Development

• Crime is an act that goes against the law, which can be categorised into different categories such as violent offences, drug related offences, acquisitive offences, sexual offences, and anti-social offences.
• Psychologists believe that criminal behaviour is subjective rather than objective, meaning that criminal behaviour is a social construct, determined by society based on what is considered acceptable at that particular point in time.
• Official statistics provide a measure for crime, which can show trends and common or less common crimes.
• Researchers may also rely on self report surveys to uncover the dark figure of crime, which are anonymous and ask convicted criminals about other crimes they have committed other than the one they have been convicted for.
• Restorative justice involves the victim, encouraging the offender to take responsibility for their actions and repair the harm they've done.
• Positive role models are a way of rehabilitating offenders, as offenders need to observe others behaving in a pro social way so they have something to imitate.
• Offenders are encouraged to reintegrate into the community through restorative justice, rather than excluding themselves.
• Victim surveys allow people to report crime they have experienced even if they haven't reported it to the police.
• Social learning theory proposes that we learn all of our behaviour from others, including criminal behaviour.
• Social learning theory starts with role models, who are people we admire and respect, and then goes through a process of identification, where we decide that we want to be like these people, observe their behaviour, and imitate it.
• Vicarious reinforcement is important in social learning theory, where we observe others being rewarded for their behaviour, decide that we want the same reward, and believe that if we imitate the same behaviour we will receive the same reward.
• If behaviour is strengthened through continual reinforcement, it becomes internalised, a process where the behaviour has become a part of the person and does not have to be necessarily reinforced for it to continue.
• Nature VS Nurture is a key debate in psychology, with some psychologists believing that our behaviour and personality are inherited, and others believing that we are born on a blank slate and our behaviour and personality are developed through experience and interaction with our environment and the people around us.
• The participants in the study were 282 adolescents from 2 catholic independent schools in New South Wales, Australia, with a modal age of 14.
• The changing nature of punishment suggests that if psychologists can establish the true cause of criminal and antisocial behaviour, it is more to do with nature or nurture, there is a chance of preventing or reducing it.
• The study measured psychoticism, extraversion, self-esteem, and self-reported delinquency using a test booklet.
• Punishments such as fines, prison sentences, and community sentences are used to deter criminal behaviour and anti-social behaviour.
• Low self-esteem is often seen as a feature of neuroticism, with several psychologists arguing that delinquent youths use anti-social behaviour as a way of compensating for their low self-esteem.
• Criticisms of the study include a culturally biased sample, potential age bias, and the possibility of dropout bias affecting the results.
• Psychoticism and delinquency were positively correlated at times 1 and 2, and extraversion correlated with delinquency only at time 2, with a weaker correlation.
• Heavens' study aligned with previous research, which showed that psychoticism is associated significantly with self-reported delinquency, and supports Eysenck's idea that psychoticism is the most important part explaining the nature of delinquent behaviour.
• Psychologists were among the first to acknowledge that punishing offenders is not enough in itself to reduce crime, offenders may need to unlearn their criminal ways, and learn how they should behave, this is the idea behind rehabilitation, punishment is more about reducing criminal and antisocial behaviour, whereas rehabilitation is about promoting prosocial behaviour.
• Criticisms of social learning theory include that it only focuses on the role of nurture completely ignoring the role of nature in the explaining of criminal behaviour, and it doesn't explain how criminal behaviour started in the first place.
• Cooper and Mackie's study into the transmission of aggression through imitation and aggressive models was a response to a comment made by a paediatric surgeon at a psychiatric conference regarding the effect of violent video games on children.
• Cooper and Mackies hypothesis was that playing an aggressive video game compared to a non aggressive video game would lead to increased aggression in children.
• The method of Cooper and Mackies study involved having children play an aggressive video game and a non aggressive video game, and then measuring their aggression levels.
• Heaven's research into delinquency, extraversion, psychoticism and self-
• Eysenck argued that in extroverts the cerebral cortex is under aroused because the stimuli is restricted by the RAS.
• Eysenck believed children are born with their personality traits, he claims that those who score highly on E and N may be more resistant to early socialisation in terms of learning moral behaviour, it does not necessarily mean they are doomed to a life of crime, as nature and nurture interact.
• Eysenck's theory can be seen as being too deterministic
• Extraversion is a personality trait where individuals are outgoing, sociable and confident.
• Psychoticism is a personality trait where individuals are impulsive, aggressive and selfish.
• Eysenck's theory ignores individual differences
• According to Eysenck, criminality can be linked to under arousal of the CNS.
• Stability is a personality trait where individuals are calm, even tempered and not easily stressed.
• Neuroticism is a personality trait where individuals are anxious, angry and prone to feeling guilt.
• Eysenck suggested that psychoticism is the result to f an excess of dopaminergic neurons, which cause overproduction of dopamine by the nervous system, the excess dopamine leads to less inhibition of impulses in the brain during synaptic transmission.
• High levels of extraversion and neuroticism, according to eysenck, make people difficult to condition, people who are naturally stable and introverted learn the association between performing a criminal or nati-social act and its negative outcomes more easily, and so avoid commiting crimes in the future.
• The concept of psychoticism is not useful
• Neuroticism is related to the activity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which is activated during emotion inducing situations and regulates the activity of the brain's limbic system.