cognitive

• Kohlberg's theory: moral development that we experience, criminals have a different level of moral reasoning to non-criminals

  • you can assess moral reasoning through a series of dilemmas - Heinz Dilemma
• dilemmas:

  • pre-conventional morality; doing what is right due to the fear of punishment or personal gain - rewards to avoid punishment
  • conventional morality: doing what is right according to the majority, since it is your duty to help develop society
  • post-conventional morality: doing what is right even though it breaks the law since its restrictive - ethical principles
• criminals are most likely to be in pre-conventional morality state, as they offend to reach satisfaction as a reward from crime - less sophisticated reasoning

  • criminals have child-like reasoning that is immature
  • they commit a crime to attempt to avoid punishment
• Kohlerg's study (1973): found that violent youths had significantly lower moral reasoning than non-violent youths
• evaluation:

  weaknesses:

  • too simple to ultimately say that all criminals are in the pre-conventional stage, you can commit crime and still have moral reasoning
  • self-report, demand characteristics and figure out aim of study
  • artificial, hypothetical situation does not truthfully represent how they would act in real life moral dilemmas