cog

• Cognitive distortions:

  • Faulty and irrational ways of thinking, causing people to perceive themselves, the others and the world inaccurately and usually negatively - leading to faulty behaviours (aggression)
  • 2 cognitive distortions: 

  1. Hostile attribution bias
  2. Minimisation 
• Hostile attribution bias:

  • Violence is often caused by the perception that other people's acts are aggressive
  • People may be perceived as being confrontational when they are not 
  • This attributes blame to the victim - justifying offenders own actions 
• Minimisation:

  • Downplay/minimise the seriousness of an offence - justify the crime to themselves
  • This reduces feelings of guilt 
• Moral reasoning:

  Morality = what a person thinks is right or wrong - impacting their choices or behaviours 

  Kohlberg's levels of morality:

  • Believes that criminals work at a different level of morality reasoning to non-criminals 
  • The development of morality is linked to cognitive development 
  • Used 'moral dilemmas' to assess this
• kohlbergs levels of morality:

  pre-conventional - punishment and self-interest

  conventional - social approval and law&order

  post-conventional - social contract and ethical principles
• • Kohlberg believed criminals were pre-conventional 
  • Criminals have a lack of reflection or self awareness - they don’t care about social approval 
  • They have a more simplistic assessment of right and wrong  - assess if they will be punished or rewarded - self interest  (preconventional thinking)
• supportive evidence for moral reasoning: Kohlberg found that a group of violent youths had lower levels of moral development (preconventional ) when presented with moral dilemmas, compared with controls(social background controlled) - moral reasoning is able to explain why people exhibit criminal behaviour as it supports Kohlberg’s link that criminals operate preconventionally. Increases external validity - explanation that criminal behaviour is caused by preconventional moral reasoning. furthermore, other research has also found criminals have less mature moral reasoning than non-criminals
• opposing evidence for moral reasoning: Raide et al – financial crimes are more likely to show preconventional thinking as they’re often premeditated, as opposed those who carry out impulsive crimes – preconventional moral reason tends to be more associated with crimes where offenders believe they have a good chance at avoiding punishment - suggests moral reasoning is not a full explanation of criminal behaviour as it is unable to explain crimes where individuals act on impulse. - indicates that moral reasoning can describe criminal behaviour but cannot actually explain it

   
• supporting evidence for hostile attribution bias:  Justye et al – 55 violent offenders shown pictures of ambiguous facial expressions – when they were compared with a non-aggressive control group, they were more likely to see the faces as angry - This shows that the theory can explain why some offenders are violent and so commit aggressive crimes as the research provides evidence that offenders interprets ambiguous faces as angry -  However, research used a small sample size, meaning that the results may not be able to be accurately generalised to other criminals 

   
• supporting evidence for minimisation: Sexual offenders are prone to minimisation. 

  Barbaree – 26 incarcerated rapists, 54% denied committing the offence, 40% minimised harm they’d caused (minimising guilt) - criminal behaviour can be explained by minimisation as it is a thought process used to minimise their guilt and maintain their positive self schema. - However, this only shows the link between minimisation and explaining sexual offences – it may not explain other crimes