Psychological explanations: cognitive

• Cognitive distortions


  Errors or biases in people's information processing system characterised by faulty thinking
• We all occasionally show evidence of faulty thinking when explaining our own behaviour (especially if the behaviour was unexpected or out of character)
• Research has linked cognitive distortions to the way in which offenders interpret other people's behaviour and justify their own actions
• Cognitive distortions


  • Hostile attribution bias
  • Minimalisation
• Hostile attribution bias


  A tendency to misinterpret the actions of other people as confrontational when they are not
• Offenders may misread non-aggressive cues (such as being looked at) and this may trigger a disproportionate, often violent, response
• Violent offenders were significantly more likely to perceive ambiguous facial expressions as angry and hostile compared to a non-aggressive control group
• Children identified as 'aggressive' and 'rejected' prior to a study interpreted an ambiguous provocation as more hostile than those classed as 'non-aggressive' and 'accepted'
• Minimalisation


  An attempt to deny or downplay the seriousness of an offence
• Burglars may describe themselves as doing a 'job' or 'supporting my family' as a way of minimising the seriousness of their offences
• Studies suggest that individuals who commit sexual offences are particularly prone to minimalisation, with 54% denying they had committed an offence at all and a further 40% minimising the harm they had caused to the victim
• Moral reasoning


  People's decisions and judgements on issues of right and wrong
• Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning


  The higher the stage, the more sophisticated the reasoning
• Offenders tend to show a lower level of moral reasoning than non-offenders
• Offenders are more likely to be classified at the pre-conventional level of Kohlberg's model (stages 1 and 2), whereas non-offenders have generally progressed to the conventional level and beyond
• Pre-conventional level


  Characterised by a need to avoid punishment and gain rewards, and is associated with less mature, childlike 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.
• Offenders are often more egocentric (self-centred) and display poorer social perspective-taking skills than non-offender peers
• Individuals who reason at higher levels tend to sympathise more with the rights of others and exhibit more conventional behaviours such as honesty, generosity and non-violence