psychological explanations for offending behaviour

• Psychodynamic explanations


  Psychological explanations of offending behavior
• Superego


  • One of the three aspects of personality proposed by Freud: id, ego, superego
  • Each influences behaviour separately and at times one can overtake another
  • Emerges towards the end of phallic stage
  • Makes judgments through the morality principle on what is ethically right and wrong
• Superego is lacking


  The more impulsive part of the personality, the id, will take over
• Types of deficient superego

  • Underdeveloped superego
  • Overdeveloped superego
  • Deviant superego
• Maternal deprivation hypothesis


  • Stems from the attachment theory which suggests that children begin to attach to an adult from birth by pure instinct to survive
  • If bond between the mother and the child was broken then this would arise some psychological damage to the child's life
• Affectionless psychopathy


  • Lack of guilt
  • Lack of empathy
  • Viewing people as objects
  • Primed to be criminals as they are likely to be impulsive and risk taking
• Violent offenders with no history of criminal behaviour suddenly became violent which suggests that the overdeveloped superego contributed
• Thieves were more likely to have experienced maternal deprivation early in life
• Strengths of psychodynamic explanations

  • Freud was one of the first psychologists to talk about the importance of childhood experiences shaping adulthood - good external validity
  • Maternal deprivation theory could be used to understand antisocial behaviour in children who have experienced early life in orphanages
• Weaknesses of psychodynamic explanations

  • Freud's theory is highly subjective and leans heavily on individual interpretation which means that it is unfalsifiable - lacks features of science so it is not possible to formulate a hypothesis
  • Maternal deprivation hypothesis depend on Bowlby's 44 thieves study which has been criticised for researcher bias
• Psychodynamic explanations


  • Use a nomothetic approach as Freud uses the psychosexual stages which is assumed that everyone goes through it
  • Lack an idiographic dimension
  • Suggest an alpha bias, as Freud claimed females develop a weaker superego
  • Are deterministic as they assume that any deprivation early in childhood will lead to criminal behaviour
• Differential association theory


  • Individuals learn criminality and offending behaviour through experience
  • Proposes how crime is transmitted and generated between people
• Principles of differential association theory

  • Criminal behaviour is learnt, not inherited
  • Criminal behaviour is learnt via interaction with others
  • Biggest influence comes from the most closest and intimate relationships
  • Possible to learn tips and tricks from others
  • Possible to learn the mindset from others
  • Criminality is strengthened by repeated exposure to criminals
  • Contact with criminals are not necessary constant
  • People learn criminality in the same way that they learn everything
  • Criminality is an expression of person's needs and values in both criminal and non criminal behaviour
• Learnt attitudes


  Tendency to see law as foolish, seeing police as a threat
• Learnt acts


  Using tools to break in, how to avoid capture
• A person is exposed to criminals more than non criminals

  They can turn to criminal behaviour
• Research results


  • Farrington et al longitudinal study of boys from south london, found key risk factors of them becoming a criminal - convicted parents, coming from a large who lives in poverty, low educational attainment
  • Reiss and Rhodes - boys in close triads were more likely to behave criminally if other members of the triad also behaved criminally
• Strengths of differential association theory

  • Still relevant after 100 years - why some young people tend to seek membership in criminal gangs to have the sense of belonging and how criminals may become more skilled if they are in contact with more experienced criminals
  • Changed the views of criminality from biological and morals to social aspects which provided explanations as to how the environment can be a risk factor
• Weaknesses of differential association theory

  • Over simplistic: people are more complex than this
  • Can not explain people who do not turn to crime even though they are surrounded by criminal influences
• Issues and debates


  • Nurture
  • Environmental determinism
• Cognitive distortions


  Psychological explanations of offending behavior
• Hostile attribution bias


  • Tendency to interpret natural behavior from others as threatening and dangerous
  • These people are always on the lookout for confrontation and threat from others
• Minimisation


  • Downplaying of an offence by the offender as a way of reducing guilt and shame
  • Form of denial so that they can tell themselves that they have not done anything wrong
  • Highly prominent amongst sex offenders who blame the victim
• Interviews


  • Some offenders believe that abuse was a positive thing for the victim
• Pollock and Hashmall study - 86 child molesters, over one third said that their reasoning for crime was that it was consensual
• Henning et al study - 1267 men and 159 women convicted of intimate partner abuse were assessed using scales to measure hostile attribution bias and minimisation, results show that both male and female blame the others more
• Strengths of cognitive distortions

  • Help with interventions and treatment programmes - empathy targeted programmes may help the way they think
  • Can be used to predict the likelihood of someone reoffending as it can show if the offender has been fully rehabilitated or not - showing remorse
• Weaknesses of cognitive distortions

  • Trying to measure cognitive distortions is not 100% right - thoughts are subjective and open to interpretations
  • Uses self report methods
  • These theories can present us with characteristics of offending behaviour but never why it's happening
• Kohlberg's theory of morality


  Psychological explanation of offending behaviour
• Main idea of theory

  • Criminals operate at a different level of moral reasoning than non-criminals
• Stage theory


  Links development of morality to developmental stages in a person's life
• Measuring moral reasoning


  1. Presenting a series of moral dilemmas to test the ways a person responds and the reasoning behind their response

  2. Justification demonstrates the level of morality instead of the decision
• Stages of moral reasoning

  • Preconventional (5y-11y)
  • Conventional (12y-adulthood)
  • Postconventional (adulthood)
• Preconventional moral reasoning


  • Punishment-avoidance orientation
  • Instrumental orientation
• Conventional moral reasoning


  • Good child orientation
  • Maintenance of social order
• Postconventional moral reasoning


  • Social contract
  • Universal ethical principles
• Criminals likely operate at the preconventional moral reasoning stage
• Preconventional moral reasoning


  • Lacks levels of reflection and self-awareness
  • Lacks simplistic assessment of one's action
• Strengths of Kohlberg's theory

  • Could be applied in rehabilitative settings - incorporating moral reasoning into effective interventions with offenders
  • Moral dilemmas could be replicated and modified to suit specific age groups - reliable
• Weaknesses of Kohlberg's theory

  • Moral reasoning does not always reflect behaviour
  • Not everyone can be slotted into these stages neatly - people may skip or overlap