cognitive explanations

• kohlberg


  proposed that people’s judgements on issues of right and wrong can be be summarised in a stage theory of moral development

  • the higher the stage, the more sophisticated
• studies suggest that criminals tend to show a lower level of moral reasoning that non criminal

  kohlberg used his moral dilemma technique and found that a group of violent youth were significantly lower in their moral development than non violent youths
• morality level 1 - pre conventional morality

  stage 1 - punishment orientation - rules obeyed to avoid punishment

  stage 2 - instrumental orientation - rules obeyed for personal growth
• morality level 2 - conventional morality

  stage 3 - good boy/girl orientation - rules obeyed for approval

  stage 4 - maintenance of approval - rules obeyed to obey social order
• morality level 3 - post conventional morality

  stage 5 - morality of contract and individual rights - rules obeyed if they are impartial, democratic rules are challenged if they infringe on the rights of others

  stage 6 - morality of conscience - the individual establishes their own rules in accordance with a personal set of ethical principles
• criminal offenders more likely to be classified at the preconventional level, whereas non criminals have generally progressed to the postconventional level
• pre conventional level characterised by a need to avoid punishment and gain awards.

  • is associated with less mature, childlike reasoning

  people who reason at this level may commit crim if they can get away with it or gain rewards (money or respect)

  • this assumption is supported by studies that suggest offenders are egocentric and display poorer social perspective taking skills than their non criminal peers - chandler
• cognitive distortions

  errors/biases in people’s information processing system characterised by faulty thinking

  • eg. the way criminals interpret themselves and everything around them as negatively inaccurate
• hostile attribution bias 


  tendency to judge ambiguous situation or the actions of others as confrontational or aggressive when they are not

  • triggers a violent disproportionate reaction
• schonenberg and justye presented 55 violent offenders with images with emotionally ambiguous facial expressions 


  when compared with a non aggressive matched control group, the violent offenders were significantly more likely to perceive the images as angry and hostile
• dodge and frame - perceiving behaviour that is ambiguous as hostile rooted in childhood 


  showed children a video of an ambiguous provocation - intention was neither hostile or accidentally

  children who had been identified as ‘aggressive and rejected’ prior to the study interpreted the situation as more hostile than those classed as ‘non aggressive and accepted’
• minimalisation 


  the attempt to deny or downplay the seriousness of an offence

  • eg. robbing passed off as supporting oneself
• studies suggest that sexual offenders are prone to minimalisation

  barbaree - found among 26 incarcerated rapists, 54% denied they had committed an offence

  • a further 40% minimised the harm they had caused
• studies suggest that sexual offenders are prone to minimalisation - pollock and hashmall

  reported that 35% of a sample of child molesters argued their crimes were non sexual - ‘they were just being affectionate’

  • 36% stated the victims had consented
• X hard to generalise findings to all criminal acts
• ✔️ palmer and hollin - compared moral reasoning within groups of non offenders and found the delinquent group showed less mature moral reasoning than the non delinquent group
• blackburn - suggests delinquent may show poor moral development due to a lack of role playing opportunities in child which give more opportunities for moral reasoning to be developed

  ✔️ real life application - can be used to help young people not to turn to crime by offering them role play opportunities
• X cultural bias - doesn’t represent a natural stage of development, ignores the importance of culture
• gibbs proposed new model with equivalent levels of conventional levels and adjusted them to mature and immature levels

  • allowed the theory to be used across more cultures and helps compensate for the lack of generalisability
• ✔️ understanding the nature of cognitive distortions is beneficial for the treatment of criminal behaviour

  • CBT encourages offenders to face their actions and establish a less distorted view of their actions
  • studies suggest that reduced incidence of denial and minimalisation in therapy is highly correlated with a reduced risk of reoffending
• X lacks ecological validity - hostile attribution bias uses hypothetical situations to measure hostile attribution bias
• X lacks predictive validity - it is difficult to make predictions about why people engage in violent behaviour as their responses may not be the same as they would in a real situation