Cognitive explanations

• Hannah had a wife named Amy, who was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer and didn't have long to live.
• A pharmacist had invented a drug called Psycbustium that could totally cure Amy's cancer, but the pharmacist owned all the rights to this medication and decided to sell it at a high markup to make a big profit.
• Hannah tried fundraising to cover the costs of the medicine, but with time running out, had only managed to gather a thousand pounds, which wasn't enough to buy the medicine.
• Hannah broke into the pharmacy after hours and stole the drug, which was a right or wrong thing to do.
• Minimization is a cognitive distortion where we interpret our own behavior and the results of that behavior as less serious than it really is.
• Hostile attribution bias is a cognitive distortion where we automatically assume that the other person has had negative intentions.
• The theory developed from Karl Berg's research may not generalize to real instances of funding due to social desirability pressures and the likelihood of people answering honestly.
• Cognitive behavioral programs can be developed to challenge irrational thinking and reduce offending behavior.
• Gillian's research suggests that Kolberg's theory focuses on a male ideal of justice, minimizing the value of females and emphasizing the importance of caring.
• Karl Berg's theory is gender biased as it was developed using an all-male sample and assumes it would apply to women.
• Karl Berg's research on moral reasoning is based on responses to hypothetical dilemma questions, which are susceptible to social desirability pressures.
• Kohlberg described his theory of moral reasoning in 1969, suggesting there are three levels that we can pass through during our moral development.
• According to Kohlberg, most criminals don't ever reach the higher levels of moral reasoning and are likely to be stuck at the first pre-conventional level.
• At the pre-conventional level, people only consider how their actions will affect them personally and there are two stages to this level: punishment orientation and reward orientation.
• Stage five of post-conventional moral reasoning is a social contract view, considering that laws should be in the best interests of members of society.
• Conventional moral decisions accept society as an authority, and can be split into two stages: good intention and social obedience.
• Post-conventional moral decisions consider personal ethical principles and obey or disobey depending on deeply felt beliefs concerning some laws being just and some being unjust.
• Pre-conventional moral decisions are made based on how the actions affect the individual personally, and criminals are likely to be in this stage as they might overestimate the rewards and underestimate the risk of getting caught.
• The stage that a person is at in their moral development does not necessarily dictate their likelihood of committing a crime, but rather the thought process they go through to arrive at their decision.
• In the social obedience stage, individuals are more likely to follow the law because they consider the functioning of society as important.
• Stage six of post-conventional moral reasoning is universal ethics, where before making a decision there is an abstract level of reasoning on the true nature of justice and people in this stage may consider that true morality requires disobedience of laws not grounded in justice.
• In the good intention stage, individuals conform to society's expectations because they are worried about what others think of them.
• In the punishment orientation stage, people think correct behavior is whatever they won't get in trouble for, which may lead them to commit the crime if they think they can get away with it.
• In the reward orientation stage, people think correct behavior is whatever is the most rewarding, even if the reward outweighs any potential punishment, which may lead them to commit a crime for financial or status rewards.
• Kohlberg's theory suggests that criminal behavior is less likely if people are at the conventional level when they think about what is best for their own personal relationships and society in general before taking action, and even less likely if they are at the post-conventional level when they actually consider the moral principles you know what is truly right and truly wrong.