Criminal personality theory

• What is Yochelson and Samenow's theory on criminal personality?


  -criminals are prone to faulty thinking (causing them to commit crime)

  -the theory is based on a 14 yr old longitudinal (lengthy study with the same participants) study of 240 male offenders, most had been committed to a psych hospital.

  -claimed to have identified thinking patterns that 'characterise' all criminals.

  -study suggests there are a number of identifiable flawed ways of thinking that are common to criminals.

  -series of choices in early like turns someone into a criminal
• What are the types of error in Character traits?

  -Pervasive fearfulness

  -Feelings of worthlessness.

  -Need for power and control

  -Perfectionism

  -Need for sexual excitement

  -Lying
• What are the types of error in automatic errors of thinking?

  -Poor decision making

  -Lack of trust

  -Secretive

  -Failure to understand others' positions.

  -Failure to assume obligations.
• What are the types of error with errors associated with criminal acts?

  -Fantasies of anti-social behaviour

  -Corrosion of internal and external deterrents.

  -super-optimism
• • They argue that it is NOT environmental factors that lead to criminality- e.g. poverty, divorced parents, abusive parents, peer pressure etc.
  • Instead, it is the 'thinking errors' that are caused by having a criminal personality.
• Strengths of CPT


  -This has led to other research e.g. PICTS 2 (questionnaire times at revealing criminal thought patterns)

  -Successful treatments e.g. CBT (treatment to 'correct' faulty thinking pattern) have been developed from these ideas.
• Weakness of CPT

  -Yochelson and Samenow didn't use a control group of non-criminals to compare thinking errors with.

  -Their sample was unrepresentative- only males, mostly in psychiatric hospitals. Doesn't account for all criminals.

  -High sample attrition rate (the number of participants who drop out the study) there were only 30 left in the study by the end.