he was the first to apply the concept of moral reasoning to criminal behaviour. he proposed that people’s decisions of what is right and wrong can be summarised in a stage theory of moral development.
Heinz dilemma
H’s wife is dying from cancer and there is only one drug that can save her. Chemist would only sell it for 10x the price which H couldn’t afford. The chemist refused any deals as he would make lots of money from it. H later went and stole the drug.
Kohlberg’s study into the Heinz dilemma
Studied the answers of differentagedchildren to the dilemma. He wanted to see how moral reasoningchanged as they got older.
Cognitive distortions
errors/biases in people’s infoprocessingsystems characterised by faultythinking. this is linked to the way in which criminalsinterpret the behaviour of others and justify their own actions.
what are the 2 examples of cognitive distortions?
hostile attribution bias and minimalisation
hostile attribution bias description
offenders may mis-readnon-aggressive behaviour as aggressive, which may trigger a violentresponse.
hostile attribution bias research
Schonenberg and Justye = presented 55violentoffenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expression. all offenders perceived the images as angry and hostile.
minimalisation research
Bombardee = found among 26incarceratedrapists,54% denied committing an offence at all. 40% minimised the harm they had caused the victim.
levels of moral reasoning pyramid (1-5)
reward/punishment, self-interest, pleasing others, law and order, social contract, principle. (pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional)
positive - application of research
beneficial in the treatment of criminalbehaviour. it gives the offenders a lessdistortedview of their actions.
negative - it is descriptive and not explanatory
it is good at describing the criminal mind but less successful when it comes to explaining it. it doesn’t give much insight into why the offender commits a crime in the first place