Cognitive Explanations for Offending behaviour

• Cognitive distortions

  Faulty, biased or irrational ways of thinking that make people perceive themselves or others in an inaccurate way
• Cognitive distortions in criminal behaviour


  Allow an offender to deny or rationalise their behaviour
• Hostile attribution bias

  • Offender behaviour is often associated with a tendency to misinterpret the actions of other people, as aggressive or provocative
  • When they misread non-aggressive cues (such as being 'looked at') this may trigger a disproportionate, often violent response
• Hostile attribution bias


  • Schonenberg and Justye (2014) presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions
  • Violent offenders were significantly more likely to perceive the images as angry and hostile compared to a non-aggressive matched control group
• Minimisation


  • Explains how an offender may deny or downplay the seriousness of an offence
  • Helps the offender accept the consequences of their own behaviour
  • Means that negative emotions can be reduced (for example, burglars may describe themselves as 'doing a job')
• Minimisation


  • Barbaree (1991) found that among 26 incarcerated rapists, 54% denied they had committed an offence at all and a further 40% minimised the harm that they had caused the victim downplaying the seriousness of the offence
• Cognitive distortions

  • Understanding the nature of cognitive distortions has been proven beneficial in the treatment of criminal behaviour
  • Reduced incidence of denial and minimalisation in therapy is highly correlated with a reduced risk of reoffending and is the key feature of anger management
• Cognitive behaviour therapy for sex offenders

  1. Encourages offenders to accept what they have done

  2. Establish a less distorted view of their actions
• Cognitive behavioural techniques


  • Reducing cognitive distortions such as judgement and decision making errors
• Participants who attended 13 hour sessions had a 44% reduction in arrests compared to a control group
• Understanding cognitive distortions is key to treating criminals
• Cognitive distortions


  Thought processes that criminals go through after a crime has been committed
• Cognitive distortions are more useful as a way of describing thought processes after a crime has been committed, rather than explaining how the offending behaviour occurred in the first place</b>
• Minimisation accurately describes how a person might deal with their feelings of guilt, but it doesn't explain how they got there in the first place
• It is questionable how useful cognitive distortions are as an explanation of offending behaviour
• Psychodynamic explanations


  Explanations that propose long-term separations between mother and child could have long-term emotional consequences
• Maternal deprivation hypothesis

  Proposed by Bowlby, that long-term separations between mother and child could have long-term emotional consequences
• Affectionless psychopathy


  Characterised by a lack of normal affection, shame or sense of responsibility, as a long-term consequence of separation
• Alternative explanations could therefore explain the reasons why offending behaviour occurs particularly in childhood and adolescence
• Kohlberg's (1969) cognitive theory of moral development


  A stage theory of moral development whereby each stage represents a more advanced form of moral reasoning
• Kohlberg's theory construction

  1. Interviews with boys about their understanding of what is right and wrong

  2. Constructed a stage theory of moral development
• Levels of moral reasoning in Kohlberg's theory

  • Pre-conventional
  • Conventional
  • Post-conventional
• People progress through these stages as a consequence of biological maturity and also as a consequence of having opportunities to discuss and develop their thinking
• Higher stage


  More sophisticated the cognitive reasoning an individual has
• Criminals are more likely to be classified at the pre-conventional stage


  Non-criminals have generally progressed to the conventional level and beyond
• Pre-conventional level


  Characterised by the need to avoid punishment and gain rewards, and is associated with less mature, childlike cognitive reasoning
• Adults and adolescents who reason at the pre-conventional level may commit crime if they can get away with it or gain rewards in the form of money, increased respect etc.
• Individuals who reason at higher levels


  • Sympathise more with the rights of others
  • Exhibit more conventional behaviours such as honesty, generosity and non-violence
• Offenders

  • More egocentric (self-centred)
  • Display poorer social perspective-taking skills than non-offending peers
• Moral reasoning


  Kohlberg's level of moral reasoning
• Kohlberg's level of moral reasoning


  Criminal behaviour
• Study by Palmer and Hollin (1998)


  • Compared moral reasoning between 332 non-offenders and 126 convicted offenders
  • All participants given Socio-Reflection Measure Short Form (SRM-SF) with 11 moral dilemma-related questions
• Convicted offenders group showed less mature moral cognitive reasoning than the non-offenders group, operating at lower levels of moral development such as hedonistic gain (pre-conventional morality)
• This illustrates clear differences in moral reasoning between offenders and non-offenders and is consistent with Kohlberg's predictions
• Limitations of Kohlberg's theory

  • Cannot be applied to all crimes
• Thornton and Reid (1982) used Kohlberg's moral dilemmas with criminal samples and measured the results against his 'Stages of Moral Development' concept</b>
• Pre-conventional moral reasoning


  • Tends to be associated with crimes relating to financial gain (such as robbery)
  • Tended to be evident in crimes where the offender thought they might have had a good chance at evading punishment
• Impulsive crimes (such as assault)


  Did not relate to any type of reasoning and was not a factor in committing the crime
• The level of moral reasoning may depend on the kind of offence committed and therefore questions the generalisability of Kohlberg's theory to offending behaviour
• Differential association theory

  Offending is learnt through socialisation. Pro-criminal attitudes/behaviours occur through association and interactions with family members, peers and their neighbourhood.