias

  • Offenders may misread non aggressive queues such as being 'looked at' and this may trigger a disproportionate, often violent response
  • A study was conducted and presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions. When compared with a non-aggressive matched control group the violent offenders were significantly more likely to perceive the images as angry and hostile
• Hostile attribution bias

  • The roots of this behaviour may be apparent in childhood, a similar study was conducted where children were shown a video clip of an ambiguous provocation ( where the intention was neither clearly hostile or accidental )
  • Children who had been identified as 'aggressive' prior to the study interpreted the situation as more hostile than those described as 'non-aggressive'
• Minimalisation: A type of deception that involves downplaying the significance of an event or an emotion, a common strategy when dealing with feelings of guilt
• Minimalisation

  • Burglars may describe themselves as 'doing a job' or 'supporting their family' as a way of minimising the seriousness of an offence
  • Studied have shown that individuals who commit sexual offences are particularly prone to minimilising
  • Barbaree found among 26 incarcerated rapist, 54% denied they had committed the offence at all and a further 40% minimalised the harm they had done to the victim
• A03: Evidence for the link between level of moral reasoning and crime

  • Palmer and Hollin compared moral reasoning in 332 non-offenders and 126 convicted offenders using the 'socio-moral-reflection-measure' which contained 11 moral dilemmas, such as not taking things from others and keeping a promise to a friend
  • The offender group showed less mature levels of moral reasoning
  • This supports Kohlberg's predictions
• A03: Thinking vs behaviour

  • Kohlbergs theory is useful in providing insight into the mechanics of the criminal mind- that offenders may be more child-like and egocentric when it comes to moral decisions
  • However moral decisions are not the same as moral behaviour, somebody may not decide to act on their thoughts
  • More likely to be used to describe and justify behaviour after it has happened
• A03: Cognitive distortions have real world application to therapy

  • CBT aims to challenge irrational thinking
  • In the case of offending, offenders are encouraged to face up to what they have done and establish a less distorted view of their actions
  • Studies show that reduced incidences of denial and minimalisation in therapy is highly associated with a reduced risk of reoffending
  • Theory has Practical value
• A03: One limitation is that the level of cognitive distortion depends on the offence

  • Researchers gathered questionnaire responses from sexual offenders
  • Contrary to what the researches predicted, they found that non-contact sex offenders (accessing images online) used more cognitive distortions than contact sex offenders (physically abused children)
  • those who had a previous history of offending were also more likely to use distortions as a justification
  • Suggests distortions are not used in the same way by all offenders