Cognitive Theories

• Criminal Personality Theory:

  Strengths:

  • The idea that criminals‘ thinking patterns are different from normal has led to other research. For examples PICTS (the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles) is a questionnaire aimed at revealing whether someone shows criminal thought patterns
  • Successful treatments, known as cognitive behavioural therapy, have been developed based on the idea that criminals‘ thought processes can be corrected with treatment.
• Criminal Personality Theory:

  Limitations:

  • Yochelson and Samenow did not use a control group of non-criminals to see if ‘normal’ people also make the same thinking errors
  • Their sample was unrepresentative, there were no women and most of the Men had been found insane and sent to psychiatric hospital. Yet Yochelson and Samenow claim that all offenders share the same thinking errors as this sample.
  • There was high sample attrition (drop-out rate). By the end only 30 were left in the study.