Cognitive explanations

• Cognitive explanations suggest that there are ways of thinking and internal mental processes about the world and moral decisions that lead to offending behaviour.
• Levels of moral reasoning - Kohlberg (1969)

  • Suggested that through development we pass through three levels of moral reasoning, and at each level, we demonstrate greater moral maturity. Criminal behaviour is more likely in people who do not reach the higher levels of moral reasoning.
• Moral reasoning is the way a person thinks about right and wrong.
• Cognition distortions are faulty and biased thinking patterns that lead to negative thoughts about ourselves, others and the world.
• Criminals are said to be stuck at the pre-conventional level, which at this stage, morality is considered only in terms of how their actions effect them. There are two stages of this:

  1. Punishment orientation - Correct behaviour is whatever helps avoid punishment (so criminal behaviour will happen if they feel as though they can get away with the crime).
  2. Reward orientation - Correct behaviour is whatever is the most rewarding (so criminal behaviour will happen if they feel the rewards outweigh the risks).
• Level one, the pre-conventional stage:

  1. Punishment orientation - Rules are obeyed to avoid punishment.
  2. Instrumental orientation or personal gain - Rules are obeyed for personal gain.
• Level two, the conventional stage:

  3. Good boy / girl orientation - Rules are obeyed for approval.

  4. Maintenance of the social order - Rules are obeyed to maintain social order.
• Level three, the post-conventional stage:

  5. Morality of contract and individual rights - Rules are obeyed if they are impartial (democratic rules are challenged if they infringe on the rights of others).

  6. Morality of conscious - Individual establishes their own rules in accordance with a set of ethical principles.
• Types of cognitive distortions:

  • Hostile attribution bias - Interferences about other peoples internal mental states are biased to assume they have negative intentions. These assumptions are made from misreading the body language or tone of a person as aggressive.
• Types of cognitive distortions:

  • Minimalisation - Interpreting our own beliefs as less serious that it really is. This leads to denying actions which actually caused harm to victims or the victim is in some way to blame. This attempts to justify behaviour and reduce interpersonal feelings of guilt.
• Hostile attribution bias - Schönenberg and Jusyte showed 55 violent offenders images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions. They found violent offenders were more likely than non-offenders to perceive the images as angry and hostile. Offenders misread non-aggressive cues (eg - being ‘looked at’) and this can trigger a violent response.
• Hostile attribution bias - Dodge & Frame (1982) showed children a video clip of an ‘ambiguous provocation.’ Children who had been identified as ‘aggressive’ prior to the study interpreted the situation as more hostile than those classed as ‘non-aggressive’, suggesting the root of such behaviour is influenced from childhood.
• Minimalisation - This is particularly likely in sex offenders. Barbaree found 54% rapists denied they had committed an offence at all and a further 40% minimised the harm they had caused to the victim.
• Strengths of cognitive explanations:

  • Supporting evidence for moral reasoning - Palmer & Hollin compared moral reasoning of offenders and non-offenders on a SRM-SF scale, with 11 moral dilemmas. Offenders showed less mature moral reasoning than the non-offenders group (eg - not taking things that belong to someone else). This is consistent with Kohlberg’s theory, and suggests his theory of criminality has validity.
• Strengths of the cognitive approach:

  • Practical application to therapy - Understanding the link between offending behaviour and cognitive processes means that CBT could be used to change offender's irrational beliefs. Harkins suggest that reduced denial and minimalisation in therapy is associated with less reoffending. This suggests the theory has practical value.
• Limitations of the cognitive explanations:

  • Depends on the type of offence - Howitt & Sheldon found that non-contact sex offenders (accessed sexual images on the internet) used more cognitive distortions than contact sex offenders (physically abused children). Those who had a previous history of offending were also more likely to use distortions as a justification for their behaviour. This suggests that cognitive distortions are not used in the same way by all offenders.
• Limitations of the cognitive approach:

  • Limited explanations of moral reasoning - Gibbs suggested ideas of mature and immature reasoning, similar to Kohlberg’s levels, with immature reasoning being represented by the pre-conventional level and mature reasoning being represented by the conventional level, whilst the ‘culturally biased’ post-conventional level was removed. Therefore, this suggests that the theoretical basis of Kohlberg’s ideas were sound, but a modern update on the organisation of his theory increases the validity.